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Others translate it into the vernacular, as you. the Swedish of the same passage," Forty klangaret skall waraheligt ibland eder."

Luther combines both ideas in his version. In Lev. xxv. 10, he translates jobel by "erlassjahr," the year of redemption, but elsewhere he adopts halljahr, the year of the trumpet or rejoicing. Our English version renders a portion of this passage differently from any other translation. In the early English Bibles, Coverdale, Matthew, Cranmer, and Taverner, verse 9 makes no reference to Jubilee. It stands thus, “And thou shalt make a trompe blow on the tenth daye of the seventh month."

In the Bishops' Bible of 1572 it reads, "And thou shalt cause to blowe the trumpet of the Jubilee in the tenth day of the seventh month." There is a marginal note to Jubilee, "It was so called because the joyful tidings of libertie was publikely proclaimed by the sound of a trumpet.'

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Our modern pronunciation is entirely out of accord with the ancient. It will be seen above that in our early English versions the initial letter is, representing the Hebrew yod. This marks a transition taking place in the pronunciation of j, which, being merely an initial i or y, was intermingled in the old dictionaries with the vowel i. It is not easy to determine the precise period when the y, hardened semivowel j, with the sound of initial into the palatal j. In Italian a change in the spelling took place. Lat. justus, jubilæus, became giusto, giubeleo. In English we contented ourselves with altering the pronunciation, which, however, gave rise to some inconviences. Halle lujah is a poser to many rustic musical amateurs. I suppose, however, that we shall never get back to the Hebrew yobel or the old English iubely.

The connexion of Hebrew jobel with similar words in the Aryan tongues is a curious subject of inquiry. Gesenius compares it with Lat. ejulare; Swed. iolen, jal, jöbl, &c.

Liddell and Scott carry the comparison to Greek ódodŵyn, óλodújw, Lat. ululare, and again to Hebrew halal, to praise-hence Hallelu-jah. The connexion of Semitic and Aryan roots may appear problematical, but interjectional cries of joy or J. A. PICTON. grief are common to all races. Sandyknowe, Wavertree.

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they should find a place in 'N. & Q.' in any case, as they will then be ready at hand for workers on the dialect dictionary which we all hope some day to see.

Brimming.-"In the North of England, when the earth turns up with a mellow and crumbly appearance, and smoaks, the farmers say the earth is brimming (vol. i. p. 157).

Mother-stone.-"The stone, called, in Hertfordshire,

mother-stone, a concretion of many small blue pebbles (vol. i. p. 506).

Cow-gate. "I scarcely ever knew a cow-gate given up (vol. ii. p. 126). for want of ability to obtain a cow Foal (coal-pit term).-" When they [boys] reach the age of ten or twelve years, a more laborious station is allotted to them. They then become what are termed lads or foals; supplying the inferior place at a machine called a tram" (vol. ii. p. 158).

Fashions." He applied to Squire Fairfax, and told by the road side 'he would show him the fashions on him, that if he would let him have a little bit of ground it" (vol. ii. p. 309).

Crombe." As soon as a sufficient quantity [of weeds] are collected on the dam, they are drawn out by crombes, forks, &c." (vol. ii. p. 351).

Flag.-"The dibbler, who walks backwards, and turning the dibbles partly round......makes two holes on each flag, at the distance of three inches the length way of the flag" (vol. ii. p. 355).

Shim." In the isle of Thanet they are particularly attentive to clean their bean and pea stubbles before instrument called a shim " (vol. iii. p. 131). they plough...... For this purpose they have invented an

Fell-Monger's Poake.-"This manure has, for ten years past, been used upon the stiff grounds in the counties of Surrey and Kent" (vol. iii. p. 138).

Rowen.-"The grass of the preceding hay crop, or pasturage, kept from July or August, without suffering (vol. iii. p. 151). any animal to enter it, is in Suffolk called old Rowen Tipling.-"A mode of curing clover-hay" (vol. iii. p. 194).

