338 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2°<» S. VI. 147., Oct. 23. '58. 



To rule the Roast (2°'» S. iv. 152.) — X.X.X. 

 says at this i-eference, " I want some illustrations 

 to prove that roast is the rijht word." I will fur- 

 nish him with some. In 2 Hen. VI., Act I. Sc. 1 ., 

 we read : — 



" Suffolk the new-made Duke that 

 Rules the rost." 



But an earlier use would be more satisfactory. 

 In 



" A most Excellent and comfortable Treatise for all 

 sucb as are any nianer of way either troubled in mynde 

 or afflicted in bodie, by Andrew Kingesmyl, Fellow of 

 Alsolne Colledge, 1585," 



at the 20th page (unnumbered), I find this godly 

 advice : — 



" Let us not seeke after worldly wealth or earthly fe- 

 licitie, let us not look heere to rule the roste, but to be 

 rested rather of Rulers." 



Surely this is proof enough that roast (and not 

 roost) is the proper word. In Elizabethan works 

 the spelling of these two words is ever kept dis- 

 tinct, — 



Roast = roste, rost, 



Roost = rowst, rowste. 



The ruler of the roast, is, as Dr. Richardson 

 says, the master of the feast. It is a pity the 

 learned doctor should have cast so groundless a 

 suspicion on " roast." C. Mansfield Ingleby. 



Birmingham. 



Charles Diodati (1" S. viii. 577.) — Charles 

 Diodati of Trinity College, Oxford, the friend of 

 Milton, was nephew of John Diodati, the eminent 

 divine, and son of Theodore, who, although ori- 

 ginally of Lucca, as well as his brother, married 

 an English lady, and his son in every respect be- 

 came an Englishman. See Chalmers's Biogrw 

 phical Dictionary, article " John Diodati." 'AAievs. 



Dublin. 



Homes pocus (2"'^ S. vi. 280.) — In reply to the 

 above Query, I take the following extract from 

 Landor's Imaginary Conversations, 182G, 2nd edit., 

 2nd vol., pp. 275, 276. : — 



" Tooke. What think you, for instance, of Hocus! 

 Pocus ! 



" Johnson. Sir, those are exclamations of conjurers, as 

 thej' call themselves. 



" Tooke. Well, Doctor, let us join them, and try to be 

 conjurers ourselves a little. We know that the common 

 people often use the aspirate unnecessarily, and as often 

 omit the i : they constantlj' saj' ingenons for inrjenions ; u 

 and { are not only confounded by us, as in grum for gtini, 

 §-c., but were equally by the Romans, as lacruma was 

 laciima. 



" Johnson. You mean rather with y. 



" Toohe. No : they oftener wrote it with i : the con- 

 ceited and ignorant used y, only to show they knew the 

 derivation ; as among us people write thyme contrary to 

 the manner of pronouncing it. 



" Johnson. Pray go on. 



" Toohe. The preliminaries acceded to, hocus then is 

 ocus out of use, or ocins ; poctts is pocis. 



" Johnsott. What is that? 



" Tooke. The ancient Romans, followed in this by the 

 modern Italians, vrrote pocis or paucis, Clodius or Cladius, 

 plodite or plaudite. Ocus pocis is quickly! at few woids .' 

 the conjurer's word of command, naprasto is. 



" Johnson. You pronounce /»a!<eis as if the c was ze. 



" Tooke. So did the Romans : we are taught so by the 

 Greek biographers and historians. They wrote Latin 

 proper names according to the pronunciation — Kikeron, 

 not Siseron ; Kaisur, not Scesar ; which, to their ears, 

 would have been as absurd as Satan would have been for 

 Catan." 



Dr. Trench notices hocus pocus, but does not 

 give the derivation ; he describes it as a double 

 word of strong rhyming modulation, and classes it 

 with " Willy nilly," " helter skelter," " tag rag," 

 " hodge podge," &c. See English Past and Pre- 

 sent, 1856, 3rd edit., p. 136. 



I remember seeing at a bookstall in Belfast, in 

 1840, an octavo volume, bearing the title Hocus 

 Pocus, or the ivhole Art of Legerdemain. The 

 quotation from the Latin Vidgate, " Hoc est Cor- 

 pus," in the service of the Romish church is, as a 

 general rule, like "Agnes Dei" and "Mea culpa" 

 read slowly : so that the sound would not have 

 the least resemblance to hocus pocus. 



Wm. OHaka. 



Ly7ich Laiv (2"'» S. vi. 247. 278.) — To Me. 

 Thompson's communication at p. 278. it may be 

 added, that at Hull the substantive lynch, and the 

 verb to lynch, are to this day in constant use 

 amongst the lower orders. Hearing an angry 

 woman threaten her young son with the words, 

 " I'll fetch you such a lynch, my boy," I asked her 

 the meaning of the word. " Why, a good skelp," 

 was the answer. This was, to me, obscurum per 

 ohscurius ; and on farther inquiry I was told, 

 " Why, a good smack, to be sure ; and I will 

 lynch him, too ! " Ache. 



In my opinion this term is derived from one 

 Lynch, who in 1687-8 was sent to America to 

 suppress piracy. (^London Gazette, 2319. Feb. 

 6-9, 1687-8.) As the colonists did not administer 

 law with vigour or certainty, owing to " the dif- 

 ficulty of adhering to the usual forms of law in 

 the newly fashioned territories," Lynch was pro- 

 bably empowered to punish pirates summarily, 

 whence this term would arise. Chas. H. Baylet. 



Dover (2"* S. vi. 297.) —Mr. J. Dacres Dev- 

 lin, in his reply to E. F. D. C.'s inquiry as to 

 drawings of antiquities at Dover, says there is 

 "an excellent wood-engraving of the Blinster of 

 St. Martjs church, which has its situation within 

 the embracing wails of that particular cliff which 

 goes by the name of the ' Castle.' " This Minster 

 is a building which hitherto, it is thought, no in- 

 habitant of Dover ever heard of. There is within 

 the Castle the ruins of a venerable church dedi- 

 cated to St. Martin, which may perhaps be meant 

 as the one situated within the " embracing walls 

 of the cliff." C. DE D. 



