2n'J S. X. July 21. '^GO.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



49 



Trans., 1678.) We think the Portuguese term applied to 

 a smoked herring would be defumado, and the Spanish 

 ahumado. But perhaps our correspondent has met with 

 fumado in the sense he indicates. Under " Harengs," in 

 the Index to Buffon, mention is made of the herring fu- 

 mela (" le hareng fumela "). Can fumela be the etymo- 

 logy which has occurred to our correspondent's mind?] 



BuNNr. — Can you inform me whether any ety- 

 mology has ever been attempted of that infantine 

 word for the rabbit "Bunfiy?" Many of these 

 juvenile expressions are difficult enough to trace 

 up to their roots. M. Foddee. 



[The original name is Bun. In the Scotch language 

 bun is equivalent to fud (a tail) ; and it is said of a 

 " maukin," or hare, that she " cocks her bun" i.e. cocks 

 her tail. Hence " Bun-rabbit," Bun," and the " Bunnie" 

 or " Bunny ; " all equivalents, except that the last is a 

 diminutive, and all referring to the animal's tail. Much 

 in the same way a part was sometimes put for the whole, 

 in the use of our old English provincial word scut. Scut 

 was properly the tail of a hare or rabbit ; but was also 

 employed to signify the hare itself.] 



THE FLAMBARD BRASS AND ITS SUPPOSED 



WANT OF EVANGELICAL TEACHING. 



(2"'» S. ix. 409.) 



In his notice on the word "verbere" in this 

 puzzle of an inscription on the Harrow brass, Mr. 

 J. G. Nichols tells us : " My first suggestion was 

 'by the stripes' of Hira by whom the Gospel 

 teaches us we are healed ; but I fear that is too 

 evangelical a sense for the time when the epitaph 

 was written." 



Upon what grounds this "fear " of his rests, Mr. 

 J, G. Nichols does not say ; yet, in giving such a 

 distinct utterance to it, he more than whispers, 

 through " N. & Q.," an open assertion that the 

 great truth of the Atonement was quite unknown 

 to, and wilfully hidden from. Englishmen up to 

 the change of this country's religion in the six- 

 teenth centtiry. This is no small charge to lay 

 against the millions of the gone-by teachers and the 

 taught of this our fatherland, which they adorned 

 with such costly and lasting monuments of their 

 Christian zeal. " N. & Q." afford the proper list 

 for this question, first, because the challenge was 

 first thrown down within their pages ; secondly, 

 the question is closely bound up with' the olden 

 ritualism, the olden literature, the olden customs, 

 the olden men of this land, about all of which 

 " N. & Q." profess a warm and especial interest ; 

 and, thirdly, knowing as I do the Editor to be at 

 heart a true Englishman who loves fair play *, I 



[♦ Our learned correspondent, while doing justice to 

 our love of fair play, has taken somewhat advantage of 

 it — by the heavy tax which he has laid upon our space. 

 But we must, we suppose, follow the goodnatured ex- 

 ample which Lord Palmerston has set us, with regard to 

 what is so perversely called The Lords taxing the people 

 — we must yield with a good grace, and protest against 



am sure he will not shut me out from meeting and 

 answering an accusation upon the spot where he 

 allowed it to be uttered. 



Instead of there being any — the weakest — 

 foundation for Mr. J. G. Nichols's " fear," it is a 

 thing most thoroughly known to every one who 

 has made himself but slightly acquainted with the 

 religious belief held by our forefathers during 

 the mediaeval period, and from the earliest times, 

 that the great mysteries of the Incarnation, and 

 of the Redemption and Salvation of man by 

 Christ our Lord, were not only unweariedly 

 preached to the people by the Church, but set 

 forth in every imaginable form, even too in the 

 lighter literature of those days, after a way that, 

 perhaps, might now be looked upon as exag- 

 gerated and out of place — nay, a very bore itself, 

 by not a few among the so-called evangelicals of 

 the present hour. 



In her daily liturgy, in very many of her more 

 especial ceremonials within her yearly course, in 

 her symbolism, in her architecture, in her various 

 ritual appliances, in fact at all her moments, and 

 by every thing about her, the Church spoke forth, 

 as she still speaks, in loudest words the glorious 

 mystery of the Atonement. 



The holy Sacrifice of the Mass, by its various 

 prayers, the distribution of its several parts, and 

 even by the vestments of the priest who was offer- 

 ing it up, took our forefathers every morning 

 back in thought to Calvary and the crucifixion ; all 

 the ceremonies during Holy Week led their minds 

 and hearts to the same spot ; the very orientation 

 of the building whither they went to pray, told 

 them of the Orient from on high, who brought to 

 them " health in his wings ; " the little cross upon 

 the altar, the larger one in the rood-loft, the cross 

 in the churchyard or by the wayside, the cruci- 

 fixion limned in the missal at the beginning of the 

 canon, and graven on the chalice foot, spoke 

 man's redemption wrought by the death of the 

 God-man Saviour. In many a cathedral, and even 

 in little parish churches, the studied and intended 

 deflection to the north of the presbytery and 

 chancel walls, was done for no other purpose than 

 to show how the head of our Lord hung leaning to 

 that side, at the moment of his death for us upon 

 the altar of the cross : the transepts, or, as they 

 were better called, the cross-isles made the church 

 itself to figure forth in its ground-plan that in- 

 strument of our redemption, while often the 

 stained-glass windows all around were filled with 

 types and antetypes of that same mercy. The 

 paintings and carvings on the walls ; the cala- 

 drius, that imaginary bird that, by gazing on the 

 dying man, took to itself his sickness, and gave 



the present case being drawn into a precedent. One 

 paragraph we have been compelled to omit, as it would 

 inevitably have led to a controversy altogether unsuited 

 to these columns.— Ed. »N. & Q."] 



