5G0 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 188> 



ship, and, I have heard, while going and returning 

 to and from the fair. Edward Hawkins. 



At Free Mart, at Portsmouth, a glove used to be 

 hung out of the town-hall window, and no one 

 could be arrested during the fortnight that the 

 fair lasted. F. O. Martin. 



Arms — Batlle-axe (Vol. vii., p. 407.). — The 

 families which bore three Dane-axes or battle- 

 axes in their coats armorial were very numerous 

 in ancient times. It may chance to be of service 

 to your Querist A. C. to be informed, that those 

 of Devonshire which displayed these bearings were 

 the following : Dennys, Batten, Gibbes, Ledenry, 

 Wike, Wykes, and Urey. J. D. S. 



Enough (Vol. vii., p. 455.). — In Staffordshire, 

 and I believe in the other midland counties, this 

 word is usually pronounced enoo, and written 

 enow. In Richardson's Dictionary it will be found 

 " enough or enow;" and the etymology is evidently 

 from the German genug, from the verb genugen, 

 to suffice, to be enough, to content, to satisfy. 

 The Anglo-Saxon is genog. I remember the 

 burden of an old song which I frequently heard in 

 my boyish days : 



" I know not, I care not, 



I cannot tell how to woo, 

 But I'll away to the merry green woods, 

 And there get nuts enow." 



This evidently shows what the pronunciation was 

 when it was written. J. A. H. 



Enough is from the same root as the German 

 genug, where the first g has been lost, and the 

 latter softened and almost lost in its old English 

 pronunciation, enow. The modern pronunciation 

 is founded, as that of many other words is, upon 

 an affected style of speech, ridiculed by Holo- 

 fernes.* The word bread, for example, is almost 

 universally called bred; but in Chaucer's poetry, 

 and indeed now in Yorkshire, it is pronounced 

 bre-ad, a dissyllable. T. J. Buckton. 



Birmingham. 



In Vol. vii., p. 455. there is an inquiry respect- 

 ing the change in the pronunciation of the word 

 enough, and quotations are given from Waller, 

 where the word is used, rhyming with bow and 

 plough. But though spelt enough, is not the woi'd, 

 in both places, really enow f and is there not, in 

 fact, a distinction between the two words ? Does 

 not enough always refer to quantity, and enow to 

 number: the former, to what may be measured; 

 the latter, to that which may be counted? In both 

 quotations the word enough refers to numbers? 



S. S. S. 



* The Euphuists are probably chargeable with this 

 corruption. 



Feelings of Age (Vol. vii., p. 429.). — A. C. asks 

 if it " is not the general feeling, that man in ad- 

 vancing years would not like to begin life again? " 

 I fear not. It is a wisdom above the average of 

 what men possess that made the good Sir Thomas 

 Browne say : 



" Though I think no man can live well once, but he 

 that could live twice, yet for my own part I would not 

 live over my hours past, or begin again the thread of 

 my dayes : not upon Cicero's ground — because I have 

 lived them well — but for fear I should live them, 

 worse. I find my growing judgment daily instruct 

 me how to be better, but my untamed affections and 

 confirmed vitiosity make me daily do worse. I find in 

 my confirmed age the same sins I discovered in my 

 youth ; I committed many then, because I was a child, 

 and, because I commit them still, I am yet an infant. 

 Therefore I perceive a man may be twice a child 

 before the days of dotage, and stand in need of .^son's 

 bath before threescore." 



The annotator refers to Cic, lib. xxiv. ep. 4. : 



" Quod reliquum est, sustenta te, mea Terentia, ut 

 potes, honestissime. Viximus: floruimus : non vitium 

 nostrum, sed virtus nostra, nos afHixit. Peccatum est 

 nullum, nisi quod non una animam cum ornamentis 

 amisimus," — Edit. Orell., vol. iii. part i. p. 335. 



However, it seems probable that Sir Thomas meant 

 that this sentiment is rather to be gathered from 

 Cicero's writings, — not enunciated in a single 

 sentence. H. C. K. 

 Rectory, Hereford. 



Optical Query (Vol. vii., p. 430.). — In reply ta 

 the optical Query by II. H., I venture to suggest 

 that a stronger gust of wind than usual might 

 easily occasion the illusion in question, as I myself 

 have frequently found in looking at the fans oa 

 the tops of chimneys. Or possibly the eyes may 

 have been confused by gazing on the revolving 

 blades, just as the tongue is frequently influenced 

 in its accentuation by pronouncing a word of two 

 syllables in rapid articulation. F. F. S. 



Oxford. 



Cross and Pile (Vol. vii., p. 487.). — Here is 

 another explanation at least as satisfactory as some 

 of the previous ones : 



" The word coin itself is money struck on the coin 

 or head of the flattened metal, by which word coin or 

 head is to be understood the obverse, the only side 

 which in the infancy of coining bore the stamp. Thence 

 the Latin cutieus, from cu7ie or ki/n, the head. 



" This side was also called pile, in corruption from 

 poll, a head, not only from the side itself being the 

 coin or head, but from its being impressed most com- 

 monly with some head in contradistinction to the re- 

 verse, which, in latter times, was oftenest a cross. 

 Thence the vulgarism, cross or pile, poll, head." — Cle- 

 land's Specimen of an Etymological Vocabulary, p. 157. 



A. Holt White. 



