42 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 220. 



ing to collect in your pages, as illustrative of the 

 habits of our forefathers, and the changes that 

 time has produced. I recognise many among 

 your coadjutors who are well able to contribute, 

 either from tradition or personal experience, 

 something that is worth recording, and thus by 

 their mutual communications to form a collection 

 that would be both interesting and useful. Let 

 me commence the heap by depositing the first 

 stones. 



1. My father has informed me that in his early 

 years it was the universal practice for lawyers to 

 attend the theatre on the last day of term. This 

 was at a period wheff those who went into the 

 boxes always wore swords. 



2. It was formerly (within fifty years) the cus- 

 tom for every barrister in the Court of Chancery 

 to receive from the usher, or some other officer of 

 the court, as many buns as he made motions on 

 the last day of Term, and to give a shilling for 

 each bun. Edward Foss. 



_ Silo (Vol. viii., p. 639.). — The word silo is de- 

 rived from the Celtic siol, grain, and omh, a cave ; 

 siolomh, pronounced sheeloo, a " grain cave." 

 Underground excavations have been discovered 

 in various parts of Europe, and it is probable that 

 they were really used for storing grain, and not 

 for habitations, as many have supposed. 



Fras. Crossley. 



I have no doubt but that Mr. Strong's Query 

 respecting silos will meet with many satisfactory 

 answers ; but in the mean time I remark that 

 the Arab subterranean granaries, often used by 

 the French as temporary prisons for refractory 

 soldiers, are termed by them silos or silhos. 



G. H. K. 



Laurie on Finance (Vol. viii., p. 491.). — 



" A Treatise on Finance, under which the General 

 Interests of the British Empire are illustrated, com- 

 prising a Project for their Improvement, together with 

 a new scheme for liquidating the National Debt," by 

 David Laurie, 8vo., London, 1815. 



Anon. 



David's Mother (Vol. viii., p. 539.). — The fol- 

 lowing comment on this point is taken from vol. i. 

 p. 203. of the Rev. Gilbert Burrington's Arrange- 

 ment of the Genealogies of the Old Testament and 

 Apocrypha, Lond. 1836, a learned and elaborate 

 work: 



"In 2 Sam. xvii. 25., Abigail is said to be the 

 daughter of Nahash, and sister to Zeruiah, Joab's 

 mother; but in 1 Chron. ii. 16., both Zeruiah and 

 Abigail are said to be the daughters of Jesse ; we must 

 conclude, therefore, with Cappell, either that the name 

 KV1J, Nahash, in 2 Sam. xvii. 25., is a corruption of 

 *B>\ Jesse, which is the reading of the Aldine and 

 Complutensian editions, and of a considerable number 



of MSS. of the LXX in this place j or that Jesse had 

 two names, as Jonathan in his Targum on Ruth iv. 22. 

 informs us; or that Nahash is not the name of the 

 father, but of the mother of Abigail, as Tremellius and 

 Junius imagine; or, lastly, with Grotius, we must be 

 compelled to suppose that Abigail, mentioned as the 

 sister of Zeruiah in 2 Sam., was a different person from 

 Abigail the sister of Zeruiah, mentioned in 1 Chron., 

 which appears most improbable." 



'AXievs. 

 Dublin. 



Anagram (Vol. vii., p. 546.). — Some years 

 since I purchased, at a book-stall in Cologne, a 

 duodecimo (I think it was a copy of Milton's De- 

 fensio), on a fly-leaf of which was the date 1653, 

 and in the neat Italian hand of the period the 

 following anagram. The book had probably be- 

 longed to one of the English exiles who accom- 

 panied Charles II. in his banishment. I have 

 never met with it in any collection of anagrams 

 hitherto published. Perhaps some of your nu- 

 merous readers may have been more fortunate, 

 and can give some account of it. 

 " Carolus Stuartus, Anglia;, Scotiae, et Hiberniae Rex, 

 Aula, statu, regno exueris, ac hostili arte necaberis." 



John o' the Ford. 

 Malta. 



Passage in Sophocles (Vol. viii., pp. 73. 478. 631.). 

 — Your correspondent M. is quite right in trans- 

 lating irpdaa-eiv fares, and referring it not to ®ebs, 

 but to the person whom the Deity has infatuated ; 

 and he is equally right in explaining 6\iyocrTov 

 Xpovov for a very short time. Updo-vei, the old read- 

 ing restored by Herman, is probably right ; but it 

 must still be referred to the same person : file 

 vero versatur, &c. Mr. Buckton explains <J>, 

 which is the relative to povv, to signify when, and 

 translates PovXtverai as if it were equivalent with 

 PovAerai. Tbv vow £ PovXeverai is the mental power 

 with which he (6 j3\a<f>0e\s, not 0«bs) deliberates. 

 "Xri) is, as M. properly explains it, not destruction 

 but infatuation, mental delusion; that judicial blind' 

 ness which leads a man to his ruin, not the ruin 

 itself. It is a leading idea in the Homeric theo- 

 logy (//. xix. 88., xxiv. 480., &c). 



Though the idea in the Antigone closely re- 

 sembles that which is cited in the Scholia, it seems 

 more than probable that the original source of 

 both passages is derived from some much earlier 

 author than a cotemporary of Sophocles. As to 

 the line given in Boswell, it is not an Iambic 

 verse, nor even Greek. It was probably made 

 out of the Latin by some one who would try his 

 hand, with little knowledge either of the metre or 

 the language. Mr. Buckton says, that to trans- 

 late bxi-yoarov very short, is not to translate agree- 

 ably to the admonition of the old scholiast. Now, 

 the words of the scholiast are oi»5e 6\iyov, not even 

 a little, that is, a very little : so oiiSe tvt6ov, oi>$' 



