296 
Bryan Edwards’s Colonies in the West Indies, 5 vols. 8yo., 
1819. Consult also R. Montgomery Martin’s History of 
ihe British Colonies, vol, ii. pp. 385—393. ] 
Replies. 
THE WATERMILL AND THE WINDMILL; OR THE 
DISCREPANCY OF NEIGHBOURING DIALECTS, 
(i* S. xii. 264. 354.) 
One of your correspondents, who has travelled 
through space as well as through books, has set us 
all right. Quoting volume and page, he has 
proved that the dialogue respecting the merits of 
wind and water was composed and printed in one 
of the numerous dialects of the Flemings “ qui 
non teutonisant,”—that of Liege. Informed by 
a glance at your journal that the document came 
From Poitiers, I copied the lines, and inferred, 
from dim reminiscences of Count Wilhelm’s 
Poitevin song in 1094, and the Catholic lampoon 
against Protestant Rochelle in 1627, that the 
verses might have originated in so distant a 
quarter. My audacious interpretation looks, 
therefore, very like a hoax, though simply the 
result of, I should hope, pardonable inadvertence. 
Every scholar worthy of the name is bound to 
the acquirement of some familiarity with French 
and English of every date. ‘There are, moreover, 
spoken jargons that deserve the regard of philo- 
logical students. None are in higher request, at 
present, for instance, than the Norman, the Picard, 
and the Walachian. So considerable, neverthe- 
less, is the discrepancy between the popular dia- 
lects of localities of the same province, that, a 
moment after I had committed my letter to the 
post, I detected my mistake in adapting, conjec- 
turally, known words of the same sound to the 
vocables of an imperfectly understood pati-pata, 
or talkee-talkee. There was, at that very time, 
on my table a little book printed at Lille in 1848, 
It was a present from the celebrated singer Ro- 
dolphe Arnold, who favoured me with an unex- 
pected visit seven years ago. This Recueil de 
Chansons et Pasquilles Lilloires I had often pe- 
rused, and mentally translated in my own dialect, 
with scarcely an effort or difficulty ; but it is a 
fact, that to comprehend the dialogue concerning 
the respective advantages of grinding corn by 
means of wind or water, I should need a dic- 
tionary. 
This mishap reminds one of the amusing blun- 
ders of Samuel Petit, a Parisian doctor of divinity, 
who tried his skill in Hebrew on the touchstone 
of Hanno’s famous Punic soliloquy in Plautus. 
Still more dismal were the flounderings of General 
Vallancey, Harry O’Brien, and Anacreontic little 
Tom Moore; who, with a long list of fashionable 
adherents, gravely maintained that the Phenicians 
NOTES AND QUERIES. 
[294 8. No1d., Aprim 12. 756, 
spoke excellent Irish. Samuel Bochart, of Caen, 
1647, and Wilhelm Gesenius, of Halle, 1837, have 
nevertheless accounted for every word in the 
passage with scarcely a shade of dissent; so that 
no doubt remains as to the almost identity of 
Hebrew and Carthaginian, except among the few 
dreamers in literature’s backwoods, who fancy 
that Hannibal made speeches in the brogue of 
Kilkenny and Bilboa. 
Thus have I offered an apology due to the 
learned pilgrim whose interesting account of the 
perplexing jargon of the environs of Liege has 
induced me to address you again. 
He will probably like to compare the following 
intelligible shred from a dialect of the same family. 
It purports to be the imitation of a Languedocian 
original, entitled Zos Poutos, or the Kisses ; it will 
presently appear, however, that this was an- 
other quite as diverting hallucination. While 
M. Millin, the celebrated antiquary, was wander- 
ing in the south of France in search of monu- 
ments of ancient art, he picked up those lines, 
fancying that they were a specimen of unborrowed 
Occitanian lyries. Though I have mislaid them, 
permit me to insert the very idiomatic translation 
by a literary peasant of this once Norman baili- 
wick : 
« Goulo Baisi. 
“Tu Vas coumis, tu l’as coumis, ma belle, 
Vila quest parai, l’doux péché, je n’sai c’ment ; 
Tantot voulant, tantét r’fusant, cruelle, 
Tu las voulu, l’as voulu, tout-a-bonan! 
«“ Bt, dis-mé donc, pour qu’est’ q’tu fais la vie? 
Qu’est’ q’tu craignais? quail affront t’a nou fait ? 
Sus ten goulo la rose est répanie — 
D’un ptit salut meurt-nou coum un touffet? 
“ Sans brouillér liane, au russé d’ la chapelle, 
L’mélot a bu; n’l’o-tu pas? qui’l est fier! 
I dit que I’ mieil cuilli sus flieur nouvelle 
N’ la fliétrit brin ; — allon, torche te-s iers!” 
Rimes Guernesiaises, p. 118. 
I might have felt some high caste scruples at 
troubling you with this specimen of the rustical 
muse of Unellian French Neustria, were it not 
obvious that every educated Englishman will com- 
prehend it. The only peculiar expressions are 
goulo, petite bouche ; parai, fini; faire la vie, that 
is, Ja veé, to anathematise, to scold; touffet, nose- 
gay; nou, On; ters, yeux. 
It is true that M. Millin, the antiquarian tra- 
veller, had set down Zos Poutos as a song of 
Occitanian growth. He might have ascertained 
the source of his blunder in a letter of the poetess, 
Madame du Boccage, who states that the English 
original words were sung at Lord Chesterfield’s 
table in London, on May 24, 1750. Perhaps 
some of your readers may remember the air, of 
which this lady only gives us a rather common- 
place French copy, Giuvres, tome iii. p. 48., Lyon, 
1770. The works of Madame du Boceage are 
noticed in the selection of French classics intended 
