Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 1.djvu/20

 NOTES AND QUERIES.

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about a worthy German merchant who had business connexions in England, and one day came over to make their personal acquaintance. His name was Abel, which when pronounced in the Fatherland rimes very nearly with marble ; but in England he found everybody called him Mr. Able, until at last he also " fell into the habit of pronoun- cing his own name as " Able, and had fresh visiting cards printed with his new name .spelt Teutonic? " Mr. Ebel." To cut a long story short, in trying to spell his name as his English friends pronounced it, the poor German changed the spelling next to Mr. Ibel, Eibel, Eubel, Jubel, ana finally wound up with Mr. Dschubel, after which he gave up all further attempts in despair.

To return to our Tartars. As the pronun- ciation of the first r presented to them no greater difficulty than the second, why did they perpetuate the wrong and "un-Tartar " form Tatar, and not revert to the original, the " unmutilated : ' form Tartar ?

History, as we see and as Dr. Koelle him- self confesses, is against him ; but let us look into his etymological proof. The root tar means to draw (in German ziehen), to pull, to move on, to roam about, and the Tartar words derived from it are so numerous and of such miscellaneous meanings that they outnumber those of the corresponding Ger- man Zv.(j,i^\' enumerating all of which our worthy editor cannot spare the space, and the reader is therefore referred to Mark Twain's^ 'Tramp Abroad.' Hence tar-tar is in Dr. Koelle's opinion a characteristic name for a people who constantly move from place to place, and it means move-on-move-on. Now tat-ar is also a genuine Tartar word ; but it means t<tsta', and consequently it is not to the doctor's taste, because it is not charac- teristic, and also because, when the Tartars pronounce their own name, " they do not say Tat-ar [nor Tar-tar] but Ta-tar [or Tat-tar]." We may now add Tatar is correct. Q.E.D. So much for the etymological proof.

With regard to the use of the form Tartar, as already stated, it is used by the Armenians, by mediaeval Greek writers like Georgios Akropolita (A.D. 1203-61, but the modern Greeks have gone over to the heterodox party), by mediaeval Latin writers, and by the Western nations of Europe, except some scholars like A. Schiefner, Vambe'ry, and D....... the old author of ' Histoiredes Tatars,'

who know something about the Tartars. The advocates of the form Tatar maintain that the superfluous r was introduced by St. Louis (the king, not the bishop) to enable him to make a pun. When writing to his

mother Blanche, in 1241, he perpetrated the historic jeu de mot : " We shall either thrust back those whom we call Tartars into their own seats in Tartarus, whence they pro- ceeded, or else they will transmit us all-up to heaven." Dr. Koelle ridicules this ex- planation, and he may be right. I am abso- lutely neutral on this point, and will merely give a few more facts.

The Dominican monk Julian, who brought the first tidings of their approach to Hungary in 1237, calls them Tartari.

According to Matthew Paris, " Dicuntur autem Tartari a quodam fluinine per montes eorum, quos jam penetraverant, decurrente, quod dicitur Tartar" ('Chronica Major,' Luard's edition in the Master of the Rolls Series, iv. 78).

There is a very suspicious letter, dated 10 April, 1242, "cujusdem episcopi Ungari- ensis [sic] ad Episcopum Pari[si]ensem," in which the name is Tartareus, and they are said to use Hebrew, not Chinese, characters (literas habent Judceorurti) ; ibidem, vi. 75.

Henry Raspe, Landgrave of Thuringia, also in 1242, writes, "dicti homines Tartari vocati."

The "Abbas Sanctse Marise totusque con- yen tus ejusdem loci, ordinis Sancti Benedict! in Hungaria commorantes," writes from Vienna on 4 Jan., 1242, "Tartari qui vocantur Ysmaelitse." The convent has not yet been identified, and Ismaelite merchants were trading in Hungary in 1092, and whole Ismaelite villages were extant in that country in the reign of Coloman (1095-1116).

Jordan, provincial vicar of the Fran- ciscans in Poland, in his letter of 10 April, 1242, also perpetrates the pun, "a gente Tartariorum, a Tartaro oriunda."

The Warden of the Franciscans at Cologne writes about them with some familiarity as the people " quos vulgariter Tartaros appel- amus."

All these passages are to be found in vol. vi. of Matthew Paris's 'Chronicle' already re- ferred to.

In conclusion, after having considered Dr. Koelle's paper we see that we cannot do better than imitate the Tartars' own pro- nunciation and call them Tatars henceforth.

L. L. K.

' THE ABBEY OP KILKHAMPTON ' (9 th S. xii. 381, 411, 488). I have "The Third Edition, with Considerable Additions," of 'The Abbey of Kilkhampton ; or, Monumental Records for the Year 1980,' Ac., London, 1780. It contains 110 epitaphs.

I have also " The Abbey of Kilkhampton. An Improved Edition. London, Printed for