tidings."

Here we have newes treated both as singular and plural! while we have tiding as the singular of tidings, a form which, from long disuse, would now appear strange to us. In the following extract from Florio's very amusing book of Dialogues, Second Frutes, 1591, he makes newes decidedly plural:—

"C. What doo they say abroade? what newes have you, Master Tiberio? T. Nothing that I know; can you tell whether the post be come? C. No, Sir; they saye in the Exchange that the great Turke makes great preparation to warre with the Persian. T. 'Tis but a deuice; these be newes cast abroade to feede the common sorte, I doo not beleeue them.... C. Yea, but they are written to verie worshipful merchants. T. By so much the lesse doo I beleeue them; doo not you know that euerie yeare such newes are spreade abroade? C. I am almost of your minde, for I seldome see these written reports prove true. T. Prognostications, newes, deuices, and letters from forraine countries (good Master Cæsar), are but used as confections to feed the common people withal. C. A man must give no more credite to Exchange and Powles' newes than to fugitiues promises and plaiers fables."

In Thomas's Principal Rules of the Italian Grammer, with a Dictionarie, printed by Thomas Powell in 1562, but written in 1548, we have—

"Novella, a tale, a parable, or a neweltee.

"Novelluzza, an ynkelyng.

"Novellare, to tell tales or newes."

In the title page of a rare little volume printed in 1616, we have the adjective new in apposition with the substantive newes, thus:

"Sir Thomas Overburie his Wife, with new Elegies upon his (now knowne) untimely death. Whereunto are annexed New Newes and Characters written by himselfe and other learned Gentlemen. Editio septima. London: printed by Edward Griffin for Lawrence Lisle, 1616, 12mo."

The head of one section is—

"Newes from any-whence, or, Old Truth under a supposal of Noueltie."

Chaucer uses for the newe and of the newe (sc. fashion) elliptically. Tiding or Tidings, from the A.-S. Tid-an, evidently preceded newes in the sense of inteligence, and may not newes therefore be an elliptic form of new-tidinges? Or, as our ancestors had newelté and neweltés, can it have been a contraction of the latter? If we are to suppose with Mr. Hickson that news was "adopted bodily into the language," we must not go to the High-German, from which our early language has derived scarcely anything, but to the Neder-Duytsch, from the frequent and constant communication with the Low Countries in the sixteenth century. The following passages from Kilian's Thesaurus, printed by Plantin, at Antwerp, in 1573, are to the purpose, and may serve to show how the word was formed:—

"Nieuwtijdinge, oft wat nieuws, Nouvelles, Nuntius vel Nuntium."

"Seght ons wat nieuws, Dicte nous quelquechose de nouveau, Recita nobis aliquid novi."

"Nieuwsgierich, nygierich, Convoiteux de nouveautez, Cupidus novitatis."

I trust these materials may be acceptable to your able correspondents, and tend to the resolution of the question at issue.

S.W. SINGER.

Mickleham, August 6. 1850.

"News," Origin of the Word (Vol. i., pp. 270. 369. 487.; vol. ii., pp. 23. 81. 106.).—Your correspondents who have written upon this subject may now have seen the following note in Zimperley's Encyclopædia, p. 472.:—

"The original orthography was newes, and in the singular. Johnson has, however, decided that the word newes is a substantive without a singular, unless it be considered as singular. The word new, according to Wachter, is of very ancient use, and is common to many nations. The Britons, and the Anglo-Saxons, had the word, though not the thing. It was first printed by Caxton in the modern sense, in the Siege of Rhodes, which was translated by John Kay, the Poet Laureate, and printed by Caxton about the year 1490. In the Assembly of Foulis, which was printed by William Copland in 1530, there is the following exclamation:—

"'Newes! newes! newes! have ye ony newes?'

"In the translation of the Utopia, by Raphe Robinson, citizien and goldsmythe, which was imprinted by Abraham Nele in 1551, we are told, 'As for monsters, because they be no newes, of them we were nothynge inquysitive.' Such is the rise, and such the progress of the word news, which, even in 1551, was still printed newes!"

W.J.

Havre.

FOLK LORE.

Charming for Warts (Vol. i., p. 19.; vol. ii. p. 150.).—In Lord Bacon's Sylva Sylvarum, or a Natural History in Ten Centuries (No. 997.), the great philosopher gives a minute account of the practice, from personal experience, in the following words:—

"The taking away of warts, by rubbing them with somewhat that afterwards is put to waste and consume, is a common experiment; and I do apprehend it the rather, because of mine own experience. I had from my childhood a wart upon one of my fingers; afterwards, when I was about sixteen years old, being then at Paris, there grew upon both my hands a number of warts (at least an hundred), in a month's space; the English Ambassador's lady, who was a woman far from superstition, told me one day she would help me away with my warts; whereupon she got a piece of lard with the skin on, and rubbed the warts all over with the fat side, and amongst the rest, that wart which I had from my childhood; then she nailed the piece of lard with the fat towards the sun, upon a post of her chamber window, which was to the south. The success was, that within five weeks' space all the warts went quite away, and that wart which I had so long endured for company; but at the rest I did little marvel, because they came in a short time and might go away in a short time again, but the going of that which had stayed so long doth yet stick with me. They say the like is done by rubbing of warts with a green elder stick, and then burying the stick to rot in muck."

J.M.B.

MINOR NOTES.

Capture of Henry the Sixth.—At Waddington in Mytton stands a pile of building known as the "Old Hall," once antique, but now much indeed despoiled of its beauty, where for some time the unfortunate king, Henry the Sixth, was concealed after the fatal battle of Hexham, in Northumberland. Quietly seated one day at dinner, "in company with Dr. Manting, Dean of Windsor, Dr. Bedle, and one Ellarton," his enemies came upon him by surprise, but he privately escaped by a back door, and fled to Brungerley stepping-stones (still partially visible in a wooden frame), where he was taken prisoner, "his legs tied together under the horse's belly," and thus disgracefully conveyed to the Tower in London. He was betrayed by one of the Talbots of Bashall Hall, who was then high-sheriff for the West Riding. This ancient house or hall is still in existence, but now entirely converted into a building for farming purposes: "Sic transit gloria mundi." Near the village of Waddington, there is still to be seen a meadow known by the name of "King Henry's Meadow."

In Baker's Chronicle, the capture of the king is described as having taken place "in Lincolnshire,"