464 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 84. 



''Lay of the Last Minstrer (Vol.iii, p. 307.)-— 

 The BoHDERER, wilh whom, I i'aiicy, every one 

 will fully agree, has himself been guilty of incuria 

 in charging it upon "Walter Scott. The great fes- 

 tival at which Michael Scott marches oft'witli the 

 Goblin Page, was to celebrate, not the nuptials, but 

 the betrothal, of the hero and heroine. I do not 

 think I have read the Lai/ since I was a boy ; but 

 yet I will bet five nothings to one, that the Ibllow- 

 ing lines are spoken by tiie Lady, when she gives 

 way, as she says, to Fate : — 



" For this is your betrothing da^-, 

 And all tliese nohle lords sliall st.ny 

 And grace it with tlieir company." 



It would be an excellent thing if some of your 

 correi!^pondents would furnish you with materials 

 for a corner, to be entitled, " The Prophecy of 

 Criticism." It should give, by short extract, those 

 presages in which criticism abounds, taken from 

 the lieviews of twenty years or more preceding 

 the current year. Thus, in this year of 1851, the 

 corner shotdd be open to any prophecy uttered in 

 or before 1831, and palpably either fulfilled or 

 falsified. In a little while, when the subject liegins 

 to cool, the admission should be restricted to pro- 

 phecy of precisely twenty years of previous (late. 

 Such a corner would be useful warning to critics, 

 and useful knowledge to their readers. M. 



Tingry (Vol. ii., p. 477.). — In reply to E.V.'s 

 Query, if there is any place in the north of France 

 bearing that name, I may inform him that Tingry 

 is a commune near Samcr, in the arrondissement 

 ofBoulogne. Tingry Hill is the highest spot in 

 the neighbourhood. In the Boulogne JMuseum 

 are several mediaeval antiquities found at Tingry. 



P. S. Kg. 



Sithbaiical and Jubilee Years of the Jews (Vol. iii., 

 p. 373.). — You must find it difficult to know what 

 to do when a correspondent obtains admission into 

 your columns who absolutely requires to be sent 

 back to elementary books. On the one hand, care 

 must be taken not to discourage communication : 

 on the other hand, there is a species of communi- 

 cation which must be gently discouraged. Nothing 

 has ever appeared in your columns which makes 

 this remark more necessary than the connnunica- 

 tion headed as above, and signed by the venerable 

 name of HiprARCHUs. Your well meaning, but 

 hitherto not sufficiently instructed, correspondent, 

 seems to imagine either that the Jewish year was 

 wholly lunar, or that a solar year may consist of a 

 fixed number of (wrong) lunar months. Now, the 

 lunar month is not 29 days, but 29^ days; and the 

 Jews, whom he calls ignorant of astronomy (which 

 they were, compared with Hipparchus of Riiodes), 

 met this, as most know, by using mouths of 29 days 

 and of 30 days in equal numbers. And surely 

 every one must know that the Jewish year was 



regulated, as to its commencement, by the sun and 

 the equinox. The year opened just before the 

 Passover, which required a supply of lamb. Unless 

 lamb had been obtainable all the solar year round, 

 a regular lunar year (such as the Mahometans 

 have) would have made a due observance of the 

 Passover impossible. I hope your correspondent 

 can bear to be told, good-hunioiiredly, that it 

 passes all reasonable permission that he should 

 sjxiculate on chronological questions as yet. M. 



Luncheon (Vol.iii., p. 3G9.). — I cannot help 

 doubting this derivation ; and I suspect that the 

 true meaning of the word is, a piece, or slice 

 (or vulgo, a " hunch " ) of bread. When people 

 who dined earlj', and breakfasted comparatively 

 late, wanted any intermediate refreshment, " a 

 luncheon " (or, as we should now say, "just a 

 crust of bread ") was suilicieut. The Query 

 brought to my mind some verses of the younger 

 Beattie, which were published with his father's 

 Minstrel, &c., in which he uses the word "luncheon" 

 ibr the piece of bread placed beside the plate at 

 dinner. I have no doubt of the fact, though I 

 cannot recollect the lines, or find the book. But 

 after searching in vain for it, I took down John- 

 son's Dictionary ; and under the word I found 

 this couplet by Gay, which is perhaps a better 

 authority : 



" When hungry thou stood'st staring like an oaf, 

 I sliced the luncheon from the barley loaf." 



S. R. M. 



Prophecy respecting the Discovery of America 

 (Vol. i., p. 107.). — Your correspondent C. quotes 

 the following passage from Seneca: 



" Venient annis secula seris, 

 Quibus Oceanus vincula reium 

 Laxet, ct ingens pateat tclliis, 

 Tethysque novos dctegat orbes; 

 Nee sit tcrris ultima Thule." 



Medea, Act II.. ad finem, v. 375. 



and he says that some commentator describes these 

 lines as " a vaticination of the Spanish discovery 

 of America." I believe, however, that Lord Bacon 

 may claim the merit of having been the first to 

 notice this vaticination. In his essay " Of Pro- 

 phecies " he says : 



" Seneca, the tragedian, hnth these verses : — 

 ' Venient annis 

 Sajcula seris, quibus Oceanus 

 Vincula rerum laxet, et ingens 

 Pateat tellus, Tiphysque novos 

 Detegat orbes ; nee sit terris 

 Ultima thule. 

 " ' A prophecy,' he adds, ' of the discovery of 

 America.' " 



I have quoted this from an edition of Bacon's 

 Essays, printed at the Chiswick Press, by C. 

 V/hittingham, for J. Carpenter, Old Bond Street, 



