Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 10.djvu/164

 132

NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. x. AUG. 15, iooe.

4 N. & Q.' to contaifi a reference to what the Daily Mail of 30 July calls a " peculiar incident " that took place at Dover. The paragraph is headed ' The Royal Standard.' It states that

"a peculiar incident occurred in connexion with the visit of the Duchess of Albany to the Dover Pageant yesterday. The Royal Standard having been run up at the hotel where her Royal Highness lunched, an Admiralty official called and ordered that it should be hauled down, informing the management that an order had been issued that the Royal Standard is only to be flown when the King is personally present. The Royal Standard was therefore hauled down and replaced by the Union Jack."

We have here, apparently, a strong indica- tion that the reply of the Earl of Crewe in the House of Lords stated the case most thoroughly, and makes it easy for loyal citizens to do what is right and in accord- ance with law.

W. E. HARLAND-OXLEY. Westminster.

VOWEL-SHORTENING (10 S. x. 43, 111). Like the Player-Queen, PROF. SKEAT " doth protest too much, methinks." He accuses us of ignorance of the law of vowel- shortening because we pronounce primer with the * as in prime. " If," says he, " they recognized that our language has phonetic laws, they would certainly say primmer." Well, I am afraid I come under the ban, because I recognize no more obligation to say primmer than I do to say finner, timly, lonly, makker, ladder, &c., instead of finer, timely, lonely, maker, loader, &c. In fact, I think it would be as easy to make as long a list of lengthened forms in which the long vowel is not shortened as PROF. SKEAT has given of those in which it is so. He tells us now that it is a " law " that shortens these vowels ; apparently it was not so when his ' Primmer ' was written, for in that he only observes that " a long vowel is very apt to be shortened by the accentual stress falling upon it." It seems uncritical to apply the term " law " to a tendency which fails to take effect in such a large percentage of cases.

HERBERT MAXWELL.

SALARINO, SALANIO, AND SALERIO (10 S. ix. 22, 113, 236, 315, 515). I am obliged to MR. WILMSHTJRST for his ingenious com- mentary, but greatly fear he missed the humour of my reply. I repeat that " Sala " never was a Jewish name, albeit ST. SWITHIN has been kind enough to assert the contrary. My own fancy tends to " Sheleach," Hebrew

for chief or headman. These personages were invariably the bankers of their poorer brethren, and had large funds at their disposal for lending at interest. How Shakespeare got hold of the name Sheleach is a puzzle quite as hard to explain as ST. SWITHIN'S " Sala." If it could be shown that many Venetian Jews were " basket makers," then the name " Sala " would be a derivative of Sal= basket.

M. L. R. BRESLAR.

FRENCH WORDS IN SCOTCH (10 S. ix. 369, 450). One must not omit Francisque Michel's ' Les ^cossais en France, les Frangais en Ecosse,' especially the second volume. Both are admirable, however, and not least as indicating in the notes sources where fuller material may be found. On the point of the presence of French words in Scotch of to-day, Francisque Michel has the credit of having dealt with the subject more fully and systematically than any one else. His ' Critical Inquiry into the Scottish Language, with the View of illustrating the Rise and Progress of Civilisation in Scotland ' (Blackwood, 1882), is a storehouse of French words, many of them still in common use in Scotland, and classified in a way that no one else has ever attempted. Michel was much less at home in the philology of Scotch words than in, say, that of the Basque provinces, and he has been rather sharply (often, rightly enough) assailed for many of his derivations ; but that notwithstanding, his ' Inquiry ' stands as really a dictionary, more or less exhaustive, of French words in Scotch.

Perhaps accurate scholarship on the subject is best represented in Prof. Gregory Smith's 'Specimens of Middle Scots' (Blackwood, 1902) ; see also the articles on the same subject in the new volume of ' The Cambridge History of English Lite- rature.' Prof. Gregory Smith traces the sources of the language more scientifically than had previously been done, but seems to ascribe too much influence to literature. There must have been a great deal of living ordinary intercourse at work before there could be the universal use of such common words as "dresser" (meaning a kind of side- board, common in Scotch households), Fr. dressoir ; " kickshaws," Fr. quelque chose ; 'gean" (wild cherry), Fr. guigne ; "backet" ash-box), Fr. baquet ; " cadis " (tufts of woollen waste), Fr. cadis (" caddie " also, now almost as widely known again as when applied to the " porters," or watchmen of Old Edinburgh) ; " fent " (opening in a