92

'E. D. D.' gives the meaning a country simpleton.' It used to have this signification in this part of Sussex, rather hostile in import. I well remember some fifty years ago my uncle's carter-bailiff saying of a new hand lately come over the border, whose work I was criticizing, "Wa-al, what can yer 'spect? He be on'y a (H)ampshire (h)og." E. E. STREET. Chichester.

[MR. TOM JONES also thanked for reply.]

HOCKTIDE AT HEXTON: ROPE MONDAY (10 S. xi. 488; xii. 71, 139, 214, 253, 514; 11 S. i. 338).-In support of what I wrote at the penultimate reference on the derivation of Hocktide" from A.-S. heáh tid and a hypothetical Anglo-French haut tide, Douce in Brand's 'Popular Antiquities,' p. 101, note, is made to say: "I find that Easter is called 'Hye-tide' in Robert of Gloucester "; and, strange to say, the same authority on p. 100, speaking of Florence of Worcester, Langtoff, and Robert of Gloucester, has: These three last writers do not mention a word about hocktide."

To me it seems more than likely too that high day in the N.E.D. is a doublet of heyday (A.-S. heáh, M.E. heh, hezh, hey-), though the editors prefer to regard the latter word as of uncertain origin." N. W. HILL.

New York.

COWES FAMILY (11 S. i. 508). On 3 August, 1630, the will was proved (P C.C. Scroope, 72) of Simon Cowse of the parish. of St. Bartholomew the Great, London, citizen and goldsmith, by his widow Alice. The following were married at St. James's, Duke Place, London :

Alexander Cowse and Anne Mekins, 1667. John Driver and Elizabeth Cowes, 1680. Will. Dennis and Martha Cowes, 1682. In 1681 a Robt. Cowes is mentioned in the marriage registers of the same church.

H. Cowe of 22, Parade, Berwick-on-Tweed, changed his name to Cowen; see Times, 19 September, 1894.

B. U. L. L.

The name Cowe appears in Aberdeenshire mentioned in connexion with Middlesex in as early as 1550, and again in 1650. It is 1797 and 1806; and in London for 1816, 1842, 1849, and 1868.

Cowie, as a place-name, is found as early as 1090. It is a fishing village in Kincardineshire, with remains of a castle the Castle of Cowie-built by Malcolm Canmore.

As a family name, Cowie occurs very frequently, as in Edinburgh, 1576, 1594, 1623, 1658, 1702, and 1765; Perthshire, 1622; Fifeshire, 1626; Forfarshire, 1628; Stirlingshire, 1636; Aberdeenshire, 1674, 1771, 1799, and 1800; Lanarkshire, 1680; InverMontreal ness, 1731; Elginshire, 1766; (Canada), 1809 and 1812; London, 1816, 1842, 1845, 1851, 1861, and 1866; India, (Civil Servants), 1825, 1829, and 1832; Australasia (Rev. W. G. Cowie, Bishop of Auckland, born in London, 1831); Dundee (R. Cowie), 1871.

Might one venture the opinion that the place-name Cowie is the source whence the different varieties of the family name have been derived?

W. S. S.

J. R. SMITH DR. W. SAUNDERS (11 S. ii. 6). I have a copy of this print, and Frankau's book may like to have for inappend a description which owners of Mrs. sertion therein. It is rather curious that Mrs. Frankau should have omitted the portrait from her catalogue, seeing that Chaloner Smith thus describes it ::

directed towards left, facing and looking to front. William Saunders. Nearly whole length, sitting, White hair, dark clothes; coat buttoned across vest; right arm on table to left, on which lie books fore-finger pointing. Left elbow on arm of chair. Under: in centre various medical emblems and books. Inscribed: "Published April 29th 1803 by

R. Smith 31 King Street Covent Garden & I Ackermann 101 Strand. J. R. Smith pinxt et exoudit William Saunders M.D. F.R.S. & S.A. From

Notes on Books, &c.

