Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 10.djvu/479

 10 s. x. NOV. u, 1908. j NOTES AND QUERIES.

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him whom they were to marry. The menhir of Drache (Indre-et-Loire) is a lime- stone block pierced with an oval hole. Fiances are not satisfied till the marriage promises have been made through this hole. The grass growing at the foot of the menhir is .a, preservative against spells.

George Percy Badger in ' The Nestorians and their Ritual,' i. 23, mentions that Delikli Tash, or the River Rock, derives its name from an adjacent cliff containing two natural apertures through which the superstitious villagers, who are Moslems, believe it impossible for a criminal to pass. They also think that if any one succeeds in entering at one and coming out at the other, he is sure to obtain a good wife when he is in need of one.

In Brittany, it seems, modern gravestones may receive much the same treatment as monoliths of traditional virtue :

" After the Restoration mothers brought their .-sucklings and laid them at length on the tumulary stones of the two abb6s [who had been executed during the French Revolution], following in this ~& traditional custom of Brittany, which has for its object to infuse the strength of martyrs through young children, and hasten their first steps." L'lntermddiaire, 20 Sept., 1908, col. 401.

MELUSINE.

RUDYARD KIPLING ON SHAKESPEARE (10 S. x. 348). May I be permitted to point out that the " essay " referred to by Mr. John Corbin in Munsey's Magazine is probably the letter which Mr. Kipling addressed to The Spectator on 2 July, 1898 ? The letter was written by way of comment on a leading article, ' Landscape and Literature,' pub- lished on 18 June in The Spectator ; the article was suggested by a lecture given by Sir Archibald Geikie on the effect of scenery on literature. Mr. Kipling answers his own question, Whence came the vision of the enchanted island in ' The Tempest ' ? by stating that it " had no existence in Shake- speare's world, but was woven out of such -stuff as dreams are made of." After a reference to the account of the wreck of Sir George Somers in 1609 on the Bermudas as a probable source of Shakespeare's vision, Mr. Kipling go'es on to say that it seems to him " possible that the vision was woven from the most prosaic material from no- thing more promising, in fact, than the chatter of a half -tipsy sailor at a theatre." He further explains how a stage-manager in search of material might mingle with the audience and overhear a mariner talking of the strange things he had seen, of the scenery, and of the Indians with whom he

had come into contact. But for further argu- ments I refer MB. PIERPOINT to the letter itself. W. B. OWEN.

"DEAR": "O DEAR NO!" (10 S. x. 349.) The ' N.E.D.' does not give the origin of the expression " O dear." It was explained by me at considerable length in The Modern Language Quarterly, December, 1902, at p. 147.

The quotations show that the formula " Oh ! dear ! " is the oldest. It was not till later that it became " Oh ! dear Lord ! " &c. ; i.e., it was misunderstood. It was simply borrowed from Old French ; even Cotgrave gives dea, which he explains by " yes, verily " ; and he thinks that it once meant " a God's name." But here he is wrong.

It is fully explained in Godefroy's Old French dictionary, which gives dea, dia, as an exclamation, particularly in the phrase he, dia, used to express great astonish- ment and the like. To understand this, examine all his examples ; there is a whole column full of them.

There can be little doubt that dea and dia are shortened forms of the O.F. d-eable and diable. There is no mystery at all. The phrase " Oh ! dear ! " is an English sub- stitution for the O.F. he, dea, which simply meant " Oh ! the devil ! " It is well known how oaths come to be " minced." Cotgrave had the right idea, but did not discern who was invoked. WALTER W. SKEAT.

BILLY BUTLER THE HUNTING PARSON (10 S. x. 310). -This gentleman was the son of the Rev. Duke Butler, Rector of Okeford Fitz-Payne, co. Dorset. He matri- culated at Oxford 9 May, 1780, when aged seventeen, and took the degree of B.C.L. in 1787 (see 'Alumni Oxonienses ' ). His father was the son of Thomas Butler, described in the work before referred to as of Camberwell, Surrey, gent. The Rev. Duke Butler matriculated at Oxford, 14- June, 1740, when aged seventeen, and became B.A. in 1744.

I have been informed by members of the family that Thomas Butler was a member of the Ormonde family, and that his father resided in Dorsetshire, but I have up to the present been unable to trace the con- nexion.

The Rev. William Butler never married. He had two brothers, namely, the Rev. Robert Butler and James Butler of the Middle Temple, barrister-at-law. The latter was my wife's great-grandfather.