Dai or Dei.-"In Aberdeenshire denotes the person who has the superintendance of a dairy, whether that Ooze.-"Near the coast [of Norfolk] great quantities person be male or female" (vol. iii. p. 262). of sea-weed, or ooze, are collected and used as manure (vol. iii. p. 559).

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Briser." In the month of September, a slight ploughing and preparation is given to the field, destined for beans and parsnips the ensuing year. In this country [Jersey] this work is called briser" (vol. iv. p. 321).

Lyery.-"They [oxen] should be as little liable as possible to disease, or any hereditary distemper; as being lyery or black-fleshed, or having yellow fat and the like" (vol. iv. p. 351).

Graves." A farmer in Surrey used graves from the Tallow-Chandlers, with very great success on a sandy soil" (vol. vi. p. 229).

Stubbing.-"[The Spanish chesnut] possesses a peculiar faculty of branching, provincially called stubbing, from the roots after being cut down" (vol. vi. p. 457).

Bottesford Manor, Brigg.

EDWARD PEACOCK,

THE NEW "ABBOTSFORD EDITION" OF SIR W. SCOTT's NOVELS.-I have heard that a new "Abbotsford Edition" of Sir Walter Scott's novels is about to appear. If this be true I trust that some com

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petent person will revise the text, correct obvious ever knew, he was one of the first, for a nice sense of misprints, and give short notes pointing out where honor, a generous contempt of the adventitious distincthe writer was obviously in error. tions of men, and sterling though sometimes outré wit. No writer in The enclosed elegy has pleased me beyond any of my our tongue, except Shakespere, is so well deserv- late poetic efforts. Perhaps tis the memory of joys that ing of the care of a sensible editor as is Sir Walter are past," and a friend who is no more, that biases Scott, and no one of first or even second-rate rank my criticism.-It is likewise, ever since I read your has had so little done to purify the text and correct Aiken on the poetical use of Natural History, a favorite errors. The old "Abbotsford Edition" is probably manners of the Animal Kingdoms. I regret much that study of mine, the characters of the Vegetable and the the best form in which the novels have been pre- I cannot have an opportunity of waiting on you to have sented, but it contains many errors of the press. your strictures on this poem-How I have succeeded on These remarks are made by way of preface to the whole-if there is any incongruity in the imagerythe following correction. Of course the text must altogether. I will not pretend to say whether it is or whether I have not omitted some apt rural paintings never be tampered with; but a short note should owing to my prejudice in favor of a gentleman to whom be given in any future issue, pointing out the I am much indebted, or to your critical abilities, but in mistake into which the writer has fallen. Father the way of my trade, as a poet, I will subscribe more Philip, in the fifth chapter of the Monastery' implicitly to your strictures, than to any individual on (p. 59, Abbotsf. ed.), speaks of "The monks Bene-earth.-I have written Capt Grose, and inclosed him a dictine, reformed on the rule of Saint Bernard of will probably see him. I shall have leisure soon, to write billet to you. If he comes to your neighbourhood, you Clairvaux, thence called Cistercian." The Cister-off for you, several of my poems. cians took their name from Citeaux, in Burgundy, Latin Cistercium. Though not their founder, as has been sometimes inaccurately affirmed, St. Bernard of Clairvaux was the great ornament of the order, after whom the Cistercians have sometimes been called Bernardines.

66

I have the honor to be, Sir,
Your oblidged humble servt,
ROB, BURNS.

Ellisland, 30th July, 1790.
Professor Stewart, Catrine.

HENRY MARCH GILBERT.

26, Above Bar, Southampton.

