Notes and Queries, Number 56, November 23, 1850

Its only name was given from its ripening earlier than the peach.

The words used in Galen for the same fruit (evidently Græcised Latin), are προκοκκια and πρεκοκκια. Elsewhere he says of this fruit, ταυτης εκλελειφθαι το παλαιον ονομα. Dioscorides, with a nearer approach to the Latin, calls apricots πραικοκια.

From præcox, though not immediately, apricot seems to be derived.

Johnson, unable to account for the initial a, derives it from apricus. The American lexicographer Webster gives, strangely enough albus coccus as its derivation.

The progress of the word from west to east, and then from east to south-west, and from thence northwards, and its various changes in that progress, are rather strange.

One would have supposed that the Arabs, living near the region of which the fruit was a native, might have either had a name of their own for it, or at least have borrowed one from Armenia. But they apparently adopted a slight variation of the Latin, το παλαιον ονομα, as Galen says, εξελελειπτω.

The Arabs called it برقوق or, with the article, البرقوق.

The Spaniards must have had the fruit in Martial's time, but they do not take the name immediately from the Latin, but through the Arabic, and call it albaricoque. The Italians, again, copy the Spanish, not the Latin, and call it albicocco. The French, from them, have abricot. The English, though they take their word from the French, at first called it abricock, then apricock (restoring the p), and lastly, with the French termination, apricot.

From malum persicum was derived the German Pfirsiche, and Pfirsche, whence come the French pêche, and our peach. But in this instance also, the Spaniards follow the Arabic بريشان, or, with the article البريشان, in their word alberchigo. The Arabic seems to be derived from the Latin, and the Persians, though the fruit was their own, give it the same name.

Johnson says that nectarine is French, but gives no authority. It certainly is unknown to the French, who call the fruit either pêche lisse, or brugnon. The Germans also call it glatte Pfirsche.

Can any of your readers inform me what is the Armenian word for apricot, and whether there is any reason to believe that the Arabic words for apricot and peach, are of Armenian and Persian origin? If it is so, the resemblance of the one to præcox, and of the other to persicum, will be a curious coincidence, but hardly more curious than the resemblance of πασχα with πασχω which led some of the earlier fathers, who were not Hebraists, to derive πασχα from πασχω.

    E.C.H.

MINOR NOTES

Chaucer's Monument.—It may interest those of your readers who are busying themselves in the praiseworthy endeavour to procure the means of repairing Chaucer's Monument, especially Mr. Payne Collier, who has furnished, in the November Number of the Gentleman's Magazine (p. 486.), so curious an allusion from Warner's Albion's England, to

"– venerable Chaucer, lost
Had not kind Brigham reared him cost,"

to know that there is evidence in Smith's Life of Nollekens, vol. i. p. 79., that remains of the painted figure of Chaucer were to be seen in Nolleken's times. Smith reports a conversation between the artist and Catlin, so many years the principal verger of the abbey, in which Catlin inquires,

"Did you ever notice the remaining colours of the curious little figure which was painted on the tomb of Chaucer?"

    M.N.S.

[We have heard one of the lay vicars of Westminster Abbey, now deceased, say, that when he was a choir boy, some sixty-five or seventy years since, the figure of Chaucer might be made out by rubbing a wet finger over it.]

Robert Herrick (Vol. i., p. 291.)—There is a little volume entitled Selections from the Hesperides and Works of the Rev. Robert Herrick. (Antient) Vicar of Dean-Prior, Devon. By the late Charles Short, Esq., F.R.S. and F.S.A., published by Murray in 1839. I believe it was recalled or suppressed, and that copies are rare.

    J.W.H.

Epitaph of a Wine Merchant.—The following is very beautiful, and well deserves a Note. It is copied from an inscription in All Saints Church, Cambridge.

