Notes and Queries, Number 191, June 25, 1853

"Cleland (voc. 165.) has, with his usual sagacity, and with a great deal of trouble, as he himself acknowledges, traced out the true meaning and derivation of this word: for after he had long despaired of discovering the origin of it, mere chance, he says, offered to him what he took to be the genuine one: 'In an old French book I met,' says he, 'with a passage where the author, speaking of a company that had sat up late, makes use of this expression, "l'ennuit les avoit gagnés," by the context of which it was plain he meant, that the common influence of the night, in bringing on heaviness and yawning, had come upon them. The proper sense is totally antiquated, but the figurative remains in full currency to this day."—Lemon's Etymological Dictionary.

The true synonym of ennui seem to be tædium, which appears to have the same relation to tædo, a torch, as ennui to nuit.

    B. H. C.

"Qui facit per alium, facit per se," &c. (Vol. vii., p. 488.).—This maxim is found in the following form in the Regulæ Juris, subjoined to the 6th Book of the Decretals, Reg. lxxii.: "Qui facit per alium, est perinde ac si faciat per seipsum."

    J. B.

Vincent Family (Vol. vii., pp. 501. 586.).—The Memoir of Augustine Vincent, referred to by Mr. Martin, was written by the late Sir N. Harris Nicolas, and published by Pickering in 1827, crown 8vo. Shortly after its publication, a few pages of Addenda were printed in consequence of some information communicated by the Rev. Joseph Hunter, respecting the descendants of Augustine Vincent. At that time Francis Offley Edmunds, Esq., of Westborough, was his representative.

    G.

Judge Smith (Vol. vii., pp. 463. 508.).—I am well acquainted with the monumental inscriptions in Chesterfield Church, but I do not recollect one to the memory of Judge Smith.

Thomas Smith, who was an attorney in Sheffield, and died in 1774, had a brother, William Smith of Norwich, who died in 1801. Thomas Smith married Susan Battie, by whom he had a son Thomas Smith of Sheffield, and after of Dunston Hall, who married in 1791 Elizabeth Mary, only surviving child of Robert Mower of Woodseats, Esq., (by Elizabeth his wife, daughter of Richard Milnes of Dunston Hall, Esq.) It was through this lady that the Dunston estate came to the Smiths by the will of her uncle Mr. Milnes. Mr. Smith died in 1811, having had issue by her (who married secondly John Frederick Smith, Esq., of London) three sons and several daughters. The second son (Rev. Wm. Smith of Dunston Hall) died in 1841, leaving male issue; but I am not aware of the death of either of the others. The family had a grant of arms in 1816. Dunston Hall had belonged to the Milnes family for about a century.

    W. St.

"Dimidiation" in Impalements (Vol. vii., p. 548.).—In reply to your correspondent's Query as to dimidiation, he will find that this was the most ancient form of impalement. Its manifest inconvenience no doubt at last banished it. Guillim (ed. 1724) says, at p. 425.:

"It was an ancient way of impaling, to take half the husband's coat, and with that to joyn as much of the wife's; as appeareth in an old roll, wherein three lions, being the arms of England, are dimidiated and impaled with half the pales of Arragon. The like hath been practised with quartered coats by leaving out half of them."

On p. 426. he gives the example of Mary, Henry VIII.'s sister, and her husband Louis XII. of France. Here the French king's coat is cut in half, so that the lily in the base point is dimidiated; and the queen's coat, being quarterly France and England, shows two quarters only; England in chief, France in base.

Sandford, in his Genealogical History, gives a plate of the tomb of Henry II. and Richard I. of England at Fontevrault, which was built anew in 1638. Upon it are several impalements by dimidiation. Sandford (whose book seems to me to be strangely over-valued) gives no explanation of them. No doubt they were copied from the original tomb.

In Part II. of the Guide to the Architectural Antiquities in the Neighbourhood of Oxford, at p. 178., is figured an impalement by dimidiation existing at Stanton Harcourt, in the north transept of the church, in a brass on a piece of blue marble. The writer of the Guide supposes this bearing to be some union of Harcourt and Beke, in consequence of a will of John Lord Beke, and to be commemorative of the son of Sir Richard Harcourt and Margaret Beke. It is in fact commemorative of those persons themselves. Harcourt, two bars, is dimidiated, and meets Beke, a cross moline or ancrée. The figure thus produced is a strange one, but perfectly intelligible when the practice of impaling by dimidiation is recollected. I know no modern instance of this method of impaling. I doubt if any can be found since the time of Henry VIII.

    D. P.

Begbrook.

