•^508 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 135. 



Trelacot from Tre, " a town," and icot, " below." 

 The I was often prefixed for sound sake : as lavalu 

 for avalu, "an apple ;" quedhan lavalu, " an apple 

 tree ; " Callacot, from cala, or caZfe, " straw," and 

 icot. The introduction of the vowel a for i might 

 be a corruption in spelling after the sound. This 

 is only surmise, but it has an appearance of pro- 

 bability. Cyrus Redding. 



Portrait of John Rogers, the Proto-Martyr. — 

 Should you think the following minor Note inte- 

 resting to your correspondent Kt., perhaps you will 

 find a corner for it in your miscellany. 



Living some time ago on the picturesque coast 

 .of Dorsetshire, I had the good fortune to have for 

 a neighbour a lady of cultivated taste and literary 

 acquirements ; among other specimens of anti- 

 quity and art to which she drew my attention, 

 ■was a portrait, in oil, of John Rogers ; it was of 

 the size called " Kit Cat," and was well painted. 

 This portrait she held in great veneration and 

 esteem, declaring herself to be (if my memory 

 does not deceive me) a descendant of this cham- 

 pion of Christianity, whose name stands on the 

 '" muster roll" of the " noble army of martyrs." 



In case Kt. should wish to push his inquiries in 

 this quarter, I inclose you the name and address 

 of the lady above alluded to. M. W. B. 



" Brallaghan, or the Deipnosophists." — Edward 

 Kenealey, Esq., reprinted under the above sono- 

 rous title (London : E. Churton, 1845) some 

 amusing contributions of his to Fraser and other 

 Magazines. At pp. 94. and 97. he gives us, how- 

 ever, the " Uxor non est ducenda" and the " Uxor 

 est ducenda " of the celebrated Walter Haddon ; 

 and that too without the slightest intimation that 

 he himself was not their author. It is not, I think, 

 fair for any man thus to shine in borrowed 

 plumes, or at least transcribe verbatim, and with- 

 out acknowledgment, from a writer so little known 

 and old-fashioned as Haddon. Let me therefore 

 give the reference, for the benefit of the curious : 

 D. Gualteri Haddoni Poemata, pp. 70-3. Londini, 

 1567, 4to. Rt. 



salts used by the Irish. — We have all heard of 

 the use of stilts by the shepherds of the Landes ; 

 but I have met with only one passage which speaks 

 of their use in Ireland. I have crossed rivers, 

 both in Scotland and in Ireland, on stilts, when 

 the water was not deep, and have seen them kept 

 instead of a ferryboat, when there was no bridge, 

 but do not think they are in common use at the 

 present day. The passage in question is quoted 

 in Ledwich's Antiquities, p. 300. : 



" I had almost forgotten to notice a very remarkable 

 particular recorded by Strada (Strada, Belg., 1. viii. 

 p. 404., Borlase's Reduction, 132.). He tells us that 

 Sir Wm. Pelham, who had been Lord Justice of Ire- 

 and, led into the Low Countries in 1586 fourteen 

 hundred wild Irish, clad only below the navel, and 



mounted on stilts, which they vised in passing rivers i 

 they were armed with bows and arrows. Having never 

 met with this use of stilts among any other people, it 

 seemed 3 matter of curiosity to notice it here." 



EiRIONNACH* 



^Mtxiti, 



ETYMOLOGY OF THE -WORD " DEVIL. 



What is the etymology of the word devil? This 

 may appear an unnecessary question, since we 

 have a regular chain of etyma, SidpoKos, diaholus, 

 diavolo, devil. But it is the first of this chain that 

 puzzles me. I ajn aware that it is considered a. 

 translation of l^?*? and is derived usually from 

 ^la^aKKeiv, columniare. But i^^ means adver- 

 sarins, consequently the rendering would not be 

 accurate. As the word in classical writers always 

 means a false accuser, and never a supernatural 

 agent of evil, I doubt the correctness of the usual 

 derivations in the case of ecclesiastical usage ; and 

 am inclined to consider it one of the oriental 

 words, in a Hellenistic dress, with which the Sep- 

 tuagint and Greek Testament are replete. Mr. 

 Borrow, in Lavengro, instances as a reason for 

 believing that divine and devilish were originally 

 the same words, the similarity of the gypsy word 

 Un-debel, God, and our word devil. Struck with 

 this remark, on consideration of the subject, I 

 perceived that there were several other coinci- 

 dences of the same kind, as follows : — The Greek 

 SalfxtDv means either a good or bad spirit of super- 

 human power. The Zend word afriti, " blessed," 

 corresponds to the Arabic afrit, " a rebellious 

 angel." The Latin divus, " a god," (and of course 

 Aios, with all its variations,) belongs to the same 

 family as the Persian div, " a wizard or demon ;" 

 while the jin or jan of the Ai'abian Nights answer 

 to the forms Za7i, Zena, Zeus, Janus, Djana ov 

 Diana. All words denoting deified power, and 

 employed by the inhabitants of Greece and 

 Umbria. 



These singular resemblances may prove that 

 fetish worship was more widely spread than is 

 generally believed, and I think justify my doubts 

 as to the etymology of the word in question. 



Richard F. Littledalf. 



Dublin. 



forged papal seal. 



An old seal was discovered some years ago bj 

 accident in the ruins of an abbey in the south of 

 Ireland, of which the following is a description. 

 The workmanship is rude, the material a species 

 of bronze. The impression consists of a circle of 

 raised spots : on either side are two venerable 

 human faces, both bearded ; there is a rude cross 

 between them. Above them are tlie letters — 

 « S - P - A - S - P - E." 