"In Obitum Mri. Johannis Hammond Oenopolae Epitaphium.
Spiritus ascendit generosi Nectaris astra,
Juxta Altare Calix hic jacet ecce sacrum,
Corporū αναστασει cū fit Communia magna
Unio tunc fuerit Nectaris et Calicis."

    J.W.H.
Father Blackhal.—In the Brief Narration of Services done to Three noble Ladies by Gilbert Blackhal (Aberdeen, Spalding Club, 1844), the autobiographer states (p. 43.) that, while at Brussels, he provided for his necessities by saying mass "at Notre Dame de bonne successe, a chapel of great devotion, so called from a statue of Our Lady, which was brought from Aberdeen to Ostend," &c. It may be interesting to such of your readers as are acquainted with this very amusing volume, to know that the statue is still held in honour. A friend of mine (who had never heard of Blackhal) told me, that being at Brussels on the eve of the Assumption (Aug. 14), 1847, he saw announcements that the Aberdeen image would be carried in procession on the approaching festival. He was obliged, however, to leave Brussels without witnessing the exhibition.

As to Blackhal himself, The Catholic Annual Register for the present year (p. 207.) supplies two facts which were not known to his editor—that he was at last principal of the Scots College at Paris, and that he died July 1. 1671.

    J.C.R.

The Nonjurors (Vol. ii., p. 354.).—May I take the liberty of suggesting to MR. YEOWELL that his interesting paper on "The Oratories of the Nonjurors," would have been far more valuable if he had given the authorities for his statements.

    J.C.R.

Booksellers' Catalogues.—Allow me to suggest the propriety and utility of stating the weight or cost of postage to second-hand and other books. It would be a great convenience to many country book-buyers to know the entire cost, carriage-free, of the volumes they require, but have never seen.

    ESTE.

Bailie Nicol Jarvie.—Lockhart, in his Life of Scott, speaking of the first representation of Rob Roy on the Edinburgh boards, observes—

"The great and unrivalled attraction was the personification of Bailie Jarvie by Charles Mackay, who, being himself a native of Glasgow, entered into the minutest peculiarities of the character with high gusto, and gave the west country dialect in its most racy perfection."

But in the sweetest cup of praise, there is generally one small drop of bitterness. The drop, in honest Mackay's case, is that by calling him a "native of Glasgow," and, therefore, "to the manner born," he is, by implication, deprived of the credit of speaking the "foreign tongue" like a native. So after wearing his laurels for a quarter of a century with this one withered leaf in them, he has plucked it off, and by a formal affidavit sworn before an Edinburgh bailie, the Glasgow bailie has put it on record that he is really by birth "one of the same class whom King Jamie denominated a real Edinburgh Gutter-Bluid." If there is something droll in the notion of such an affidavit, there is, assuredly, something to move our respect in the earnestness and love of truth which led the bailie to make it, and to prove him a good honest man, as we have no doubt, "his father, the deacon, was before him."

    EFFESSA.

Camels in Gaul.—The use of camels by the Franks in Gaul is more than once referred to by the chroniclers. In the year 585, the treasures of Mummolus and the friends of Gondovald were carried from Bordeaux to Convennes on camels. The troops of Gontran who were pursuing them—

"invenerunt camelos cum ingenti pondere auri atque argenti, sive equos quos fessos per vias reliquerat"—Greg. Turon., l. vii. c. 35.

And after Brunichild had fallen into the hands of Chlotair, she was, before her death, conducted through the army on a camel:—

"Jubetque eam camelum per omnem exercitum sedentem perducere."—Fredegarius, c. 42.

By what people were camels first brought into Gaul? By the Romans; by the Visigoths; or by the Franks themselves?

    R.J.K.

QUERIES

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL QUERIES

(Continued from page 325.)

