432 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 183. 



The MS. "Minutes" also contain a notice of Wil- 

 liam Roman, the thirteenth Geometry Professor, " who 

 was educated at Merchant Taylors' School, London, 

 and from thence elected to St. .John's College, Oxford, 

 in 1740, being matriculated as the son of Richard 

 Roman, of London, Gent., aetat. 17. He commenced 

 B.C.L., May 5th, 1747; Deacon at Christ Church, 

 21st Sept., 1746; Priest at Christ Church, 20th Sept., 

 1747." No date of his appointment, but he was Pro- 

 fessor in 1755, when Maitland wrote his account of the 

 college. Dr. Samuel Kettilby succeeded the Rev. 

 Samuel Birch as Geometry Lecturer, and died June 25, 

 1808. — See Gentleman's Magazine, vol. Ixxviii. p. 657.] 



^''Haulf Naked." — In poring over an old deed 

 the other night, I stumbled upon the aboA'^e name, 

 "wrhich I take to be that of a manor in the county 

 of Sussex. Is it so ? and, if so, by what name is 

 the property now known ? Charles Reed. 



[In Dallaway's Western Sussex, art. Washikgton, 

 vol. ii. pt. ii. p. 133., is the following entry: — " In 

 1310, Henry Balduyne sold to Walter de Halfenaked 

 one messuage, two acres of arable, and two acres of 

 meadow, in Washington and Sullineton. Ped. fin. 

 3 Edw, II."] 



^tifliti* 



Ithe legend or lamech — hebrew etymology. 



(Vol. vii., p. 363.) 



Etymologists are a race who frequently need to 

 be drawn up with a somewhat tight rein. Our 

 Celtic fellow-subjects will not, perhaps, be much 

 gratified by Mr. Crossley's tracing the first indi- 

 cations of their paternal tongue to the family of 

 Cain ; and as every branch of that family was 

 destroyed by the deluge, they may marvel what 

 account he can give of its reconstruction amongst 

 their forefathers. But as his manner of express- 

 ing himself may lead some of your readers to 

 imagine that he is explaining Cain, Lamech, Adah, 

 Zillah, from acknowledged Hebrew meanings of 

 any parts of those words, it may be as well to 

 warn them that the Hebrew gives no support to 

 any one of his interpretations. If fancy be ductile 

 enough to agree with him in seeing a represent- 

 ation of a human arm holding a sling with a stone 

 in it in the Hebrew letter called lamed, there 

 would still be a broad hiatus between such a con- 

 cession, and the conclusion he seems to wish the 

 reader to draw from it, viz. that the word lamed 

 must have something to do with slinging, and that 

 consequently lamed must be a slinger. The He- 

 brew scholar knows that lamed indisputably sig- 

 nifies to teach; and though perhaps he may not 

 feel sure that the Hebrew consonant I obtained 

 its name from any connexion with that primary 

 meaning of the root lamed, he will not think it 

 improbable that as the letter I, when prefixed to a 

 noun or verb, teaches the reader the construction 



of the sentence, that may have been the reason for 

 its being so named. 



As to a legend not traceable to within some 

 thousand years of the facts with which it claims to 

 be connected, those may take an interest in it who 

 like so to do. But as far as we may regard La- 

 mech's address to his wives in the light of a philo- 

 logical curiosity, it is interesting to observe how 

 naturally the language of passion runs into poetry ;: 

 and that this, the most ancient poetry in existence, 

 is in strict unison with the peculiar character of 

 subsequent Hebrew poetry ; that peculiarity con- 

 sisting of the repetition of clauses, containing either 

 the same proposition in a slightly different form, 

 or its antithesis ; a rhyme of thoughts, if we ma^x 

 so say, instead of a rhyme of sounds, and conse- 

 quently capable of being preserved by a literal 

 translation. 



And Latiiech said unto his wives, — ■ 



" Adah and Zillah, hear my voice ; 

 Ye wives of Lamech, hearken unto my speech. 

 For I have slain a man to my wounding. 

 And a young man, to my hurt. 

 If Cain shall be avenged seventy-fold, 

 Truly Lamech, seventy and seven-fold." 



The construction is more favourable to the belief 

 that the man of line third is the same as the 

 young man of the parallel clause, than that he had 

 slain two ; the word rendered hurt is properly a 

 wheal, the effect of a severe strife or wound. _ 



As to the etymologies of the names mentioned 

 by Mr. Crossley, we gather from God's words 

 that she called her first son Cain, an acquisitioa 

 (the Latin peculium expresses it more exactly than 

 any English word), because she had gotten (lite- 

 rally acquired, or obtained possession of) a man. 

 As for Lamech, or more properly Lemecb, it» 

 etymology must be confessed to be uncertain; but 

 there is a curious and interesting explanation of 

 the whole series of names of the patriarchs, Noah's 

 forefathers, in which the name of the other Le- 

 mech, son of Methusaleh, is regarded as made up 

 of Le, the prefixed preposition, and of mech, taken 

 for the participle Hophal of the verb to smite 

 or bruise. Adah, mx, is ornament ; Zillah, n?y^ 

 may mean the shade under which a person reposes ? 

 or if the doubling of the I is an indication that its 

 root is h^'i, it may mean a dancer. H. Walter. 



Allow me, in reference to Mr. Crossley's re- 

 marks, to say, that from the accidental resem- 

 blance of the Hebrew and Celtic words Lamech 

 and Lamaich, no philological argument can be 

 drawn of identical meaning, any more than from 

 the fact that the words Nebuchadnezzar, Bel- 

 shazar, or Belteshassar"^, are significant in Kussian 



* The accidental resemblances are curious. Thus, 

 Nehucadnetzar is in Russian nebe kazenniy Tzar, " A^ 

 Lord or Prince appointed by heaven ; " or, nelu godnoi 



