Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 1.djvu/518

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io* s. i. MAY %, IDOL

c oirdgue sound alike, and in writing or printing it is quite easy to confuse tn or n with u. In the First Folio many words which were thought obsolete or unfamiliar were altered deliberately by the editors, and even if they knew of the reading comrdgue, it seems probable that they would have changed it to the well-known comrade. This word com- rdgue, as it seems to me, explains the -g- of the Quartos, and the -in-, and connects the earlier editions with the Folio of 1623.

CYRIL BRETT. Wadham College, Oxford.

" PEARL." As Dr. Murray will soon have to consider this word, I venture to draw attention to an etymology of it which seems worth attention. Diez derives it from *pirola, not found, a little pear ; Korting gives *pr- nula, not found, a dimin. of L. perna. Neither is satisfactory.

But Moisy, in his ' Norman Dialect Dic- tionary,' tells us that in Normandy the form is perne, which comes straight from the L. perna without any trouble at all.

Again, Mistral, in his ' Prov. Diet.,' says that the Prov. perlo is perno in the Limousin dialect.

It seems to follow that either perle was turned into perne, or perne was turned into perle. It is just as likely that the dialect forms are original as those of the standard languages. The latter change gives an obvious etymology, and the former change gives none.

Moisy has a remark that is worth atten- tion. He says the Normans got their pearls from the Sicilies, which they had conquered ; and he actually quotes a Latin edict of Frederic, King of Sicily, in which pernis certainly seems to mean " pearls." See Pernce in Ducange. I see no reason for coin- ing a diminutive pernula, when perna itself will do. WALTER W. SKEAT.

SHERLOCK. According to the 'D.N.B.,' lii. 95, Dr. William Sherlock, Dean of St. Paul's, was born in Southwark about 1641. In a deed of 1684, relating to the manor of Paris Garden, in the parish of St. Saviour's, Southwark, mention is made of nine acres of pasture ground, part of which was used as a whiting-ground, and had been in the occupation of William Sherlock, whitster. W. C. B.

CRUCIFIXION FOLK-LORE. In ' The First Annual Report of the Committee of Manage- ment of the Glasgow Sabbath Evening School Youths' Union,' Glasgow, 1818, there is a curious piece of information on this

subject which is worth recording. The report contains extracts from the journals of district visitors, such as are generally given in missionary reports. One of these records (p. 33) an interview with a Highland family. Part of the conversation, which apparently was carried on in Gaelic, was as follows :

" H. [the husband] asked how long it was from the time in which our Lord was betrayed till he was crucified. I had not time to read the narra- tive of his death, but told him the leading par- ticulars in a few words, and promised to read the history itself, if spared, on some other occasion. Mrs. M. [the wife] asked if the Scriptures said anything about the manner in which the linen was bound round his hands by those who buried him as the Highland women in her country never used a certain kind of thread en Friday, which they suppose to have been used in dressing our Lord's body, to tie his sleeves. Of course I told her that the Scripture was silent on the subject, and that the custom was a foolish superstition."

DAVID MURRAY. Glasgow.

WE must request correspondents desiring in- formation on family matters of only private interest to affix their names and addresses to their queries, in order that the answers may be addressed to them direct.

THE FIRST WIFE OF WARREN HASTINGS. An almost complete uncertainty still shrouds the history of this lady, who has only recently been identified as Mary, widow of Capt. John Buchanan, one of the victims of the Black Hole, and whose maiden name remains unknown. She married Hastings in the cold weather of 1756-7, and died at Moradbagh in 1759, when still under thirty. The close connexion of Hastings with Dr. Tysoe Saul Hancock and his wife Philadelphia (ne'e Austen, aunt of the famous Jane) has prompted the suggestion that the first Mrs. Hastings was in some way related to them, but this has not been proved. Mr. Foster, of the India Office, has dis- covered that in 1751 a Mary Elliott obtained leave to go out to India with Philadelphia Austen, but there is no trace of her having made the voyage or arrived. In 1753 Capt. Buchanan received permission to take his wife out with him. Was Mary Elliott's plan of going to India prevented, or rather delayed, by a marriage with Buchanan? The suggestion seems probable, but needs corroboration. The descendants of the Austen and Walter families (Philadelphia Austen's mother was the widow of a Dr. Walter) can throw no light on it, and the Tonbridge registers have been searched in