Grammar of the Gothic Language. By Joseph Wright, Ph.D. (Oxford, Clarendon Press.) WITH untiring energy Prof. Wright has followed up his Old English Grammar and Historical German Grammar with one on the same lines dealing with Gothic. It is needless to say that it is thoroughly scientific and minutely accurate in its phonology and accidence. No English student who desires to possess a comparative knowledge of his own tongue can afford to stop short of Gothic as the ne plus ultra of the Teutonic branch of languages. Sufficient specimens of Ullas's translation of the New Testament are given to serve as a praxis, with notes and a complete glossary, to which Old English and old High German cognates are added. The first entry in the Glossary only gives "man, husband," as the meaning of aba, while in the text (pp. 96, 170) that of "father" is also assigned to it, this being probably the original meaning, the word is akin to abba. Ulfilas, however, it must be admitted, seems always to use it in the sense of "husband," keeping fadar for the paternal relation.

IN The National Review politics occupy, as often, a dominant part, and are discussed in the usual trenchant style. Mr. Alfred Austin's Byron in Italy' goes over a good deal which is familiar to us, but possibly not to the rising generation. Byron has hardly held his place with the modern critic, and we take leave to doubt if all readers of Mr. Austin's paper know by heart the stanza concerning the Dying

Gladiator. His scorn for those who " prefer erotic lyricism and egotistical sentiment to the noblest poetry on the rise, fall, and decline of the Roman Empire" is somewhat overdone. As Mr. Austin shows a few lines earlier, Byron is himself not free from "splendid egotism," and the fact is as much a commonplace as many pronouncements on poetry which now flourish in the press. Compliments from Goethe concerning Byron are quoted to which we do not object, but it may be added that more searching sentiments from the

same source are available.

was

We are delighted with Mr. H. C. Biron's article on 'A Red-faced Nixon.' Such, it may be recalled, was the designation of a somewhat mysterious prophet in Pickwick.' Mr. Biron found at a second-hand bookstall a slender volume which dispelled his doubts as to the soundness of commentators on the prophet. It Nixon's Prophecies: the Original Predictions of Robert Nixon, commonly called the Cheshire Prophet,' and contained some details of his shrewdness which Mr. Biron comments: on in an agreeable style. The prophecies quoted have that vein of wide application which we remember in certain Greek oracles, and has, we dare say, always, as Gibbon suggests, distinguished the discreet seer. Mr. J. Barnard-James has an interesting articleIn the Track of the Locust.' The account of the efforts made to divert or destroy the advance of these insects is most striking. The devastation they cause is almost beyond belief, and "each female is estimated to lay about 10,000 eggs. These, clinging together and forming a kind of brown cocoon, are deposited on the ground, which they resemble in colour, and they are therefore not easily discerned."

Mr. A. Maurice Low writes well, as usual, on things, that President Taft will have to be reAmerican Affairs,' indicating, amongst other

nominated; otherwise it is "tantamount to an admission that he personally or his administration as a whole has been a failure, and that is a heavy handicap to overcome."

Mr. Austin Dobson has one of his neat and informative articles on Chambers the Architect," who is known to Fame as the layer-out of the grounds at Kew Palace and the architect of Somerset House, and on whom MR. ALECK ABRAHAMS had a note in last week's N. & Q." (ante, p. 25). The article on C Greater Britain has some remarkable facts concerning Australia. For instance, there is good land only twentyfive miles from Melbourne that has never been cultivated. Such a state of affairs may rightly be called "disease."

IN The Burlington Magazine the usual editorial. articles do not figure, but Mr. Lionel Cust leads off with A Portrait of Queen Catherine Howard? by Hans Holbein the Younger. The discovery of a new and authentic portrait of an English queen, painted in England by such a hand, is

an event of no little interest." Illustrations of the picture and of others of the same lady are given for purposes of comparison. The new find from a private collection in the West of England is said to excel in every detail the portrait of the same queen acquired for the National Gallery in It is further recognized, it appears, by 1898. foreign critics as a genuine and important speci men of Holbein's work.

