Notes and Queries, Number 188, June 4, 1853

    Edward Hawkins.

At Free Mart, at Portsmouth, a glove used to be hung out of the town-hall window, and no one could be arrested during the fortnight that the fair lasted.

    F. O. Martin.

Arms—Battle-axe (Vol. vii., p. 407.).—The families which bore three Dane-axes or battle-axes in their coats armorial were very numerous in ancient times. It may chance to be of service to your Querist A.C. to be informed, that those of Devonshire which displayed these bearings were the following: Dennys, Batten, Gibbes, Ledenry, Wike, Wykes, and Urey.

    J. D. S.

Enough (Vol. vii., p. 455.).—In Staffordshire, and I believe in the other midland counties, this word is usually pronounced enoo, and written enow. In Richardson's Dictionary it will be found "enough or enow;" and the etymology is evidently from the German genug, from the verb genugen, to suffice, to be enough, to content, to satisfy. The Anglo-Saxon is genog. I remember the burden of an old song which I frequently heard in my boyish days:

"I know not, I care not,
I cannot tell how to woo,
But I'll away to the merry green woods,
And there get nuts enow."

This evidently shows what the pronunciation was when it was written.

    J. A. H.

Enough is from the same root as the German genug, where the first g has been lost, and the latter softened and almost lost in its old English pronunciation, enow. The modern pronunciation is founded, as that of many other words is, upon an affected style of speech, ridiculed by Holofernes.[4 - The Euphuists are probably chargeable with this corruption.] The word bread, for example, is almost universally called bred; but in Chaucer's poetry and indeed now in Yorkshire, it is pronounced bré-äd, a dissyllable.

    T. J. Buckton.

Birmingham.

In Vol. vii., p. 455. there is an inquiry respecting the change in the pronunciation of the word enough, and quotations are given from Waller, where the word is used, rhyming with bow and plough. But though spelt enough, is not the word, in both places, really enow? and is there not, in fact, a distinction between the two words? Does not enough always refer to quantity, and enow to number: the former, to what may be measured; the latter, to that which may be counted? In both quotations the word enough refers to numbers?

    S. S. S.

Feelings of Age (Vol. vii., p. 429.).—A.C. asks if it "is not the general feeling, that man in advancing years would not like to begin life again?" I fear not. It is a wisdom above the average of what men possess that made the good Sir Thomas Browne say:

"Though I think no man can live well once, but he that could live twice, yet for my own part I would not live over my hours past, or begin again the thread of my dayes: not upon Cicero's ground—because I have lived them well—but for fear I should live them worse. I find my growing judgment daily instruct me how to be better, but my untamed affections and confirmed vitiosity make me daily do worse. I find in my confirmed age the same sins I discovered in my youth; I committed many then, because I was a child, and, because I commit them still, I am yet an infant. Therefore I perceive a man may be twice a child before the days of dotage, and stand in need of Æson's bath before threescore."

The annotator refers to Cic., lib. xxiv. ep. 4.:

"Quod reliquum est, sustenta te, mea Terentia, ut potes, honestissimè. Viximus: floruimus: non vitium nostrum, sed virtus nostra, nos afflixit. Peccatum est nullum, nisi quod non unâ animam cum ornamentis amisimus."—Edit. Orell., vol. iii. part i. p. 335.

However, it seems probable that Sir Thomas meant that this sentiment is rather to be gathered from Cicero's writings,—not enunciated in a single sentence.

    H. C. K.

—– Rectory, Hereford.

Optical Query (Vol. vii., p. 430.).—In reply to the optical Query by H. H., I venture to suggest that a stronger gust of wind than usual might easily occasion the illusion in question, as I myself have frequently found in looking at the fans on the tops of chimneys. Or possibly the eyes may have been confused by gazing on the revolving blades, just as the tongue is frequently influenced in its accentuation by pronouncing a word of two syllables in rapid articulations.

    F. F. S.

Oxford.

Cross and Pile (Vol. vii., p.487.).—Here is another explanation at least as satisfactory as some of the previous ones:

"The word coin itself is money struck on the coin or head of the flattened metal, by which word coin or head is to be understood the obverse, the only side which in the infancy of coining bore the stamp. Thence the Latin cuneus, from cune or kyn, the head.

