Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 10.djvu/289

 10 s. x. SEPT. 19, 1908.J NOTES AND QUERIES.

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gems which form part of the jewels selected for the High Priest's breastplate ; whereas three others, including peninim, are quoted in Job which were not deemed worthy of a place among the twelve. MB. HILL tells us that in the American R.V. (1901) it is rendered " crystal." I cannot under- stand that. Zechucheth in the locus classicus, from zach= clear, has always been translated "" crystal " by Hebraists. That peninim refer to stones of a dark hue seems to me indisputable from the passage in Lam. iv. 7, where a vivid contrast is sought for by anti- thesis with shayleg = snow. I do not think that " corals " or " rubies " (Heb. oudem) represent the gems the ancient Hebrews knew as peninim the former being a cheap kind of stone, and the latter very dear. They must have been stones of some rarity and exquisiteness, I feel sure. Look- ing to the root of the word, I should say that either " jaspers " or " opals " were the kinds of gems intended to depict the value of wisdom to those who sought after it. These reflect prismatic hues, and seem to be nearer to the truth than " rubies,"
 * ' corals," or " carnelians."

M. L. R. BBESLAB. Percy House, .South Hackney.

The classical instance of the change of 5 into p, by Grimm's Law, is /cai/i/a/ita, O.E. henep, High Ger. Hanf ; though the word is perhaps not of Idg. origin. I am surprised that MB. HILL, being interested in philology, has not possessed himself of the last edition of Prof. Skeat's ' Concise Dictionary' (1901), to which he is referred .-as to " peat." The implied attribution to Prof. Skeat of "O.E. beat, fuel," is a mistake, there being no such word in O.E.

H. P. L.

" T' WIFE BAZAAB " (10 S. ix. 207, 416 ; x. 118). In The Globe for 1811 it was re- ported that

41 a woman of the name of Coveney was led by a halter into one of the rooms of ' The White Hart,' Sittiiigbourne, and sold to the highest bidder, with her five children, a horse and cart, and all her household furniture. A man at Newington was the purchaser for the sum of 10."

Other instances are recorded in The Globe of 19 Sept., 1815 ; 14 Jan., 1815 ; 31 Aug., 1822 ; 17 March, 1832 ; and 27 Oct., 1837. See also ' Wife-selling ' in ' The Derbyshire Gatherer,' p. 2 ; IS. viii. 209 ; a Globe 41 turnover," ' Wife-selling,' 16 Nov., 1903, and ' Parish Registers,' by R. E. Chester Waters. J. HOLDEN MACMICHAEL.

NONCONFOBMIST BUBIAL-GBOUNDS AND

GBA VEST/ONES (10 S. ix. 188, 233, 297, 336, 434 ; x. 31, 150). During my recent resi- dence at Epworth the last surviving member of an old Quaker family there died, and was buried, by her own direction, in the garden of the house her family had long occupied. I understood that several of the family had previously been buried there, but neither stone nor mound marks any of the spots where they lie. The grave of this last sur- vivor is immediately under the drawing room window, which overlooks what is now a tennis-lawn. Seeing how recent the last burial was, I have sometimes felt, when playing there, that there was something incongruous in the act.

This custom of burying in private grounds seems to have been pretty general at Ep- worth in bygone years. The Baptists (as I have stated in a former note) had a burial- ground adjacent to their chapel ; but the early Wesleyan Methodists were many of them buried in a garden belonging to their resident minister's house. In 1906 I was asked by the editor of the Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society to procure a copy of the inscription on the gravestone of John Maw, a friend and early supporter of John Wesley's. I could not find his stone in the churchyard (where most of the members of his family appear to have been buried), and was told that, being a Wesleyan, he had probably been buried in the garden of his own house at the lower end of the town. I had seen several gravestones, forming part of the pavement of the yard of this house, years before ; but was now unable to pursue the search further, as the house had been pulled down, and the stones turned out to repave the yard of the new house built on the site. A surviving member of the family, however, confirmed what I had been told, and had a more or less hazy recollection of the stone I wanted. C. C. B.

Regarding Quaker gravestones, MB. W. J. MEBCEB would find a very interesting account printed in The Hampshire Chronicle for 9 May last (published by Messrs. Jacob & Johnson, High Street, Winchester), entitled ' The Friends of Swanmore : a Quaint Burial-Ground.' The article occupies some two columns, and is worthy of reproduction in ' N. & Q.' for its ultimate preservation.

This burial-ground has recently been acquired by various local antiquaries (notably Canon Vaughan, Rector of Droxford), and presented by them to the Society of Friends at Southampton. Among those buried in