Notes and Queries, Number 27, May 4, 1850

In Phoebus, Wit (as Ovid said)
Enchanting Beauty woo'd;
In Daphne beauty coily fled,
While vainly Wit pursu'd.

But when you trace what Ovid writ,
A diff'rent turn we view;
Beauty no longer flies from Wit,
Since both are join'd in you.

Your lines the wond'rous change impart,
From whence our laurels spring;
In numbers fram'd to please the heart,
And merit what they sing.

Methinks thy poet's gentle shade
Its wreath presents to thee;
What Daphne owes you as a Maid,
She pays you as a Tree.

The charming poem by the same author, beginning—

"My days have been so wond'rous free,"

has the additional fourth stanza,—

"An eager hope within my breast,
Does ev'ry doubt controul,
And charming Nancy stands confest
The fav'rite of my soul."

Can any of your readers supply the name of the "young lady" who translated the story of Phoebus and Daphne?

    C.P.

EARLY ENGLISH AND EARLY GERMAN LITERATURE.—"NEWS" AND "NOISE."

I am anxious to put a question as to the communication that may have taken place between the English and German tongues previous to the sixteenth century. Possibly the materials for answering it may not exist; but it appears to me that it is of great importance, in an etymological point of view, that the extent of such communication, and the influence it has had upon our language, should be ascertained. In turning over the leaves of the Shakspeare Society's Papers, vol. i., some time ago, my attention was attracted by a "Song in praise of his Mistress," by John Heywood, the dramatist. I was immediately struck by the great resemblance it presented to another poem on the same subject by a German writer, whose real or assumed name, I do not know which, was "Muscanblüt," and which poem is to be found in Der Clara Hätzlerin Liederbuch, a collection made by a nun of Augsburg in 1471. The following are passages for comparison:—

"Fyrst was her skyn,
Whith, smoth, and thyn,
And every vayne
So blewe sene playne;
Her golden heare
To see her weare,
Her werying gere,
Alas! I fere
To tell all to you
I shall undo you.

"Her eye so rollyng,
Ech harte conterollyng;
Her nose not long,
Nor stode not wrong;
Her finger typs
So clene she clyps;
Her rosy lyps,
Her chekes gossyps,"
&c. &c.

S.S. Papers, vol. i. p. 72

"Ir mündlin rott
Uss senender nott
Mir helffen kan,
Das mir kain man
Mit nichten kan püssen.

O liechte kel,
Wie vein, wie gel
Ist dir dein har,
Dein äuglin clar,
Zartt fraw, lass mich an sehen.
Und tu mir kund
Uss rottem mund, &c.

Dein ärmlin weisz
Mit gantzem fleisz
Geschnitzet sein,
Die hennde dein
Gar hofelich gezieret,
Dem leib ist ran,
Gar wolgetan
Sind dir dein prust,"
&c. &c.

Clara Hätzlerin Liederbuch, p. 111.

In all this there is certainly nothing to warrant the conclusion that the German poem was the original of Heywood's song; but, considering that the latter was produced so near to the same age as the former, that is, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and considering that the older German poetical literature had already passed its culminating point, while ours was upon the ascending scale, there is likeness enough, both in manner and measure, to excite the suspicion of direct or indirect communication.

The etymology of the word "news," on which you have recently had some notes, is a case in illustration of the importance of this point. I have never had the least doubt that this word is derived immediately from the German. It is, in fact, "das Neue" in the genitive case; the German phrase "Was giebt's Neues?" giving the exact sense of our "What is the news?" This will appear even stronger if we go back to the date of the first use of the word in England. Possibly about the same time, or not much earlier, we find in his same collection of Clara Hätzlerin, the word spelt "new" and rhyming to "triu."

"Empfach mich uff das New
In deines hertzen triu."

The genitive of this would be "newes," thus spelt and probably pronounced the same as in England. That the word is not derived from the English adjective "new"—that it is not of English manufacture at all—I feel well assured: in that case the "s" would be the sign of the plural: and we should have, as the Germans have, either extant or obsolete, also "the new." The English language, however, has never dealt in these abstractions, except in its higher poetry; though some recent translators from the German have disregarded the difference in this respect between the powers of the two languages. "News" is a noun singular, and as such must have been adopted bodily into the language; the form of the genitive case, commonly used in conversation, not being understood, but being taken for an integral part of the word, as formerly the Koran was called "The Alcoran."

"Noise," again, is evidently of the same derivation, though from a dialect from which the modern German pronunciation of the diphthong is derived. Richardson, in his English Dictionary, assumes it to be of the same derivation as "noxious" and "noisome;" but there is no process known to the English language by which it could be manufactured without making a plural noun of it. In short, the two words are identical; "news" retaining its primitive, and "noise" adopting a consequential meaning.

    SAMUEL HICKSON.