July 30. 1853.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



105 



Mr. Burton, in his lately published " Narra- 

 tives," points out another source of information 

 regarding Drury, in the Gent. Mag. for 1769, 

 where will be found an account of \V. Benbow ; 

 in this, allusion is made to his brother John Ben- 

 bow, who was wrecked with Drury in the " De- 

 grave" Indiaman, on Madagascar. W. D., who 

 communicates the information to Sylvanus Ur- 

 ban, asserts that he recollects hearing the MS. 

 Journal of this John Benbow read ; and that it 

 afforded to his mind a strong confirmation of the 

 truthfulness of Drury's Madagascar. He adds 

 the following curious particulars anent our sub- 

 ject : — " Robin Drury," he says, " among those 

 who knew him (and he was known to many, being 

 a ■porter at the East India House), had the charac- 

 ter of a downright honest man, without any ap- 

 pearance of fraud or imposture. He was known 

 to a friend of mine (now living), who frequently 

 called upon him at his house in Lincoln's Inn 

 Fields, which were not then enclosed. He tells 

 me he has often seen him throw a javelin there, 

 and strike a small mark at a surprising distance. 

 It is a pity," he adds, " that this work of Drury's 

 is not better known, and a new edition published* 

 (it having been long out of print) ; as it contains 

 much more particular and authentic accounts of 

 that large and barbarous island, than any yet 

 given ; and, though it is true, it is in many respects 

 as entertaining as Gulliver or Crusoe." 



It may farther be mentioned that the French, 

 who have a good acquaintance with Madagascar, 

 " have found Drury's statement of the geography, 

 the natural history, the manners of the people, 

 and the conspicuous men of the time, in Mada- 

 gascar, remarkably accurate." (J5i6. Gen. des 

 Voyages, Paris, 1808.) Archdeacon Wrangham 

 says : " Duncombe (?) calls Drury's Madagascar 

 the best and most genuine account ever given of 

 the island ; " and the missionary Ellis quoted 

 Drury without the slightest suspicion that any 

 doubt hangs over the genuineness of his narrative. 

 Drury's account of himself runs thus : — "I, 

 Robert Drury," he says, when commencing his 

 book, "was born on July 24, 1687, in Crutched 

 Friars, London, where my father then lived ; but 

 soon after removed to the Old Jury, near Cheap- 

 side, where he was well known, and esteemed for 

 keeping that noted house called ' The King's 

 Head,' or otherwise distinguished by the name of 

 the Beef-stake House ; and to which there was all 

 my father's time a great resort of merchants, and 

 gentlemen of the best rank and character." To 

 this famous resort of the Revolutionary and Au- 

 gustan ages I lately betook myself for my stake, in 

 the hope that mine host might be found redolent 



* The editions of Madagascar known to me are those 

 of 1727, 1731, and 1743, by the original publisher. 

 Meadows, Hull, 1807, and London, 1826. 



of the traditional glory of his house. But alas ! 

 that worthy, although firmly believing in the an- 

 tiquity of the King's Head, and of there being 

 some book in existence that would prove it, could 

 not say of his own knowledge whether the king 

 originally complimented by his predecessor was 

 Harry the Eighth or George the Fourth ! 



In conclusion, I would just add, is not the cir- 

 cumstance of our subject holding the humble post 

 of porter at the East India House confirmatory of 

 that part of his story which represents him as one 

 of the crew of Hon. Company's ship " Degrave," 

 whose wreck upon Madagascar I take to be an 

 undoubted fact ? What so probable as this recog- 

 nition, in a small provision for a man in his old 

 age, whose misfortunes commenced while in their 

 service ? Finally, to me the whole narrative of 

 Robert Drury seems so probable, and so well 

 vouched for, that I have given in my adhesion 

 thereto by removing him to a higher shelf in my 

 library than that occupied by such apocryphal per- 

 sons as Crusoe, Quarle, Boyle, Falconer, and a 

 host of the like. J. O. 



THE TERMINATION -BT. 



(VoL vii., p. 536.) 



I would suggest a doubt, whether the suffix -by, 

 in the names of places, affords us any satisfactory 

 evidence, per se, of their exclusively Danish origin. 

 This termination is of no unfrequent occurrence in 

 districts, both in this country and elsewhere, to 

 which the Danes, properly so called, were either 

 utter strangers, or wherein they at no time esta- 

 blished any permanent footing. The truth is, there 

 seems to be a fallacy in this Danish theory, in so 

 far as it rests upon the testimony of language ; 

 for, upon investigation, we generally find that the 

 word or phrase adduced in its support was one 

 recognised, not in any single territory alone, but 

 throughout the whole of Scandinavia, whose dif- 

 ferent tribes, amid some trifling variations of dia- 

 lect, which can now be scarcely ascertained, were 

 all of them as readily intelligible to one another 

 as are, at this day, the inhabitants of two adjoin- 

 ing English counties. If this were so, it appears 

 that, in the case before us, nothing can be proved 

 from the existence of the expression, beyond the 

 fact of its Norse origin ; and our reasonable and 

 natural course is, if we would arrive at its true 

 signification, to refer at once to the parent tongue 

 of the Scandinavian nations, spoken in common, 

 and during a long-continued period, amid the 

 snows of distant Iceland, on the mountains of 

 Norway, the plains of Denmark, and in the forests 

 of Sweden. 



This ancient and widely-diffused language was 

 the Icelandic, Norman, or Donsk tunga, — that 

 in which were written the Eddas and Skilda, the 



