Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 10.djvu/445

 10 s. x. NOV. 7, loos.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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The phrase wel awey, meaning " very much, considerably," is noted in my ' Glossary to P. Plowman.' There is another good example in Chaucer, * Rom. Rose,' 119 :

But it was straighter wel away. The French line is

Mes qu'ele iere plus espandue, i.e., it was considerably more extended or stretched out. WALTER W. SKEAT.

" GA VOLT," YIDDISH TERM. In describ- ing the inquest on Esther Praager, the victim of the Bloomsbury tragedy, all the papers, I notice, including The Times, speak of the cry " Ga volt " as " Hebrew." It would have been more accurate to call it Yiddish, as it is not Hebrew at all, but is merely the ordinary German word Gewalt, which in this case means " distress," and is an appeal for help. Yiddish is a mixture of Hebrew and German.

JAS. PLATT, Jun.

SWIFT AND SUETONIUS. I wonder if any one has pointed out the source from which Swift drew what seems at first sight a highly characteristic passage in 'Gulliver's Travels.' It is where he says that in Lilliput, whenever " the Court had decreed any cruel execu- tion," the emperor always made a speech praising up his own " great lenity and tender- ness." He goes on to say :

" Nor did anything terrify the people so much as these encomiums on his majesty's mercy ; because it was observed, that the more these praises were enlarged and insisted on, the more inhuman was the punishment, and the sufferer more innocent." ' A Voyage to Lilliput,' chap. vii.

This is taken from Suetonius' s * Life of Domitian ' :

" He never pronounced a severe sentence without prefacing it with words which gave hopes of mercy ; so that, at last, there was not a more certain token of a fatal conclusion than a mild commencement." Chap. xi.

J. WILLCOCK.

Lerwick.

SAMPSON Low The first Sampson Low was apparently a printer as well as a book- seller. The catalogue of valuable pictures, to be sold " by private contract " at Mr. Bryan's Gallery in Savile Row, on Monday 27 April, 1795, and following days, was " printed by S. Low, Berwick Street, Soho."

W. ROBERTS.

DR. PENA. In the essay * Of Prophecies Bacon tells a story which he heard " from one Dr. Pena " when he was in France. The commentators are silent on the identity of this man. I suggest that he may have

3een Pierre Pena, the botanist. The better- mown botanist Lobel was physician to William of Orange. Some time after the death of William (who was murdered in 1584), Lobel settled in England. In 1592 he attended his patrtm Lord Zouch on an embassy to Denmark. James I. made him " King's Botanist," and he died at Highgate n 1616.

It was when studying medicine at Mont- pellier that Lobel met Pena. The two collaborated for years. Their first joint work, the ' Stirpium Adversaria Nova,' was published in London in 1570, and dedicated bo Queen Elizabeth. I cannot say whether Pena was ever in England, but his relations with Englishmen render it possible that he knew some members of the embassy to- France with which Bacon was connected! from September, 1576, to February, 1579, and that a youth who had taken all know- ledge to be his province would make the acquaintance of one of the leaders in a depart- ment of knowledge which interested him specially.

I shall be glad if my suggested identification can be proved right or wrong.

DAVID SALMON.

Swansea.

" THE BONNIE CRAVAT," TAVERN SIGN (See 7 S. ii. 28, 98.) May not the origin of this be accounted for in the following manner?" Hasted's ' Kent,' vol. vii. p. 235, states that " Phebe Goble of Woodchurch, by will in 1692 r gave to the poor 2 per annum, to be paid by her heirs for ever, out of a farm called the Bonny Cravat, in Woodchurch (now an ale-house), the first Sunday after Lady Day."

In Arch. Cant., vol. xxv. p. 286, I notice a deed of covenant, 1662, wherein the follow- ing holdings are named : " The Roundhouse Carvett," or the " Walke Carvett," " The Vault Carvett," " Claypitt Carvett," " Browning Downe Carvett," and " Maga* Dane Carvett."

On reference to Pegge's ' Alphabet of Kenticisms ' (Arch. Cant., vol. ix. p. 69) I find " Carvet, sb., a shave. So called about Limme. (N.B. A shave is a shaw or thick hedge-row. Halliwell gives Carvett, a thick hedge-row, Kent.)" Carvett might easily become Cravat. R. J. FYNMORE.

Sandgate, Kent.

BENJAMIN VULLIAMY. (See ante, p. 221.) The Mr. Vulliamy who designed and exe- cuted the superb addition of a crown and sceptre to the Hon. Mrs. Darner's statue of George III., exhibited at the Rotunda in 1793, was Benjamin Vulliamy, the eminent