Another error occurs to me at this moment. It is almost certainly a misprint only. In a note to PITT'S LAST WORDS.-The story I am going to the twenty-ninth chapter of Ivanhoe' (p. 566) relate is already known; but I would repeat it, as we are told that the arms assumed by Godfrey told by Mr. Disraeli, when Premier, in my hearafter the capture of Jerusalem were a crossing. I happened to sit opposite to him at dinner, counter patent cantoned with four little crosses in a private house, and to promote conversation or, upon a field azure, displaying metal upon I said, "I suppose, Mr. Disraeli, there is no such metal.” “Azure" is clearly a misprint for argent. The proper blazonry of this coat is Argent, a cross potent between four plain crosslets or. See Geo. Seton's Law and Practise of Heraldry in Scotland,' p. 97. The crosses are believed to symbolize the five wounds of our blessed Lord, and the tinctures to bear allusion to Psalm lxvii. verse 14. "Si dormiatis inter medios cleros, pennæ columbæ deargentatæ, et posteriora dorsi ejus in pallore auri." Dr. Rock was of opinion that the arms of Jerusalem were intended as "a representation of the piece of board with the writing on it, set by Pilate's order above the head of our Saviour on the cross."

EDWARD PEACOCK.

Bottesford Manor, Brigg. LETTER OF ROBERT BURNS.-The following letter of Robert Burns is in a volume in my possession. As I cannot find it in the correspondence, there is a possibility it may be unpublished:

Sir,-It would be a reason sufficiently just, if I were to tell you that I have not sent you my poetic Epistle to Fintry, because I actually could not find time to transcribe it, but a better reason is, I am out of conceit with it myself, and transcribing a thing of my own I do not like, is a drudgery I know not how to bear,-I dare say if you have not met with Capt Matthew Henderson about Edin' you must have heard of him. He was an intimate acquaintance of mine; and of all mankind I

place as Bellamy's in the House of Commons now?" "No," he said, "the members dine at the Club; but what do you know about Bellamy's?" I replied that "When I was a boy I used to pay half-a-crown to the doorkeeper of the Strangers' Gallery in the old House, where I heard the best speakers of half a century ago, and that they fed at Bellamy's."

The Premier continued, "Did you ever hear of Nicholls? He was a very respectable man-an old servant of the House, who attended to the members when they dined; and as I had few friends when I entered Parliament, I was glad of an occasional chat with him. So I said to him one day, 'You must have known in your long service some great ministers and remarkable members.' To which he answered, God bless you, sir, don't you known what Mr. Pitt's last words were ?" I think I could eat one of Nicholls's weal pies."

"Now here was the difference betwixt truth and history. Stanhope says the last words were, O, my poor country!' But there are only two things of which a dying man can think, his body or his soul-not his country; and I told Lord Stanhope so. Austerlitz killed Pitt, and as he lay a-dying at Wimbledon, his attendants urged the necessity of his eating something, when he said, 'I think I could eat one of Nicholls's veal

pies. A post-chaise was at once dispatched to London, and Nicholls came back in it with some veal pies in a napkin; but the minister was gone when they arrived."

The life and force of Lord Beaconfield's conversation are of course wanting in my narration; but the story is his, and he laid comic stress on the cockney word weal. ALFRED GATTY, D.D.

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WARDA FORI, THE WARD OF CHEAP.-Richard Thomson, in his Chronicles of London Bridge,' p. 117, speaks of the "Ward of Fori, or Fore Street." This statement has much exercised me, as it gave rise to the suspicion that before the settlement of the City into twenty-four wards (now twenty-six) there had been other, and now forgotten, ones; whereas I have ground for suspecting the earliest division to have been into twelve wards only. I am now able to determine this doubtful point with regard to a ward of Fore record in the universal index pages of N. & Q.'

MARK TWAIN.-M. Max O'Rell's recent assertion at Exeter Hall that the absence of soap in the bedrooms of the continental hotels was to be attri-Street, and it may be desirable to place it on buted to the custom of foreigners of carrying their toilet requisites in their portmanteaux, and not to their uncleanliness, may induce the author of 'Innocents Abroad' to review his facetious remarks on that subject with as strong a revulsion of feeling as he has shown in his description of that simple but all-important ceremony of threading a needle. In The Prince and the Pauper' (Chatto & Windus, 1881), at p. 133, Miles Hendon soliloquizes, while endeavouring to use a needle and thread, "Now shall I have the demon's own time to thread it." ," observes Mark Twain, And," "so he had. He did as men have always done, and probably always will do to the end of timeheld the needle still and tried to thrust the thread through the eye, which is the oppposite of a woman's way."

