Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 1.djvu/590

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NOTES AND QUERIES. do* s. i. JUNE is, 190*.

"wife appeared at the gate, and said, ' My husband Jias been out since morning.' After being astounded with this New Year's lie, they went back home roaring with laughter."

Evidently the same romancist adapted this -story in an episode in his reputed ' Kocho Monogatari,' 1810, a Japanese 'Gulliver's 'Travels.' There, in the narrative of the Land of Lies, the hero Musdbyde has been promised by Yajiro, the great master of lies, that he shall hear the first example of his mendacity on New Year's Day when he calls on him, but is told by his wife he is absent. Thinking that conscience has sud- denly made the liar ashamed of his own liabit and fly from his presence, he deter- mines to go home ; but after taking a few ^steps round the corner of the house, he dis- covers through the window the liar quietly enjoying a pipe of tobacco. Much irritated with the meanness of the liar's conduct, he rushes into the room and censures him for his cowardly way of putting off his guest. Perfectly contrary to his expectation, the liar, in composure, gives him this reply :

"I invited you to come and hear my first lie to-day. And whatever dexterous falsehood I could >tell at our meeting, would it not have been any- thing but a lie to have kept my promise, had I seen you according to our compact? Now you were about going home, firmly believing as a truth what I caused my wife artfully to tell you, when you happened to discover that was another lie. So, you see, I have just displayed my unique art in doubly deceiving you on one occasion."

Perhaps some correspondents can inform me of other instances of such adroit men- dacity. KUMAGUSU MlNAKATA.

Mount Nachi, Kii, Japan.

GREENWICH PALACE. I had been wonder- ing what excuse I might have for making this note, when I came across the title 'Vanishing London' in ' N. & Q.' of 4 June, on which day I went to Greenwich by boat, not having seen the palace from the river for several years. To my horror I found the palace vanishing. Two enormous shafts 'have been allowed to be built almost at the side of the palace as it appears as you arrive by boat. The effect is to dwarf these mag- nificent buildings so much that they will never again impress the foreigner with their -size. It is a shameful piece of vandalism.

RALPH THOMAS.

T ROYAL OAK DAY. The Sheffield Daily Telegraph states that this celebration has just taken place at Castleton, in the Peak of Derbyshire, and that in the procession the character of King was sustained by a per- former who has ridden the part for thirty years, he being accompanied by a male

"Queen," and followed by a score of girls, who executed morris dances in good style. The " King's " garland was afterwards hoisted with ropes to a pinnacle of the church tower, and there left to wither. The parish register contains an entry of 1749, " paid for an iron rod to hang ye ringer's garland in, 8d."

W. B. H.

"NEWSPAPER." (See 8 th S. vi. 508; vii. 112, 237, 432 ; ix. 294 ; 9 th S. v. 34.) I would add to my previous illustrations of the earliest recorded use of the word "newspaper" one of 1679, which comes between the two dates already given. In this case it^is employed by so distinguished an authority as Sir William Temple, who, writing to the Earl of Danby from the Hague, 23 January, 1679, refers to the part that politician's name "had in the last newspapers and journals from England " (Historical MSS. Commis- sion, Fourteenth Report, Appendix, part ix. p. 399), that being the period of his threatened impeachment because of his conduct as Lord Treasurer. But the Earl of Llndsey, writing to the same peer two years later (14 May, 1681), uses the older form in the sentence, " The news books informed me this morning of Fitz Harris his trial" (ibid., p. 433).

ALFRED F. ROBBINS.

" OFFICER " : " OFFICIAL." In the American railroad world these two words are used almost interchangeably as substantives. When there is any distinction made between them the former implies a higher rank than the latter.

E. F. McPiKE.

Chicago, U.S.

" OONALASKA." Annotating " Oonalaska's shore," in the volume of Campbell's ' Poems ' which he has just edited for the "Golden Treasury " series, Prof. Lewis Campbell writes as follows :

" The name Unalaska is given in recent maps to an island in the Aleutian group off the Alaskan promontory ; and General Sir C. Wilson, K.C.B., remembers hearing of it when he served on a boundary commission in 1862."

This vague and tentative statement sug- gests that Prof. Campbell is not sure of his ground, and, indeed, provokes the inference that he would not be surprised to hear that the island is a mere nominis iimbra, and that the poet drew from his own unaided fancy

The wolf's long howl from Oonalaska's shore.

Geographers, however, state that the place is one of the Fox Islands in the Aleutian group, and that it is so substantial and definite as to be known to include within its borders " the parish church, the custom- house, and important trading establishments."