Mr. G.F. Laking continues his criticism of The Noël Paton Collection of Arms and Armour,' and is fable this time to award high praise to some of it. Early Chinese Pottery and Porcelain at the Burlington Fine-Arts Club' is considered in a brief article by Mr. Edward Dillon, who points out that recent times of stress in China, leading to the breaking-up of many old native collections, and excavations for new railways, have given "the ruthless antiquary and those who cater for him a rich harvest. So the early wares of China are now for the first time exhibited in some profusion to Londoners. 'The Old Plate of the Cambridge Colleges,' a recent book by Mr. E. A. Jones, is reviewed by Lieut.-Col. Croft Lyons. The plate of Corpus is, we think, the best, Trinity not being so conspicuous in this respect as it is in most academic distinctions. Mr. D. S. MacColl writes on 'Twenty Years of British Art' at the Whitechapel Gallery, and his article is one of the most satisfactory in an expert paper which is more concerned with the glories of the past than the efforts of the present day. Two illustrations of Mr. Wilson Steer's Richmond Castle in Storm,' and Mr. Augustus John's Nirvana represent pictures which may rank as Old Masters some day. Mr. MacColl points out incidentally that the Committee which inquired in 1904 into the administration of the Chantrey Bequest proposed that, instead of a Council of ten as purchasers, a committee of three should be appointed including an Associate nominated by the Associates, who had hitherto had no voice in deciding purchases. Such a committee was appointed for the following year, and is under stood to have recommended a good example of Mr. Rothenstein, and one of Buxton Knight's masterpieces, the 'Winter Sunshine.' Both recommendations were thrown out by the Council." The Academy thus shows once more the farcical character of official committees, which seem only a means of stopping the course of public inquiry by resolutions which are of no avail.

"

GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY FOR THE UNITED KINGDOM. -An informal meeting was held on the 29th of June, at which it was agreed that an attempt should be made to secure the support of fifty representative genealogists. These, as founders, will subscribe a guinea apiece for the purpose of placing before the greater genealogical public a scheme, and one that shall be well-considered and likely to endure, for the formation of a "Society of Genealogists of London." Influential support has been already promised, and those interested will be advised of the progress of the movement if they will send their names to the Hon. Secretary pro tem., Room 22, 227, Strand, W.C.

66

in Shakespeare, a subject on which he wrote several times, introducing, for instance, the Leopold Edition of several years ago, and adding to the " Century Edition two years ago, with Mr. John Munro, a characteristic little volume on the poet's life.

Throughout his career Dr. Furnivall was a man of splendid enthusiasms, who was able to achieve much for his favourite subjects by his untiring energy. An essential part, perhaps, of such a temperament was that he "loved a row.' His life was certainly unconventional, like his spelling, and his taste, as exhibited in various outbursts of his which got into print, was repugnant to many But such things are as nothing when we consider his long labours (largely labours of love) for the cause of English, and the generous way in which he always encouraged and helped other workers. It is some while since his eminence was recognized by the unusual compliment of a Festschrift presented to him by a representative body of scholars on the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday.

"

We need more such impassioned students if English in these days of commercialism is to hold its own.

D. W. FERGUSON.-The Times of the 2nd inst

notices the death at Croydon on 29 June of Mr. Donald William Ferguson, who had for some time been suffering from consumption :"Mr. Ferguson was the younger surviving son of the late A. M. Ferguson, C.M.G., a wellknown publicist and leading colonist, who arrived in Ceylon from the Scottish Highlands in 1837, and lived there for 55 years till his death. He became chief proprietor and editor of The Ceylon Observer, &c., and his son succeeded him for time; but eventually in 1893 retired to England in the Portuguese and Dutch annals and records, where he worked on the past history, especially of Ceylon administration."

We may add that both in The Athenæum and our own columns Mr. Ferguson's work was highly valued. He had a remarkable knowledge of the earlier history of India, and of the class of travellers whose writings have been published by the Hakluyt Society. His latest contribution i at 11 S. i. 41.

Notices to Correspondents.

Le

To secure insertion of communications corre spondents must observe the following rules. each note, query, or reply be written on a separate slip of paper, with the signature of the writer and such address as he wishes to appear. When answer ing queries, or making notes with regard to previou entries in the paper, contributors are requested t put in parentheses, immediately after the exac heading, the series, volume, and page or pages t which they refer. Correspondents who repea queries are requested to head the second munication "Duplicate."

com

to "The Editor of 'Notes and Queries ""-Adve EDITORIAL Communications should be addresse tisements and Business Letters to "The Pul lishers" at the Office, Bream's Buildings, Chancer Lane, E.C.

H. P. LEE.-Forwarded: delayed through chang