Notes and Queries, Number 31, June 1, 1850

"Sachent tous que Mons. Gualhard de Dureffourt … ad recue … quatorze guianois dour et dys sondz de la mon[oye] currant a Burdeux."

The date is 12. Nov. 1387. The document is quoted in Madox's Baronia Anglica, p. 159. note d.

    A.J.H.

Parish Registers Tax.—In the Parish Register of Wigston Magna, Leicestershire, are the following entries against several dates in the Baptisms and Burials:—

I should be glad to be informed what tax is here referred to. These are all the entries of the kind.

    ARUN.

"The following piece of mysticism has been sent to us as original, with a request for a solution. The authorship is among the secrets of literature: it is said to have been by Fox, Sheridan, Gregory, Psalmenazar, Lord Byron, and the Wandering Jew. We leave the question to our erudite readers."

"I sit on a rock
While I'm raising the wind,
But the storm once abated,
I'm gentle and kind;
I see kings at my feet,
Who wait but my nod,
To kneel in the dust
Which my footsteps have trod.
Though seen by the world,
I'm known but to few;
The Gentiles detest me,
I'm pork to the Jew.
I never have past
But one night in the dark,
And that was with Noah,
Alone, in the ark.
My weight is three pounds,
My length is a mile,
And when I'm discover'd,
You'll say, with a smile,
My first and my last
Are the wish of our isle."

I should be obliged if any body could give me a key to this.

QUAESTOR.

Replies

HOWKEY OR HORKEY

Howkey or Horkey (Vol. i. p. 263.) is evidently, as your East Anglian correspondent and J.M.B. have pointed out, a corrupt pronunciation of the original Hockey; Hock being a heap of sheaves of corn, and hence the hock-cart, or cart loaded with sheaves.

Herrick, who often affords pleasing illustrations of old rural customs and superstitions, has a short poem, addressed to Lord Westmoreland, entitled "The Hock-cart, or Harvest Home," in which he says:—

"The harvest swains and wenches bound,
For joy to see the hock-cart crown'd."

Die Hocke was, in the language of Lower Saxony, a heap of sheaves. Hocken was the act of piling up these sheaves; and in that valuable repertory of old and provincial German words, the Wörterbuch of J.L. Frisch, it is shown to belong to the family of words which signify a heap or hilly protuberance.

We should have been prepared to find the word in East Anglia; but from Herrick's use of it, and others, it must have formerly been prevalent in the West of England also. It has nothing to do with Hock-tide, which is the Hoch-zeit of the Germans, and is merely [Transcriber's note: illegible] feast or highday of which a very satisfactory account will be found in Mr. Hampson's "Glossary" annexed to his Medii Aevi Kalendarium. An interesting account of the Hoch-zeit of the Germans of Lower Saxony occurs where we should little expect it, in the Sprichwörter of Master Egenolf, printed at Francfort in 1548, 4to.; and may perhaps serve to illustrate some of our obsolete rural customs:—

"We Germans keep carnival (all the time between Epiphany and Ash-Wednesday) St. Bernard's and St. Martin's days, Whitsuntide and Easter, as times, above all other periods of the year, when we should eat, drink, and be merry. St. Burchard's day, on account of the fermentation of the new must. St. Martin's, probably on account of the fermentation of the new wine: then we roast fat geese, and all the world enjoy themselves. At Easter we bake pancakes (fladen); at Whitsuntide we make bowers of green boughs, and keep the feast of the tabernacle in Saxony and Thuringia; and we drink, Whitsun-beer for eight days. In Saxony, we also keep the feast of St. Panthalion with drinking and eating sausages and roast legs of mutton stuffed with garlic. To the kirmse, or church feast, which happens only once a year, four or five neighbouring villages go together, and it is a praiseworthy custom, as it maintains a neighbourly and kindly feeling among the people."

The pleasing account of the English harvest feast in Gage's Hengrave, calls it Hochay. Pegge, in his Supplement to Grose's Provincial Words, Hockey. Dr. Nares notices it in his Glossary, and refers to an account of its observance in Suffolk given in the New Monthly Magazine for November, 1820. See also Major Moor's Suffolk Words, and Forby's Vocabulary of East Anglia, who says that Bloomfield, the rustic poet of Suffolk, calls it the Horky; Dr. Nares having said that Bloomfield does not venture on this provincial term for a Harvest-home.

    S.W. SINGER.

May 14. 1850.

CHARLES MARTEL

(Vol. i. pp. 86. 275.)

If Charles Martel must no longer be the Mauler, he will only be excluded from a very motley band. Here are a few of his repudiated namesakes:—

1. The Maccabæi from Hebr. Makkab, a hammer.

2. Edward I., "Malleus Scotorum."

3. "St. Augustine, that Maul of heretics, was in chief repute with" Josias Shute, among the Latin Fathers. (Lloyd's Memoires, p. 294.) "God make you as Augustine, Malleum Hæreticorum." (Edward's Gangraena, Part II. p. 17. 1646.)

4. "Robertus Grossetest, Episcopus Lincolniensis, Romanorum Malleus, ob. 1253." (Fulman, Notitia Oxon. p. 103. 2nd ed.)

5. "Petrus de Alliaco, circ. A.D. 1400, Malleus a veritate aberrantium indefessus appellari solebat." (Wharton in Keble's Hooker, i. 102.)

6. T. Cromwell, "Malleus Monachorum:" "Mauler of Monasteries" [Fuller, if I recollect rightly, quoted by Carlyle]. Also, "Mawling religious houses." (Lloyd's State Worthies, i. 72. 8vo. ed.)

"FEAST" AND "FAST."

I am not going to take part in the game of hockey, started by LORD BRAYBROOKE, and carried on with so much spirit by several of your correspondents in No. 28.; but I have a word to say to one of the hockey-players, C.B., who, per fas et nefas, has mixed up "feast and fast" with the game.

C.B. asks, "Is not the derivation of 'feast' and 'fast' originally the same? that which is appointed connected with 'fas,' and that from 'fari?'" I should say no; and let me cite the familiar lines from the beginning of Ovid's Fasti:—

"Ne tamen ignores variorum jura dierum
Non habet officii Lucifer omnis idem.
Ille Nefastus erit per quem tria verba silentur:
Fastus, erit per quem lege licebit agi.
Neu toto perstare die sua jura putâris;
Qui jam Fastus erit, manè Nefastus erat.
Nam simul exta Deo data sunt, licet omnia fari;
Verbaque Honoratus libera Praetor habet."

The dies festus was not only not dies fastus, but dies nefastus.

Without going beyond feast and fast, I see nothing in C.B.'s suggestion better than the old derivations of the words feast from festus -um, and fast from the Anglo-Saxon; nor indeed anything half so good. Feast and fast are opposed in meaning: our word fast has a meaning which neither fas, fari, nor fastus, nor all three together, will explain.