(13.) Is it not a grievous and calumnious charge against the principal libraries of England, Germany, and France, that not one of them contains a copy of the Florentine Pandects, in three folio volumes, "magnifice, ac pereleganter, perque accurate impressis," as Fabricius speaks? (Bibl. Græc. xii: 363.) This statement, which may be but a libel, is found in Tilgner (Nov. lib. rar. Collect. Fascic. iv. 710.), Schelhorn (Amæn. Lit. iii. 428.), Vogt (Catal. p. 562. Hamb. 1738), and Solger (Biblioth. i 163.). According to the last writer, the edition in question, Florent. 1553, (for a fac-simile of the letters of the original MS. see Mabillon's Iter Italicum, p. 183.) is,—"splendidissima, et stupendæ raritatis, quæ in tanta est apud Eruditos æstimatione ut pro 100 Imperialibus sæpius divendita fuerit." Would that the race of such purchasers was not extinct! In Gibbon's notice of this impression (Decline and Fall, iv. 197. ed. Milman), there are two mistakes. He calls the editor "Taurellus" instead of Taurellius; and makes the date "1551", when it should have been 1553. These errors, however, are scarcely surprising in a sentence in which Antonius Augustinus is named "Antoninus." The Archbishop of Tarragona had received a still more exalted title in p. 193., for there he was styled "Antoninus Augustus." Are these the author's faults, or are they merely editorial embellishments?

(14.) In what year was the improved woodcut of the Prelum Ascensianum used for the first time? And has it been observed that the small and separated figures incised on the legs of this insigne of Jodocus Badius may sometimes be taken as a safe guide with reference to the exact date of the works in which this mark appears? As an argument serving to justify the occasional adoption of this criterion I would adduce the fact, that the earliest edition of Budæus De Contemptu Rerum fortuitarum is believed to have been printed in 1520 (Greswell's Parisian Greek Press, i. 39.), and this year is accordingly visible in the title-page on the print of the Prelum Ascensianum. That recourse must, however, be had with caution to this method of discovering a date, is manifest; from the circumstance, that 1521, or perhaps I should say an injured 1520, appears on the Badian Device in the third impression of the same treatise (the second with the expositio), though it was set forth "postridie Cal. April 1528."

(15.) Is it owing to the extreme rarity of copies of the first edition of the Pagninian version of the Scriptures that so many writers are perplexed and ignorant concerning it? One might have expected that such a very remarkable impression in all respects would have been so well known to Bishop Walton, that he could not have asserted (Proleg. v.) that it was published in 1523; and the same hallucination is perceptible in the Elenchus Scriptorum by Crowe (p. 4.) It is certain that Pope Leo X. directed that Pagnini's translation should be printed at his expense (Roscoe, ii. 282.), and the Diploma of Adrian VI. is dated "die, xj. Maij. M.D.XXIII.," but the labours of the eminent Dominican were not put forth until the 29th of January, 1527. This is the date in the colophon; and though "1528" is obvious on the title-page, the apparent variation may be accounted for by remembering the several ways of marking the commencement of the year. (Le Long, by Masch, ii. 475.; Chronol. of Hist., by Sir H. Nicolas, p. 40.) Chevillier informs us (Orig. de l'Imp. p. 143.) that the earliest Latin Bible, in which he had seen the verses distinguished by ciphers, was that of Robert Stephens in 1557. Clement (Biblioth. iv. 147.) takes notice of an impression issued two years previously; and these bibliographers have been followed by Greswell (Paris. G. P. i. 342. 390.). Were they all unacquainted with the antecedent exertions of Sante Pagnini (See Pettigrew's Bibl. Sussex. p. 388.)

(16.) Why should Panzer have thought that the true date of the editio princeps of Gregorius Turonensis and Ado Viennensis, comprised in the same small folio volume, was 1516? (Greswell, i. 35.) If he had said 1522, he might have had the assistance of a misprint in the colophon, in which "M.D.XXII." was inserted instead of M.D.XII.; but the royal privilege for the book is dated, "le douziesme iour de mars lan milcinqcens et onze," and the dedication of the works by Badius to Guil. Parvus ends with "Ad. XII Kalendas Decemb. Anni huius M.D.XII."