Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 1.djvu/216

 176

NOTES AND QUERIES.

s. i. FEB. 27, 190*.

more he offends his sunship, the whole process being repeated monthly. In parts of Ireland the people are said to point to the new moon with a Knife and say :

New moon, true morrow, be true now to me, That I to-morrow my true love may see !

J. HOLDEN MACMlCHAEL.

KALEIGH : ITS PRONUNCIATION (9 th S. xii. 366, 497 ; 10 th S. i. 90). With all due defer- ence to those gentlemen, it seems to me that the comments of MR. JOHN HUTCHINSON and MR. AVERN PARDOE simply beg the point at issue. How can one possibly now know with any sort of certainty how some problematical speech sounds of more than three centuries ago would be spelt by writers of the same

Eeriod 1 Since we know how vowel- sounds ave changed and are changing, there is surely very " good reason for supposing that the sounds of those syllables MR. HUT- CHINSON refers to were not the "same as now," One cannot very readily see how the word lamp, so far as its origin and derivation are concerned, could at any time in our history be pronounced lormp; yet we may find the spelling lawmp (in 1523), and the latter conjunction of letters would nowadays presumably find the former pronunciation (cf . saw, laiv, raw, &c.). For lawmp I refer to Blomefield's ' Norfolk,' vol. xi. p. 143 : " a lawmp to bren before the Rode." As to ancient letter-sounds, and phonetic spelling of those sounds, one might suppose that rode, when written, would clearly rime with mode as now pronounced ; yet I suppose there can be little doubt that in 1523 the sound of the conjoined letters rode would be the same sound as we now give to the conjoined letters rood, and that the meaning of rode in 1523 would be the same as the meaning of rood in

1904. A YORKSHIREMAN.

SMOTHERING HYDROPHOBIC PATIENTS (10 th S. i. 65). The following is from the MS. diary of Thomas Collinson, of Southgate, a nephew of the well-known botanist Peter Collinson : ." February 1, 1795. Mr. Hammond observed that 2o Ib. of blood passed through the heart every minute. This Mr. Cline, Surgeon to St. Thomas's Hospital, had an opportunity of observing by the section of the carotid artery in two unhappy subjects under hydrophobia. There were ten patients in all, eight of whom were cured ; the other two, instead of being smothered, were released from their misery by the above-mentioned method.

Cline became Master of the College of Surgeons in 1815, and subsequently its presi- dent. Sir Astley Cooper was his pupil, and the Gentleman's Magazine refers to nim as

a cautious, sound, and successful surgeon, lammond was for many years a surgeon of repute at Edmonton. His name is well mown now as the doctor whose service eats entered as a youth.

The extract, I think, proves unquestion- ably that both smothering and bleeding to death were accepted modes of treatment in dealing with incurable hydrophobists.

JOHN W. FORD. Enfield Old Park.

Charlotte Bronte, in 'Shirley' (published L849), the scene of which is laid in the West Riding of Yorkshire, evidently describes the treatment awarded to these unfortunates in her day. The heroine, who has been bitten by a dog supposed to be mad, says to her lover :

" In case the worst I have feared should happen, they will smother me. You need not smile : they will they always do. My uncle will be full of horror, weakness, precipitation ; and that is the only expedient which will suggest itself to him."

C. M. H.

There was a belief fifty years ago that people suffering with hydrophobia after a bite from a mad dog were smothered in bed as a protective measure, and that to do so was right and proper. There was then a good deal of talk about persons who had been treated in this way. Such things were said to be done, but none was positive about them. "So-and-so is dead." "Yes, they had to smother him," was now and then to be heard in conversations. THOS. RATCLIFFE.

Worksop.

TEA AS A MEAL (8 th S. ix. 387 ; x. 244 ; 9 th S. xii. 351). I have found an earlier reference than any yet quoted in an anony- mous manual of matrimonial manners, en- titled ' The Husband, in Answer to the Wife '

(London, T. Gardner, 1756), p. 31 : " cavils

with her on the article of afternoons tea, and going out every other Sunday," &c.

EDWARD HERON-ALLEN.

The point can be pushed back a little further than 1763, the earliest definite date previously given. In a note to Sir Denis le Marchant's 'Memoir of Viscount Althorp' (p. 3), describing the romantic marriage on 27 December, 1755, of Mr. (afterwards Lord) Spencer to Miss Poyntz, it is quoted from " a letter written at the time" that "after tea the parties necessary for the wedding stole by degrees from the company."

POLITICIAN.

CHINESE GHOSTS (9 th S. xii. 305). MR. PLATT says that he has learnt from his Chinese friend of those people's belief in their ghosts