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Three years later, in 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' (Chatto & Windus), p. 95, Mrs. Judith Loftus thus apostrophizes that precocious youth Bless you, child, when you set out to thread a needle, don't hold the thread still and fetch the needle up to it: hold the needle still and poke the thread at it-that's the way a woman most always does : but a man always does t' other way.

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This contradiction has puzzled me as much as the description of Mrs. Weller, in the 'Pickwick Papers,' as the immortal Sam's "mother-in-law." ERNEST A. EBBLEWHITE.

74, King Edward Road, Hackney.

"TWO BLADES OF GRASS."-A Mr. Moreton Frewen writes to the Pall Mall Gazette and ascribes to Mr. Horace Greeley the sentiment as to "he who made two blades of grass to grow in the place of one." This gentleman has evidently never read' Gulliver's Travels.'

D.

'BARNABY RUDGE.'-In reading this book of Dickens I came across two points of which I question the accuracy.

1. Dickens places Mr. Chester in chambers in Paper Buildings, Temple, in 1775. I doubt whether that row of buildings was in existence at so early a date.

2. He gives Mr. Haredale a sword as the ordinary wear of a gentleman in 1780. I fancy that swords were discontinued before that time. H.

In the Liber Albus' (Riley), "Munimenta Gildhalda Londiniensis," pt. ii. vol. i. p. 379, a list is given appointing the days on which the different wards are to appear and plead before the justices. As, from this list, by "Warda Fori" the Ward of Cheap is so evidently meant, we arrive at the interesting fact that the citizens designated the ward in which their chief and richest merchants dwelt as the Warda Fori, or Ward of the Forum:Die Luna-Fardone, infra et extra. Die Martis-Cripplegate, infra et extra. Bassieshaghe. Colemanstrete. Aldresgate.

Die Mercurii-Ripa Reginæ.

Bredstrete.
Vinetrie.
Doungate.
Pontis.
Billyngesgate.

Turris.

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confirmed by Sir Walter Scott himself in a note,
saying, "This bibliomaniacal anecdote is literally
true." Mr. Fitzgerald tells us that the price
realized at Askew's sale was three hundred and
seventy pounds; but the discrepancy is immate-
rial, for the plain fact is that the whole story, Sir
Walter's positive assertion notwithstanding, is a
pure fiction.
Askew died in 1774, and his library
was sold in February, 1775, when the copy so
confidently asserted to have been bought for the
king had been already nearly two years in the
Royal Library, having been bought (for 32l. Os. 6d.)
at the sale of James's West's library, in March,
1773, nor am I aware of any authority, save that
of the anecdote above mentioned, for supposing
that Dr. Askew ever possessed a copy of the book
in question. The notion of Osborne paying what
must have been, in his estimation, so exorbitant a
price for anything printed by Caxton, is sufficiently
disposed of by the fact that he never put a higher
value than one guinea on any of those which he
bought in the Harleian Library, which contained
more than fifty, and among them at least one, if
not two copies of this very first edition of the

DEATH OF ART MAC MURROUGH.-The obscurity that envelopes some historical facts is as tantalizing as the light that floods others is charming. This is peculiarly so in Irish history, an instance of which former I stumbled across recently in searching for data of the career of the abovenamed warrior-king of Leinster. Most writers are delightfully at one concerning the stirring inci-Game of Chesse.' dents of his life, but join issue irritatingly as to the manner and cause of his death-the very point I am particularly anxious to be clear upon. Haverty says:

