524 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 213. 



Mary, says, " He then sat do^Yn upon a stone 

 ■opposite to Bell Savage's Inn." 



James Edmeston. 

 Homerton. 



History of Yorh (Vol. viii., p. 125.). — There is 

 a History of Yorh, published in 1785 by Wilson 

 and Spence, described to be an abridgment of 

 Drake, which is in three volumes, and may be a 

 later edition of the same work to which Mr. 

 Elliot alludes. F. T. M. 



SK". Cannon Street. 



Encore (Vol. viii., p. 387.). — If A, A. knows 

 the meaning of " this French word " I am a little 

 surprised at his Query. Perhaps he moans to ask 

 why a French word should be used ? It probably 

 was first used at concerts and operas (anco7-a in 

 Italian), where the performers and even the per- 

 formances were foreign, and so became the fashion. 

 Pope says : 



" To the same notes thy sons shall hum or snore, 

 And all thy yawning daughters cry encore" 



It was not, I think, In use so early as Shak- 

 speare's time, who makes Bottom anticipate that 

 " the Duke shall say. Let him roar again, let him 

 roar again" where the jingle of " encore " would 

 have been obvious. It is somewhat curious that 

 where we use the French word encore, the French 

 audiences use the Latin word " bis." C. 



^^ Hauling over the Coals" (Vol. viii., p. 125.). — 

 This saying I conceive to have arisen from the 

 custom prevalent in olden times, when every Baron 

 was supreme in his own castle, of extracting 

 money from the unfortunate Jews who happened 

 to fall into his power, by means of torture. The 

 most usual modus operandi seems to have been 

 roasting the victims over a slow fire. Every one 

 remembers the treatment of Isaac of York by 

 Front-de-Boeuf, so vividly described in Sir Walter 

 Scott's Ivanhoe. Although the practice has long 

 been numbered amongst the things that were, the 

 fact of its having once obtained is handed down to 

 posterity in this saying, as when any one Is taken 

 to task for his shortcomings he is haided over the 

 coals. ^ John P. Stilwell. 



Dorking. 



The Words ''Cash" and '' Mol'' (Vol. viii., 

 p. 386.). — Mb. Fox was right : moh Is not genuine 

 English — teste Dean Swift! A lady who was 

 well known to Swift used to say that the greatest 

 scrape she ever got into with him was by using 

 the word moh. " Why do you say that ? " he 

 exclaimed In a passion ; " never let me hear you 

 say that again ! " " Why, sir," she asked, " what 

 am I to say ? " " The rabble, to be sure," an- 

 swered he. (Sir W. Scott's Works of Swift, 

 vol. ix.) The word appears to have been intro- 



duced about the commencement of the eighteenth 

 century, by a process to which we owe many other 

 and similar barbarisms — " beauties introduced to 

 supply the want of wit, sense, humour, and learn- 

 ing." In a paper of The Tatler, No. 230., much 

 in the spirit, and possibly from the pen, of Swift, 

 complaint Is made of the " abbreviations and eli- 

 sions " which had recently been introduced, and a 

 humorous example of them is given. By these, 

 the author adds, 



" Consonants of most obdurate sound are joined to- 

 gether without one softening vowel to intervene ; and 

 all this only to make one syllable of two, directly con- 

 trary to the example of the Greeks and Romans, and 

 a natural tendency towards relapsing into barbarity. 

 And this is still more visible in the next refinement, 

 which consists in pronouncing the first syllable in a 

 word that has many, and dismissing the rest. Thus 

 we cram one syllable and cut off the rest, as the owl 

 fattened lier mice after she had bit off their legs to pre- 

 vent their running away ; and if ours be the same 

 reason for maiming our words, it will certainly answer 

 the end, for I am sure no other nation will desire to 

 borrow them." 



I have only to add (see Blachvood's Blagazine^ 

 vol. il., 1842) that "mob Is mobile." 



Cash appears to be from the French caisse, a 

 chest, cash. J. W. Thomas. 



Dewsbury. 



Cash is from the French caisse, the money- 

 chest where specie was kept. So caissier became 

 "cashier," and specie "cash." 



3Iob, Swift tells us (Polite Conversa/ion, Introd.), 

 Is a contraction for mobile. 



Clericus Rusticus has not, I fear, Johnson's 

 Dictionary, where both these derivations are 

 given. C. 



Ampers i^ (Vol. il., pp. 230. 284. ; Vol. viii. 

 passim). — Mr. Ingleby may well ask what "and- 

 per-se-and" can mean. The fact is, this is itself 

 a corruption. In old spelling-books, after the 

 twenty-six letters it was customary to print the 

 two following symbols with their explanations : 

 &c. et cetera. j 



& (per sg), and. 



Children were taught to read the above "et- 

 cee, etcetera" and " et-per-se, and." Such, at 

 least, was the case in a Dublin school, some ninety 

 years ago, where my informant, now many years 

 deceased, was educated. As se was not there 

 pronounced like cee, but like say, there was no 

 danger of confounding the two names. In Eng- 

 land,%here a different pronunciation of the Latia 

 word prevailed, such confusion would be apt to 

 occur ; and hence, probably, English teachers sub- 

 stituted and for et ; from which, in course of 

 time, the other corruptions mentioned by Mb. 

 Lowes were developed. E. H. D. D. 



