•July 10. 1852.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



2p 



Ji<!;ht fame ; but T, for one, slionld like to be made 

 ^C(iuuinteil witli the spiiii^vs and wells whicli, from 

 time to time beyond the memory of man, have 

 been lield to make sound the hinie, to cure dis- 

 eases, to brew <iood beer, and, in more modern 

 times, to nnike pood tea. Should there be any 

 fairy tale atlaehed, I trust the writer will reveal 

 it. Folk lore is of more use than the unreflecting 

 imagine. Egbert J^Iawlinson. 



Paganism, in the Sixteenth Century. — The fol- 

 lowinL,' curious passage from Peinble's Sermon on 

 the Mischief e of Ignorance (Oxford, ed. 1G59), 

 affords a lively illustration of popular education 

 in his time: — 



" Let ine tell you a story that I have heard from a 

 reverend man out of the pulpit, a place where none 

 should dare to tell a lye, of an old man above sixty, 

 who lived and died in a parish where tliere had bin 

 preaching almost all his time, and for the greatest part 

 -twice on the Lord's day, besides at extraordinary times. 

 This man was u constant hearer as any might be, and 

 seemed forward in the love of the word : on his death- 

 bed being (juestioned by a minister touching Ins faith 

 and hope in 'God: you would wonder to hear what 

 answer he made ; being demanded what he thought of 

 God, lie answers that he was a good old man ; and 

 what of Christ, tliat he was a towardly yoi th ; and of 

 Ins soule, that it was a greate bone in his body; and 

 what shou'd become of his soule after he was dead, 

 that if he had done well he should be put into a 

 ■pleasant green meadow. " 



The resemblance of the old heathen's heaven 

 to the sacred fields " where souls do couch on 

 flowers" of Hellenic myth(dogy is curious. Had 

 lie derived his notions of futurity from a miracle- 

 play, or is it a genuine relic of Saxon heathendom ? 



T. Sternberg 



FALSE SrELLTNGS ARISING OUT OP SOUND. 



A curious list might be compiled of English 

 words conveying in their present form meanings 

 totally in discordance with their derivatives. 

 What I n;ea 1 is this. The sound of such words 

 has given birth to a new idea, and this new idea 

 has become confirmed by a corresponding, but of 

 course erroneous, mode of spelling. Such are the 

 follovvinur, some of which have been already noticed 

 by Dr. Lathom in his large grammar. Many of 

 jour readers could doubtless supply additional 

 instances. 



Dent de lion has been corrupted to dandylion, 

 ■from an idea of the bold and flaunting aspect of 

 the flower, whex-eas its name has reference to the 

 root. 



Contre-danse is spelled country -dance, as im- 

 plying rural or common life pastime, instead of 

 the position of the dancers. 



Shamefastness, alteied by our modern printers 

 of the authorised version of the New Testament 



to shame facedness, though the connexion of the 



|)assage shows it to have reference to the attire 

 and not to the countenance. Query, has not 

 Miss Strickland, in her life of Mary of Lorraine, 

 fallen Into the same error, in a quotation which 

 slates that while the court ladies were dressing 

 gaily on one occasion, the princess (afterwards 

 queen) Elizabeth preferred keeping to htr owji 

 shuvtcfucediiess ? This must surely be an alteratioa 

 from shamefastness. 



Cap-a-pie, armed from head to foot : this has 

 given rise to the homely term oi' apple-pie (u-der. 



Folio-capo (Italian), first size sheet, suggestive 

 of foolscap. 



Asparagus, popularised into s/jan'ott"-g-rass. La- 

 thom. 



Chateau-vert hill, near Oxford, well known as 

 Shotover hill. Lathom. 



Girasole artichoke, Jerusalem artichoke. La» 

 thoin. 



Farced-meat balls. The notion of their con- 

 taining essence artificially concentrated has occa- 

 sioned the fTptiWmg forced, whereas the meaning ia 

 simply chopped. 



Spar-hawk (or rock-hawk), sparrow-hawk. 

 Satyr and Bacchanals, a public-house sign, 

 Satan and the Bug of Nails. 



Double-dore, double-gilt ; from his bright yelloV 

 spot, the bee called in the west of England the 

 dumhledoor, still further softened into humble-bee. 

 Gut-cord, cat-gut. 



Engleford, or the Englishman's ford, modernised 

 into Hungerford; but the corruption in the names 

 of places is a very wide field. 



Laak (Ang.-Sax.), play, has been turned into 

 lark, and even tortured into sky-lark. Lathom. 



Samhuca, altered (through a Frencli medium), 

 though certainly not euphonised, into sackbuty 

 treated by Miss Strickland in the work above 

 mentioned as a Scottish bagpipe. Her version is 

 not positively disputed, but merely the doubt 

 raised whether or not the origiiud chronicler- in- 

 tended to sug<zest the mode of inflation. Further- 

 more, is it likely that, as Miss Strickland sur- 

 mises, the bagpipe was used at church ? The 

 meanings of ancient musical terms are doubtless 

 very obscure. In some parts of England the 

 sackbut is even identified with the trombone. 



J. Watlen. 



CATHEDRALS IN NORWAY. 



Persons acquainted with Norway will remember 

 the two towns of Stor Hammer and Lillehammer, 

 both anciently bishoprics, which stand on the bor- 

 ders of the Miosen Lake. Stor and Lille are ob- 

 viously g-rea/ and small; but what is the meaning 

 of Hammer? Has it the same derivation as the 

 terminations of such names as C\A\)ham, Twickim- 

 ham, WickAam, &c.? Stor Hammer is often called. 



