25i 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2"4 S. IX. Mar. 31. 'GO. 



Radicals in European Languages (2 nd S. ix- 

 63. 113.) — Vans Kennedy (lies. Orig. princ- 

 Lang. Asia, etc., 4to., Lond. 1828,) states that 

 there are 900 Sanskrit words in the Greek, Latin, 

 and Teutonic languages, 265 in Persian, 83 in 

 Zend, and 251 in English. Of these 900 roots 

 he allots 339 to the Greek, 319 to the Latin, and 

 162 to the German (leaving 80 for the remaining 

 Teutonic languages). He says there are 208 

 Sanskrit roots in Greek not found in Latin, and 

 188 in Latin not to be met with in Greek, and 

 many roots in Latin not in the Teutonic lan- 

 guages, and that 43 are found in German and 

 not in English, and 138 in English and not in 

 German. Perhaps, however, the Sanskrit roots 

 in the English language would amount to between 

 300 and 400, which moreover may be discovered 

 in composition of several thousand words (4 San- 

 skrit root-verbs alone being found in composi- 

 tion of 500 or 600 English words). Indeed, to 

 such an extent is this the case, that we can hardly 

 utter a sentence which does not contain 2 or 3 

 Sanskrit roots ; so that most of us might be 

 likened to the Bourgeois gentilhomme who had 

 been speaking prose all his life without knowing 

 it. These Sanskrit roots have come into our 

 language in various ways. We have some 

 directly, some indirectly through both the Latin 

 and Greek, some through only one of those lan- 

 guages ; others again, = through the Persian, the 

 Teutonic languages, and the various Celtic dia- 

 lects. The Slavonic languages contain a large 

 number of Sanskrit roots ; the Hebrew and Arabic 

 very few. The Latin may be reduced to about 

 800 or 900 words, from which the whole body of 

 the language has been built up. More than half 

 of these words may be traced to the Greek, and 

 the remainder (after deducting those formed by 

 onomatopeia, and a few from the Arabic, Persian, 

 Coptic, and the Celtic and Teutonic languages,) 

 chiefly to the Sanskrit, Phoenician, and Hebrew. 



R. S. Charnock. 



Grav's Inn. » 



EarlopNorthesk's Epitaph (2" d S. viii. 495.) 

 — The only memorial to the late Earl of Northesk, 

 in St. Paul's crypt, is as follows : — 



" Sacred to the Memory of William, 7th Earl of Nor- 

 thesk, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear- Admiral of 

 Great Britain, and Third in Command in the glorious 

 Victory of Trafalgar. 



" Born April 10, 1758. 

 Died May 28, 1831." 



Anon. 



Sir Peter Carew (2 nd S. ix. 143.)— There are 

 in the Lambeth Library two MSS. relating to the 

 life of Sir Peter Carew. The first is entitled, 

 " The Life of Sir Peter Carew by John Vowell 

 alias Hooker" (Lamb. MSS., 605. 1.), which was 

 edited by me in 1857; and the second, "Part of 

 Sir Peter Carew's Life, extracted out of a Dis- 



course writ by John Hooker, 1575" (Lamb. MSS., 

 621. 35.) The latter is limited to that portion of 

 Sir Peter's career during which he was connected 

 with Ireland. In some few places there may be 

 slight verbal .differences from the first, as pointed 

 out by Abracadabra ; but, as well as I can re- 

 collect, they very nearly coincide. I imagine 

 that your correspondent quotes from a transcript 

 of the latter paper, which I think I have seen in 

 the British Museum, although I cannot lay my 

 hand on a reference to it. . John Maclean. 



Hammersmith. 



Fletcher Family (2 nd S. ix. 162.)— A fletcher 

 is an arrow-maker. Many such persons must 

 have come over with the Conqueror ; but as sur- 

 names were not then hereditary, the particular 

 claim to be descended from any of those men de- 

 pends on the amount of testimony the claimant 

 can produce. As arrow-making was a trade from 

 which many wholly unconnected families would 

 derive their surname, one Fletcher being of 

 Norman descent would not prove that another 

 was. Heralds continually granted arms referring 

 to the name of the grantee, as bows to Bowes ; 

 arrows to Fletcher ; deer to Parker, &c. ; so that 

 the arms prove nothing. No mistake is more 

 common than that of supposing that all families 

 of the same name had a common ancestor. P. P. 



Old London Bridge (2" d S. ix. 119.)— Mr. 

 Wm. Sydney Gibson has done well to point out 

 Mr. Peter Cunningham's mistake about Isenbert, 

 " Master of the Schools at Saintes," but his "curi- 

 ous facts" are well known, or at least ought to 

 be, to most intelligent readers — and certainly to 

 those of "N. & Q." 



The Patent Roll of the third year of the reign 

 of King John, was printed in the first volume of 

 Hearne's Liber Niger Scaccarii, 8vo., 1771 ; and 

 in the Calendarium Rotulorum Patenlium Turri 

 Londinensi, edited and published by the Rev. S. 

 Ascough, and John Caley, Esq., in 1802. 



King John's "Letter Missive to the Mayor and 

 Citizens of London" has also found its proper place 

 in Mr. Richard Thomson's Chronicles of London 

 Bridge, 8vo., 1827. It would be an act of injus- 

 tice to the learned author of this charming volume 

 to suppose, for one moment, that he had neglected 

 any available information bearing upon the sub 1 

 ject of his work. Edward F. Rimbault. 



Hotspur (2 nd S. ix. 65.) — I copy what follows 

 from a learned paper upon the old heraldry of the 

 Percies by Mr. Longstaffe, which is printed in 

 the fifteenth Part of Archceologia Mliana, just 

 issued : — 



" Henry de Percy (Hotspur), his son and heir apparent, 

 slain 1403: called Henry the Sixth (Chron. Mon. de 

 Alnewyhc), and more commonly Harry Hotspur." "Called 

 by the French and Scots, Harre Hatesporre ; because, in 

 the silence of unseasonable night, of quiet sleep to others 



