Jan. 14. 1854.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



43 



of the same 

 E. C. H. 



T)6aibv, ouSe fxivwda, and many forms 

 kind. 



B. L. M. (Vol. viii., p. 585.). — The letters 

 B. L. M., in the subscription of Italian correspond- 

 ence, stand for bacio le mani (I kiss your hands), 

 a form nearly equivalent to " your most obedient 

 servant." In the present instance the inflection 

 baciando (kissing) is intended. W. S. B. 



" The Forlorn Hope''' (Vol. viii., pp. 411. 569.). 

 — For centuries the "forlorn hope" was called, 

 and*is still called by the Germans, Verlorne Posten; 

 by the French, Enfans perdus ; by the Poles and 

 other Slavonians, Stracona poczta : meaning, in 

 each of those three languages, a detachment of 

 troops, to which the commander of an army assigns 

 such a perilous post, that he entertains no hope 

 of ever rescuing it, or rather gives up all hope of 

 its salvation. In detaching these men, he is con- 

 scious of the fate that awaits them ; but he sacri- 

 fices them to save the rest of his army, i. e. he 

 sacrifices a part for the safety of the whole. In 

 short, he has no other intention, no other thought 

 in so doing, than that which the adjective forlorn 

 conveys. Thus, for instance, in Spain, a detach- 

 ment of 600 students volunteered to become a 

 forlorn hope, in order to defend the passage of a 

 bridge at Burgos, to give time to an Anglo- 

 Spanish corps (which was thrown into disorder, 

 and closely pursued by a French corps of 18,000 

 men) to rally. The students all, to the last man, 

 perished ; but the object was attained. 



It much grieves me thus to sap the foundation 

 of the idle speculation upon a word the late Dr. 

 Graves indulged in, and which Mr. W. R. Wilde 

 inserted in the Dublin Quarterly Journal of Medical 

 Science for February, 1849 ; but, on the other 

 hand, I rejoice to have had the opportunity of 

 endeavouring to destroy the very erroneous sup- 

 position, that Lord Byron had fallen into an error 

 in his beautiful line : 



" The full of hope, misnamed forlorn? 



What the late Dr. Graves meant by haupt or 

 hope, for head, I am at a loss to conceive. Haupt, 

 in German, it is true, means head ; but in speak- 

 ing of a small body of men, marching at the head 

 of an army, no German would ever say Haupt, 

 but Spitze. As to hope (another word for head) 

 I know not from what language he took it ; cer- 

 tainly not from the Saxon, for in that tongue head 

 was called heafod, hefed, or heafd; whilst hope was 

 called kopa, not hope. C. S. (An Old Soldier.) 



Oak Cottage, Coniston, Lancashire. 



Two Brothers of the same Christian Name 

 (Vol. viii., p. 338.). — I have recently met with 

 another instance of this peculiarity. John Upton, 

 of Trelaske, Cornwall, an ancestor of the Uptons 

 of Ingsmire Hall, Westmoreland, had two sons, 



living in 1450, to both of whom he gave the 

 Christian name of John. The elder of these 

 alike-named brothers is stated by Burke, in his 

 History of the Landed Gentry, to have been the 

 father of the learned Dr. Nicholas Upton, canon 

 of Salisbury and Wells, and afterwards of St. 

 Paul's, one of the earliest known of our authors 

 on heraldic subjects. The desire of the elder Up- 

 ton to perpetuate his own Christian^ name may 

 in some way account for this curious eccen- 

 tricity. T. Hughes. 

 Chester. 



Passage in Watson (Vol. viii., p. 587.). — Your 

 correspondent G. asks, whence Bishop Watson 

 took the passage : 



" Scire ubi aliquid invenire posses, ea demum maxima 

 pars eruditionis est." 



In the account of conference between Spalato 

 and Bishop Overall, preserved in Gutch's Collec- 

 tanea Curiosa, and printed in the Anglo-Catholic 

 Library, Cosin's Works, vol. iv. p. 470., the same 

 sentiment is thus expressed : 



"By keeping Bishop Overall's library, he (Cosin) 

 began to learn, ' Quanta pars eruditionis erat bonos 

 nosse auctores ; ' which was the saying of Joseph 

 Scaliger." 



Can any of your correspondents trace the words 

 in the writings of Scaliger ? J- Sansom. 



Derivation of " Mammel" (Vol. viii., p. 515.). 

 — It may help to throw light on this question to 

 note that Wiclif's translation of 2 Cor. vi. 16. 

 reads thus : " What consent to the temple of God 

 with mawmetis f " Calf hill, in his Answer to 

 Martiall (ed. Parker Soc, p. 31.), has the follow- 

 ing sentence : 



" Gregory, therefore, if he had lived but awhile 

 longer ; and had seen the least part of all the miseries 

 which all the world hath felt since, only for mainte- 

 nance of those mawmots ; he would, and well might, 

 have cursed himself, for leaving behind him so lewd a 

 precedent." 

 And at p. 175. this, — 



" That Jesabel Irene, which was so bewitched with 

 superstition, that all order, all honesty, all law of na- 

 ture broken, she cared not what she did, so she might 

 have her mawmots" 



See also the editor's note on the use of the word 

 in this last passage. In Dorsetshire, among the 

 common people, the word mammet is in frequent 

 use to designate a puppet, a doll, an odd figure, 

 a scarecrow. J. D. ©. 



Ampers and, iff or Sr (Vol. viii., p. l73 -)- — 

 Ampers $-, or Empessy fr, as it is sometimes called 

 in this country, means et per se 8f ; that is to say, 

 Sp is a character by itself, or sui generis, represent- 

 ing not a letter but a word. It was formerly an- 



