2-.d S. VI. 154., Dec. U. '58.] NOTJJS AND QUEKIES. 



473 



LONDON, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 11. 1858. 



WOEDS AND OLD SAYrUGS IN TKANSITU, OK WHOSE 

 ORIGINAL MEANING IS PASSING BEYOND THE 

 COGNISANCE OF ORDINAEY READERS. 



Ear. — The verb active, of indisputable Saxon 

 origin, is acknowledged by Bailey and by John- 

 son as meaning to plough ; yet Bailey only recog- 

 nises earing, as derived from the verb neuter, 

 which is of much later origin, " to come into ear," 

 and explains earing time as meaning harvest; 

 whilst Johnson rightly cites Gen. xlv. C, " There 

 shall be neither earing nor harvest." The text in 

 Exod. xxxiv. 21. was probably in Bailey's me- 

 mory, where yet he should have observed that 

 times of pressing for labour were intended by a 

 law which said, " On the seventh day thou shalt 

 rest ; in earing time and in harvest thou shalt 

 rest;" Vulg., " Cessabis arare et metere." The 

 Hebrew has the usual word for ploughing. 



Quarrel. — Johnson gives his readers ten dif- 

 ferent meanings of this word, but takes no no- 

 tice of one of the two meanings assigned to it 

 by Bailey, viz. a plaintiff's action at law. Both 

 of these give the French querelle as its origin, 

 without going farther back to querela, which Du 

 Gauge's Glossary explains as meaning, in legal 

 documents, " idem quod causa, actio, lis inten- 

 tata." In our Canons of 1603, the 95th is en- 

 titled " The Restraint of double Quarrels." It 

 says, " AVe do ordain and appoint, that no double 

 quarrel shall hereafter be granted out of any of 

 the archbishops' courts, at the suit of any minis- 

 ter." The legal sense of the word is the sense 

 intended in Ps. xxxv. 2.3. (Prayer- Book trans- 

 lation), " Awake and stand up to judge my quar- 

 rel ;" where our Bible translation has "Awake to 

 I my judgment, even to my cause." In fact the 

 Hebrew, the Greek Septuagint, and the Vulgate, 

 all use terms here connected with judicial pro- 

 cedures, and not with a quarrel in its ordinary or 

 vulgar sense. 

 Stand with, for Withstand. — In the very charac- 

 teristic conversation of Henry VIII. withCranmer, 

 when warning him of the probability of his not 

 meeting with fair dealing, if brought as a prisoner 

 before the Council, the inonarcli advises him what 

 to say; and then adds, " If they stand with you, with- 

 out regard of your allegations .... appeal from 

 them to our person." (Anderson's Annals of Eng' 

 lish Bible, vol. ii. b. ii. §8. p. 176.) This occasional 

 transfer of the usually prefixed preposition to a 

 place after the verb, is common enough in the 

 tongue of our German kinsmen. 



Took part, for Partook — is a similar transfer of 

 the originally separate, but ordinarily combined, 

 parts of a verb. It occurs in our authorised 

 version of the New Testament, in Heb. ii. 14., 



where /uerctrx^ is rendered " Took part of." Tyn- 

 dale had rendered it " Took part with." 



A St. Barnabe's Day and a St. Lucie" s Night — 

 In an exposition of I. Epist. of Peter, composed 

 by Thomas Adams about 1633, he says, when 

 commenting on ii. 21., "Every day of their pa- 

 tience appearing to them a St. Barnabe's day, 

 and every night a St. Lucie's night." Looking 

 into an odd authority for saints' d:iys, the Etat- 

 General des Postes du Royaume de France, pub- 

 lished at the Imprimerie Royale immediately after 

 the first restoration of Louis XVIII., in which 

 every day of the year has its saint, I find " Juiu 

 11, S. Barnabe," and " Decembre 1.3, S'= Luce." 

 When T. Adams wrote, June 11th was the longest 

 dav, and December 13th the longest night: be- 

 cause the reformation, not of religion, but of the 

 calendar, had not yet corrected the gradual ad- 

 vance of the days of the month, by which June 

 11th had got into the place of Midsummer-Day, 

 and December 13th into that of December 21st. 



Henry Walxek. 



THE MODERN P0RIM : BURNING IN EFFIGY, A 

 JEWISH CUSTOM. 



To commemorate a signal deliverance from the 

 machinations of Haman, who had obtained, in the 

 days of Esther, a decree for the total destruction 

 of the Jews throughout the Persian eni[)ire, that 

 people instituted, as your readers are well aware, 

 the feast Purim : so called from a Persian word 

 Phur, or Pur, signifying Zo<, — that having been 

 used to determine the month in which the minis- 

 ter should execute his design of extermination. 

 This annual solemnity was observed by the an- 

 cient Jews with great national rejoicing in Shu- 

 shan, and throughout the Persian dominions, 

 being kept in the capital on the 14th day o{ Adar 

 (February), in the provinces a day later. This 

 was to be a perpetual ordinance throughout their 

 generations : for " the days of Purim were not to 

 fail among the Jews, nor the memorial of them to 

 perish from their seed;" it is accordingly ob- 

 served to this day, but as a season of fearful licen- 

 tiousness, the modern Jews disgracing it by every 

 sort of intemperance and excess; having so de- 

 generated from its original institution, which was 

 one of religious mirth and thanksgiving, as to re- 

 ceive from the learned Ussher the just but op- 

 probrious designation of the Bacchanals of the 

 Jews. It is, however, due to them to say that 

 the eve of Purim is duly solemnised by strict 

 fasting and rest by all of the age of thirteen years 

 and upwards. Should this vigil, if such it may 

 be termed, fall on a Sabbath, which will not sanc- 

 tion such devotional rigour, the fastis anticipated, 

 being kept on the 11th instead of the 13ih day 

 of the month. Calmet tells us, that in reading 

 through the Book of Esther from a Hebrew MS. 