Worth (Vol. vii., p. 584.).—At one time, and in one locality, this word seems to have denoted manure; as appears by the following preamble to the statute 7 Jac. I. cap. 18.:

"Whereas the sea-sand, by long triall and experience, hath bin found to be very profitable for the bettering of land, and especially for the increase of corne and tillage, within the counties of Devon and Cornwall, where the inhabitants have not commonly used any other worth, for the bettering of their arable grounds and pastures."

I am not aware of any other instance of the use of this word in this sense.

    C. H. Cooper.

Cambridge.

"Elementa sex," &c. (Vol. vii., p. 572.).—The answer to the Latin riddle propounded by your correspondent Effigy, seems to be the word putres; divided into utres, tres, res, es, and the letter s.

The allusion in putres is to Virgil, Georgic, i. 392.; and in utres probably to Georgic, ii. 384.: the rest is patent enough.

I send this response to save others from the trouble of seeking an answer, and being disappointed at their profitless labours. If I may venture a guess at its author, I should be inclined to ascribe it to some idle schoolboy, or perhaps schoolmaster, who deserved to be whipped for their pains.

    C. W. B.

"A Diasii 'Salve'," &c. (Vol. vii., p. 571.).—The deliverance desired in these words is from treachery, similar to that which was exhibited by the fratricide Alfonso Diaz toward his brother Juan. (Vid. Senarclæi Historiam veram, 1546; Actiones et Monimenta Martyrum, foll. 126-139. [Genevæ], 1560: Histoire des Martyrs, foll. 161-168., ed. 1597; M

Crie's Reformation in Spain, pp. 181-188., Edinb. 1829.)

The "A Gallorum 'Venite,'" probably refers to the singing of the "Venite, exultemus Domino," on the occasion of the massacre of St. Bartholomew.

    R. G.

Meaning of "Claret" (Vol. vii., pp. 237. 511.).—Old Bartholomew Glanville, the venerable Franciscan, gives a recipe for claret in his treatise De Proprietatibus Rerum, Argent., 1485., lib. xix. cap. 56., which proves it to be of older date than is generally supposed:

"Claretum ex vino et melle et speciebus aromaticis est confectum … Unde a vino contrahit fortitudinem et acumen, a speciebus autem retinet aromaticitatem et odorem, sed a melle dulcedinem mutuat et saporem."

    H. C. K.

—– Rectory, Hereford.

"The Temple of Truth" (Vol. vii., p. 549.).—The author of this work, according to Dr. Watt, was the Rev. C. E. de Coetlogon, rector of Godstone, Surrey.

    Ἁλιέυς.

Dublin.

Wellborne Family (Vol. vii., p. 259.).—The following is from the Town and Country Magazine for 1772:

"Deaths.—Mr. Richard Wellborne, in Aldersgate Street, descended in a direct male line from the youngest son of Simon Montfort, Earl of Leicester, who flourished in King Henry III.'s time, and married that king's sister."

There is now a family of the name of Wellborne residing in Doncaster.

    W. H. L.

Devonianisms (Vol. vii., p. 544.).—While a resident in Devonshire, I frequently met with localisms similar in character to those quoted by J. M. B.; but what at first struck me as most peculiar in common conversation, was the use, or rather abuse, of the little preposition to. When inquiring the whereabouts of an individual, Devonians ask one another, "Where is he to?" The invariable reply is, "To London," "To Plymouth," &c., as the case may be. The Cheshire clowns, on the other hand, murder the word at, in just the same strange and inappropriate manner.

The indiscriminate use of the term forrell, when describing the cover of a book, is a solecism, I fancy, peculiarly Devonian. Whether a book be bound in cloth, vellum, or morocco, it is all alike forrell in Devonshire parlance. I imagine, however, that the word, in its present corrupt sense, must have originated from forrell, a term still used by the trade to designate an inferior kind of vellum or parchment, in which books are not unfrequently bound. When we consider that vellum was at one time in much greater request for bookbinding purposes than it is just now, we shall be at no great loss to reconcile this eccentricity in the vocabulary of our west country brethren.

    T. Hughes.

Chester.

Humbug (Vol. vii., p. 550.).—A recent number of Miller's Fly Leaves makes the following hazardous assertion as to the origin and derivation of the term Humbug:

"This, now common expression, is a corruption of the word Hamburgh, and originated in the following manner:—During a period when war prevailed on the Continent, so many false reports and lying bulletins were fabricated at Hamburgh, that at length, when any one would signify his disbelief of a statement, he would say, 'You had that from Hamburgh;' and thus, 'That is Hamburgh,' or Humbug, became a common expression of incredulity."

With all my credulity, I cannot help fancying that this bit of specious humbug is a leetle too far-fetched.

    T. Hughes.

Chester.