He is supposed to have been poisoned along with his chief Brehon, O'Doran, by a drink administered to him by a woman at New Ross the week after Christmas." And the "Four Masters," ad ann. 1417, write:"Art Cavanagh, King of Leinster, the son of Art, son of Murtogh, son of Maurice, Lord of Leinster, died; some state that it was by drinking a poisonous draught which a woman gave him at Ross Mac Briuin, and also to O'Doran, the Brehon of Leinster, that both died; Donogh, his son, succeeded him in the government." Haverty simply echoes the statement of the "Four Masters," while others make no reference at all to the supposition of death by poisoning. The authority of the "Four Masters" is undoubtedly great, but I should like to have additional light, if possible, thrown on the matter, of which, perhaps, some fellow contributor to 'N. & Q.' might be the possessor.

Manchester.

J. B. S.

CAXTON'S GAME OF THE CHESSE.'-Mr. Percy Fitzgerald, in his recently published 'Bookfancier,' repeats the well-known anecdote of David Wilson ("Snuffy Davy") buying a copy of the first edition of this rare work in Holland for about twopence, selling it for twenty pounds, and books to the value of twenty more, to Osborne, who sold it to Dr. Askew for sixty guineas, and its final sale by auction after Askew's death, when it was bought for the Royal Library for one hundred and seventy pounds. Such is the story as told by Jonathan Oldbuck in chap. iii. of The Antiquary,' and

The highest price of which there is any positively authentic record as paid for a Caxton during the last century was 477. 15s. 6d. for a first edition of 'The Canterbury Tales' (also in West's sale, 1773), nor was this amount ever exceeded till 1807, when a copy of 'The Knight of the Tower' was sold at Brand's sale for 1017. 6s. to Earl Spencer. F. N.

"I'M A DUTCHMAN."-Not very long ago three of the leading parishioners in a rural parish waited, as a deputation, upon their rector to ask for his support, pecuniary and otherwise, to their projected treat to the poor on the Jubilee day, when the rector replied to the deputation in these words: "If I give a farthing to the Jubilee, I'm a Dutchman!" I have looked through the five volumes of the General Index of 'N. & Q.,' and as I do not find "I'm a Dutchman" recorded among the "Proverbs and Phrases," I here make a note of it. Is its origin known? CUTHBERT BEDE.

ADMIRAL BYNG. (See 7th S. iii. 346.)-The name of this unfortunate, rather than "unhappy" admiral was John, not George, as your correspondent styles him, and he was not either a knight or a baronet, but the fourth son of George Byng, who was created in 1721, for his services, Viscount Torrington and Baron Byng, of Southill, himself a gallant naval officer. The Hon. John Byng was shot March 14, 1757, on board the Monarque, in order, as Voltaire sarcastically observes, in Candide; ou, l'Optisme,' encourager les autres." This was, according to Smollett's History of England' (c. xxvi.), "a third-rate ship of war anchored in the harbour of

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Portsmouth." Prefixed to vol. xii. of the edition
of 1834, in my library, is a frontispiece representing
the "Execution of Admiral Byng," in which he is
depicted as blindfolded, kneeling on a cushion on
the deck of the Monarque, and dropping a white
handkerchief as a signal, whilst in front of him
five marines are firing a volley at his breast. This
is engraved, probably on a very reduced scale, from
some larger contemporaneous print of the subject.
The mortal remains of Admiral Byng rest in the
vault of the Bying family in Southill Church, near
Biggleswade, and near it is erected a mural monu-
ment to his memory, narrating how his life was
unjustly sacrificed to gratify merely a popular
clamour. The inscription recorded upon it may
be seen in full in Boswell's 'Life of Johnson,' where
it is printed, and, it may be added, has been
perpetuated.
JOHN PICKFORD, M. A.

Newbourne Rectory, Woodbridge.