"This side was also called pile, in corruption from poll, a head, not only from the side itself being the coin or head, but from its being impressed most commonly with some head in contradistinction to the reverse, which, in latter times, was oftenest a cross. Thence the vulgarism, cross or pile, poll, head."—Cleland's Specimen of an Etymological Vocabulary, p. 157.

    A. Holt White.

Capital Punishments (Vol. vii., pp. 52. 321.).—The authorities to which W. L. N. refers not being generally accessible, he would confer a very great obligation by giving the names and dates of execution of any of the individuals alluded to by him, who have undergone capital punishment in this country for exercising the Roman Catholic religion. Herein, it is almost needless to remark, I exclude such cases as those of Babington, Ballard, Parsons, Garnett, Campion, Oldcorne, and others, their fellows, who suffered, as every reader of history knows, for treasonable practices against the civil and christian policy and government of the realm.

    Cowgill.

Thomas Bonnell (Vol. vii., p. 305.).—In what year was this person, about whose published Life J. S. B. inquires, Mayor of Norwich? His name, as such, does not occur in the lists of Nobbs, Blomefield, or Ewing.

    Cowgill.

Passage in the First Part of Faust (Vol. vii., p. 501.).—Mr. W. Fraser will find good illustrations of the question he has raised in his second suggestion for the elucidation of this passage in The Abbot, chap. 15. ad fin. and note.

A few weeks after giving this reference, in answer to a question by Emdee (see "N. & Q.," Vol. i., p. 262.; Vol. ii., p. 47.), I sent in English, for I am not a German scholar, as an additional reply to Emdee, the very same passage that Mr. Fraser has just forwarded, but it was not inserted, probably because its fitness as an illustration was not very evident.

My intention in sending that second reply was to show that, as in Christabel and The Abbot, the voluntary and sustained effort required to introduce the evil spirit was of a physical, so in Faust it was of a mental character; and I confess that I am much pleased now to find my opinion supported by the accidental testimony of another correspondent.

It must, however, be allowed that the peculiar wording of the passage under consideration may make it difficult, if not impossible, to separate earnest from the magical form in which Faust's command to enter his room is given. Göthe's intention, probably, was to combine and illustrate both.

As proofs of the belief in the influence of the number three in incantation, I may refer to Virg. Ecl. viii. 73—78.; to a passage in Apuleius, which describes the resuscitation of a corpse by Zachlas, the Egyptian sorcerer;

"Propheta, sic propitiatus, herbulam quampiam ter ob os corporis, et aliam pectori ejus imponit."—Apul. Metamorph., lib. ii. sect. 39. (Regent's Classics);

and to the rhyming spell that raised the White Lady of Avenel at the Corrie nan Shian. (See The Monastery, chaps. xi. and xvii.)

    C. Forbes.

Sir Josias Bodley (Vol. vii., p. 357.).—Your correspondent Y. L. will find some account of the family of Bodley in Prince's Worthies of Devon, edit. 1810, pp. 92-105., and in Moore's History of Devon, vol. ii. pp. 220-227. See also "N. & Q.," Vol. iv., pp. 59. 117. 240.

    J. D. S.

Claret (Vol. vii., p. 237.).—The word claret is evidently derived directly from the French word clairet; which is used, even at the present day, as a generic name for the "vins ordinaires," of a light and thin quality, grown in the south of France. The name is never applied but to red wines; and it is very doubtful whether it takes its appellation from any place, being always used adjectively—"vin clairet," not vin de clairet. I am perhaps not quite correct in stating, that the word is always used as an adjective; for we sometimes find clairet used alone as a substantive; but I conceive that in this case the word vin is to be understood, as we say "du Bordeaux," "du Champagne," meaning "du vin de Bordeaux," "du vin de Champagne." Eau clairette is the name given to a sort of cherry-brandy; and lapidaries apply the name clairette to a precious stone, the colour of which is not so deep as it ought to be. This latter fact may lead one to suppose that the wine derived its name from being clearer and lighter in colour than the more full-bodied vines of the south. The word is constantly occurring in old drinking-songs. A song of Olivier Basselin, the minstrel of Vire, begins with these words:

"Beau nez, dont les rubis out coûté mainte pipe
De vin blanc et clairet."

By the way, this song is the original of one in the musical drama of Jack Sheppard, which many of the readers of "N. & Q." may remember, as it became rather popular at the time. It began thus:

"Jolly nose, the bright gems that illumine thy tip,
Were dug from the mines of Canary."

I am not aware that the plagiarism has been noticed before.

    Honoré de Mareville.