Mae. 5. 1853.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



231 



Supported by Caxton, by Wynkin upheld, 

 Text Tibbald crept forward to sight. 



* Is this,' quoth the poet, ' the thing that rebell'd, 



And dar'd even Pope to the fight ? 



* To Kennel, good Tib, for a time will arrive, 



When all in their senses shall know, 

 That half of your consequence, Tib, you derive 

 From the lash of so envied a foe. 



* Eight hundred old plays thou declar'st thou hast 



read*; 

 How could'st thou the public so cozen ? 

 Yet the traces I see (spite of what thou hast said) 

 Of not many more than a dozen. 



' If all thou hast dug, how could Farmer, my Tib, 



Or Stevens, find gold in the mine ? 

 Thy trade of attorney sure taught thee to fib, 



And truth was no client of thine. 



* And yet, to appease me for all thou hast done, 



And show thou art truly my friend, 

 Go watch, and to me with intelligence run, 



When Johnson and Capell descend. 

 ' For Johnson, with all his mistakes, I must love ; 



Ev'n love from the injured he gains ; 

 But Capell a comrade for dulness will prove. 



And him thou may'st take for thy pains.' " 



Edward F. Eimbault. 



SWEDISH WORDS CURRENT IN ENGLAND. 



In the summer of 1847 I mentioned to my friend 

 Professor Retzius at Stockholm, certain Scandi- 

 navian words in use at Whitby, with which he 

 was much pleased, they not being akin to the 

 German. I have since been mostly in the South 

 of Europe, but have not lost sight of these words ; 

 and last spring I wrote out in Switzerland up- 

 wards of five hundred Swedish words, which 

 greatly resemble the English, Lowland Scots, &c., 

 but I doubt many of them have the same root 

 with the German correspondents. I now beg you 

 kindly to offer to the notice of our Anglo- Saxon 



* Theobald, in the preface to his first edition of 

 Shakspeare, asserts that, exclusive of the works of 

 Beaumont and Fletcher, and Ben Jonson, he had 

 xead above eight hundred plays, to ascertain the un- 

 common and obsolete phrases in his author. The 

 reader who can discover the fruits of this boasted in- 

 dustry in his notes may safely believe him ; and those 

 who cannot may surely claim the liberty, like myself, 

 to doubt somewhat of his veracity. This assertion, 

 however, Theobald had sufficient modesty to omit in 

 the preface to his second edition, together with all the 

 criticisms on Greek authors, which I am assured he 

 had collected from such papers of Mr. Wycherley as 

 had been entrusted to his care for very different pur- 

 poses. It is much to be questioned whether there are 

 five hundred old plays extant, by the most accurate 

 perusal of which the works of Shakspeare could receive 

 advantage ; I mean of dramas prior, cotemporary, or 

 within half a century before and after his own. 



and Icelandic scholars, as well as the estimable 

 UTorthern savans at Copenhagen and elsewhere, 

 the following words in use at Whitby, and I 

 believe throughout Cleveland and Cumberland, 

 where the local accent and manner of speaking is 

 the same. 



" Jffff orm, Swedish (viper), agg teorm, Whitby 



(pron. worrum). — Bloa beer (bilbery), blue berry. i 



By (village), as a termination to names of towns, 

 occurs, perhaps, more frequently in this district than, 

 in others ; there are some places in Cleveland called 

 Lund and Upsal. — Beeck (brook), beck. — Djevul (devil), 

 pronounced exactly in the Swedish manner at Whitby. 

 — Doalig (poorly), dowly. — Eldon (tinder-box), ap- 

 plied to faggots. — Fors (waterfall), spelt force andfoss 

 in Yorkshire books. — Fxd (ugly), pron. fool, usually 

 associated with bigness in Cleveland. — Foane (silly), 

 pron. fond at Whitby. — Gilkr (snare), guilder. — 



Gwpen (handful), gowpen Harr (grayling), carrling 



in Ryedale. — Kcett (flesh), kett, applied to coarse 

 meat. — Lek (play), at Whitby, to lake. — Leta (to 

 seek), to late at Whitby. — Lie (scythe), pron. lye. — 

 Lingon (red bilberry), called a ling berry. — Ljung 

 (ling). — Lopp (a flea). — Nahb (beak), neb. — Shaft 

 (handle), skaft, — Skar (rock), Whitby skar. — Smitta 

 (to infect), to smit. — Strandgata (creek), at Whitby 

 ghaut. — Steed (anvil), steady. — S(ef (a rush), siv. — . 

 Tjam (pool), tarn. — Oenska (to wish for), we say to 

 set one an onska, i.e. longing or wishing." 



Will any one inform me which of the above are 

 Anglo-Saxon words ? I may add that there are 

 many French words in the Swedish for aught I 

 know, some of them Norman. As we find German 

 words in the Italian, we may expect to find Scan- 

 dinavian in the French. Charles Watkins. 



Sm DAVID LINDSAY S VIRIDABITJM. 



In Lord Lindsay's very interesting Lives of the 

 Lindsays, vol. i. p. 347., after the description of 

 the very curious " viridarium or garden " of Sir 

 David Lindsay at Edzell, and of the various sculp- 

 tures and ornaments with which its wall is de- 

 corated, the author says : " To show how insecure 

 was enjoyment in that dawn of refinement, the 

 centre of every star along the wall forms an em- 

 brasure for the extrusion, if needed, of arrow, 

 harquebuss, or pistol." 



Some years before the book was published, I 

 had visited this very interesting spot, and examined 

 these sculptures, and other ornaments, amongst 

 which the pierced stars puzzled me much : how- 

 ever, after a lengthened and very careful investi- 

 gation, finding that, being at too great a height 

 from the ground, and, moreover, that as the holes 

 in the centre of the stars do not pass through the 

 wall, but merely into small cavities in it, they 

 could not have been used as embrasures, or have 

 served for warlike purposes; and that, as there 

 were no channels or pipes that could have con- 



