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قراءة كتاب Notes and Queries, Number 175, March 5, 1853 A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc.
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Notes and Queries, Number 175, March 5, 1853 A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc.
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Supported by Caxton, Wynkin upheld,
Text Tibbald crept forward to sight.
'Is this,' quoth the poet, 'the thing that rebell'd,
And dar'd even Pope to the fight?
'To Kennel, good Tib, for a time will arrive,
When all in their senses shall know,
That half of your consequence, Tib, you derive
From the lash of so envied a foe.
'Eight hundred old plays thou declar'st thou hast read[2];
How could'st thou the public so cozen?
Yet the traces I see (spite of what thou hast said)
Of not many more than a dozen.
'If all thou hast dug, how could Farmer, my Tib,
Or Stevens, find gold in the mine?
Thy trade of attorney sure taught thee to fib,
And truth was no client of thine.
'And yet, to appease me for all thou hast done,
And show thou art truly my friend,
Go watch, and to me with intelligence run,
When Johnson and Capell descend.
'For Johnson, with all his mistakes, I must love;
Ev'n love from the injured he gains;
But Capell a comrade for dulness will prove,
And him thou may'st take for thy pains.'"
The Biter; an attempt at Comedy, by Rowe, which was received with that contempt which it well deserved.
Footnote 2:(return)
Theobald, in the preface to his first edition of Shakspeare, asserts that, exclusive of the works of Beaumont and Fletcher, and Ben Jonson, he had read above eight hundred plays, to ascertain the uncommon and obsolete phrases in his author. The reader who can discover the fruits of this boasted industry in his notes may safely believe him; and those who cannot may surely claim the liberty, like myself, to doubt somewhat of his veracity. This assertion, however, Theobald had sufficient modesty to omit in the preface to his second edition, together with all the criticisms on Greek authors, which I am assured he had collected from such papers of Mr. Wycherley as had been entrusted to his care for very different purposes. It is much to be questioned whether there are five hundred old plays extant, by the most accurate perusal of which the works of Shakspeare could receive advantage; I mean of dramas prior, cotemporary, or within half a century before and after his own.
SWEDISH WORDS CURRENT IN ENGLAND.
In the summer of 1847 I mentioned to my friend Professor Retzius at Stockholm, certain Scandinavian words in use at Whitby, with which he was much pleased, they not being akin to the German. I have since been mostly in the South of Europe, but have not lost sight of these words; and last spring I wrote out in Switzerland upwards of five hundred Swedish words, which greatly resemble the English, Lowland Scots, &c., but I doubt many of them have the same root with the German correspondents. I now beg you kindly to offer to the notice of our Anglo-Saxon and Icelandic scholars, as well as the estimable Northern savans at Copenhagen and elsewhere, the following words in use at Whitby, and I believe throughout Cleveland and Cumberland, where the local accent and manner of speaking is the same.
"Agg orm, Swedish (viper), agg worm, Whitby (pron. wōrrum).—Bloa bær (bilbery), blue berry.—By (village), as a termination to names of towns, occurs, perhaps, more frequently in this district than in others; there are some places in Cleveland called Lund and Upsal.—Bæck (brook), beck.—Djevul (devil), pronounced exactly in the Swedish manner at Whitby.—Doalig (poorly), dowly.—Eldon (tinder-box), applied to faggots.—Fors (waterfall), spelt force and foss in Yorkshire books.—Ful (ugly), pron. fool, usually associated with bigness in Cleveland.—Foane (silly), pron. fond at Whitby.—Giller (snare), guilder.—Gæpen (handful), gowpen.—Harr (grayling), carrling in Ryedale.—Kætt (flesh), kett, applied to coarse meat.—Lek (play), at Whitby, to lake.—Leta (to seek), to late at Whitby.—Lie (scythe), pron. lye.—Lingon (red bilberry), called a ling berry.—Ljung (ling).—Lopp (a flea).—Næbb (beak), neb.—Skaft (handle), skaft.—Skær (rock), Whitby skar.—Smitta (to infect), to smit.—Strandgata (creek), at Whitby ghaut.—Stæd (anvil), steady.—Sæf (a rush), siv.—Tjarn (pool), tarn.—Oenska (to wish for), we say to set one an onska, i.e. longing or wishing."
Will any one inform me which of the above are Anglo-Saxon words? I may add that there are many French words in the Swedish for aught I know, some of them Norman. As we find German words in the Italian, we may expect to find Scandinavian in the French.
SIR DAVID LINDSAY'S VIRIDARIUM.
In Lord Lindsay's very interesting Lives of the Lindsays, vol. i. p. 347., after the description of the very curious "viridarium or garden" of Sir David Lindsay at Edzell, and of the various sculptures and ornaments with which its wall is decorated, the author says: "To show how insecure was enjoyment in that dawn of refinement, the centre of every star along the wall forms an embrasure for the extrusion, if needed, of arrow, harquebuss, or pistol."
Some years before the book was published, I had visited this very interesting spot, and examined these sculptures, and other ornaments, amongst which the pierced stars puzzled me much: however, after a lengthened and very careful investigation, finding that, being at too great a height from the ground, and, moreover, that as the holes in the centre of the stars do not pass through the wall, but merely into small cavities in it, they could not have been used as embrasures, or have served for warlike purposes; and that, as there were no channels or pipes that could have
conducted water to them, they could not have been connected with fountains or water-works; I came to the conclusion that the planner of the garden, or at least of its walls, must have been an ardent lover of birds, and that these holes were for providing access for his beloved feathered friends (they would only admit the passage of small birds) to the secure resting-places which the hollow stones afforded; for whose use other niches and recesses seem also to have been planned (though some of the latter were probably intended to hold bee-hives) with a philornithic indifference for the security of the fruit tempting their attacks from all sides, but quite in character with the portrait of Sir David, as depicted by his noble biographer.
Athenæum.