"THE COCKLES OF THE HEART."-Mr. Smythe Palmer, in his 'Folk-Etymology,' s. v. "Cockle," says:

ing by itself, but close to the village cross, a very small,* circular, solidly-constructed stone building terminating in a dome. I inquired what it was, and was told it was used as a lock-up for offenders until they could be brought before a magistrate, and that there was a bedstead in it. My informant added that it was called the blind-house because there were no windows in it. Now, I know very well that blind is used in this sense, and many examples will be found in part iii. of the 'New English Dictionary,' though blind-house is not among them; but I should be glad to learn whether there are many villages in England in which there is such a structure; and, if so, whether it is also called a blind-house. I want to know, in fact, whether the expression has become a technical term lock-up, or whether it has by chance come to be so used in this particular village only. I was reminded by it of the city prison in New York, which is, no doubt from the same reason with others, very expressively called the Tombs, though I do not know that that term has been extended to any other prison in the United States.

Sydenham Hill,

F. CHANCE.

THE REV. W. J. LOFTIE'S HISTORY OF

"Cockles, in the curious phrase 'the cockles of the heart,' has never been explained. It occurs in Eachard's 'Observations,' 1671, This contrivance of his did inwardly rejoice the cockles of his heart' (Wright)." The phrase is never heard except as used jocosely. LONDON.'-On p. 133 of this interesting little If one offers an old friend a glass of good wine one book, which appears as the first of the series now may say, "There! that will warm the cockles of being edited by Prof. Freeman, I read the followyour heart"; but the words could never be used ing: "There is no county in England [Middlesex seriously, either in conversation or in writing. is here alluded to] which can be compared with it Hotten's Slang Dictionary' (1864) calls it "ain wealth, population, and importance," &c. The vulgar phrase," and so no doubt it would be if seriously used.

In an anatomical work on the heart I have met with a passage which seems to give some hint as to the origin of the expression. Lower, one of the most eminent anatomists of the seventeenth century, in his Tractatus de Corde,' 1669, p. 25, speaking of the muscular fibres of the ventricles,

says:

"Fibræ quidem rectis hisce exterioribus in dextro ventriculo proximè subjectæ obliquè dextrorsum ascendentes in basin cordis terminantur, et spirali suo ambitu helicem sive cochleam satis aptè referunt."

The ventricles of the heart might, therefore, be called cochleæ cordis, and this would easily be turned into "cockles of the heart." What we want is some quotation from a grave writer that will bridge over the gap between the cochleae cordis of the anatomist and the phrase "cockles of the heart" used jocosely, as, for instance, by Hood:

population of Lancashire in 1881 was 3,454,441, whereas that of Middlesex was only 2,920,485. I might add we have a near rival, too, in the largest county, which has 2,886,564.

EDWARD R. VYVYAN.

MEDIEVAL USE OF THE WORD "" MISSAL."The learned canon of York, the late Mr. Simmons, in his admirable notes to the 'Lay Folks' Massbook' (E.E.T.S., 1879), p. 155, has expressed an opinion which I have heard elsewhere, that the word "Missal is comparatively modern, and in all likelihood was never in ordinary use as long as the Mass-book itself was a service book of the Church of England."

purpose) the 'Testamenta Eboracensia' of the SurI have lately been looking over (not for this tees Society, and I find in them no fewer than five instances of the word Missal being used for the Mass-book before the Reformation. In pt. ii. p. 21, Nicholas Blakburn in 1431/2 bequeaths "my beste vestment, my best Missall, and my best chaleys." In pt. iv. p. 100, Sir Martin of the Sea

To cure Mamma another dose brought home Of Cockles ;-not the cockles of her heart. J. DIXON. BLIND-HOUSE PARISH LOCK-UP. It may be eight to ten feet high, but six to eight in Quite diameter. recently, when passing through Steeple Ashton, a There is, I have been told since, a grating in the village in Wiltshire about four miles from Trow- padlocked door, but it was not sufficiently large to bridge, I noticed in the centre of the village, stand-attract my attention,

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