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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. XL FEB. 13, im.

damages. M. Chambon replied that Meri- mee had in a general way abandoned his rights, and certainly had not specially reserved them. Further, that as regards letters given by the recipients to public libraries, the authority to print was vested in the State. The judge thought that Merimee had virtually abandoned to his correspondents the undoubted rights which in French law the writer possesses during his lifetime, and which his representatives can exercise for fifty years after his death. Apart from the special circumstances of this case, the judge stated that in France the writer has the copyright for life, and that his representatives can retain it for fifty years.

The doubt as to the British law is to be regretted, as no one seems to know with certainty what any one's rights are.

WILLIAM E. A. AXON.

Manchester.

[We fully agree with our contributor's last paragraph, and may add that we do not think it .advisable for so complicated a subject to be discussed at length in 'N. & Q.', though any author of experience who, like our contributor, calls atten- tion to the present unsatisfactory state of affairs in this country may help to bring about revision of the law.]

" ARO-SETNA " IN THE ' It has been suggested by Dr. W. de G. Birch that aro- in the land-name " Aro- setna " represents " Arrow," and that " Aro-setna(-lond) " lay along the banks of the Warwickshire river of that name. On the one hand, however, not only are the hypothetical Aro-sete quite unrecorded, and the alleged eleventh-century reduction of the final syllable -we to o unconfirmed by contemporary instances of similar change, but, on the other, the unreduced form of the river-name Arewe, Arwe (Arwan in oblique cases), was still used in the century named to denote the Orwell ; cf. ' Saxon Chronicles ' D and E, annal 1016.

When dealing with so corrupt a text as that of the ' Nomina Hidarum,' we are guided quite as much by our knowledge of what such a list ought to contain as by palseo- graphical considerations. Now there is one land-name which is so well known, and so ancient, that we have the right to say that no list of such names, whether made in Saxon times or later, is complete without it. I refer to Dorn-S8etna(-Iond), the land of the Dorn-saete, i.e., Dorset. In MS. A of the ' Saxon Chronicle,' which was written c. A.D. 892, in annals 837, 845, we get " mid Dorn-ssetum." Bishop Asser no doubt gave the true Old -Welsh form Durn-guois

( = *Durn-enses) in his ' Gesta though the form actually handed down by the scribe of the lost MS. appears to have been either -gueis or -gueir. The n appears to have dropped out in the tenth century, and in MS. B of the ' Chronicle,' which was transcribed c. A.D. 1000 from a copy which ended with 977, we get " Dor-ssetan " and " Dor-saetum," in annals 837 and 845 respectively. In MS. C, which was written c. 1050, we find the same spelling in annals 978 and 982. We are, therefore, prepared to find " Dor-ssete " in lists of land-names written, like the one discovered by Dr. Birch, in the early part of the eleventh century to wit, in the interval between the transcription of B and C. But " Dor- sete " does not occur in that list. I suggest, therefore, that " Aro-sete " = " Dor-sete."

Let it be admitted that " Aro " does not equal " Arewe," and that no record of a folk called " Aro-sete " has come down to us : the suggested identification of " Aro- setna " will then depend provisionally upon the answers we can give to the palaeogra- phical questions : 1. Did a usurp the place of d, at times, in mediaeval MSS., through approximation of the written forms ? 2. Did metathesis of r in or^occur, i.e., was the compendium for or misread and expanded wrongly as ro ? The answer to the first question is in the affirmative, and scribal errors like decius for aetius, 1 au for du (dum), 2 and auroleuo for duroleuo, 3 are con- clusive.

With respect to the second question the metathesis of r in the expanded form of a compendium is a frequently recurring phenomenon, and, though I can give no exact parallel offering ro for or, such scribal errors as the following abound : duaruerno for du ro u er no ; s iharciam for th>'"ciam ; 4 uigore for ui r go ; 5 terit for t r it ; 6 remigrante for

1 ' Historia Brittonum,' Harley MS. 3859, c. 1100, cap. Ixvi., ed. Mommsen, 'Chronica Minora,' iii. 209.

2 Gildas, MS. D., ssec. XIV., ed. Mommsen, M.S., p. 38, 1. 2. The mistake of sustinencia for .111 xfi- nenda, in the same MS., p. 36, 1. 14, indicates the form of the d, for ci and a often collide.

3 'Itinerarium Antonini Augusti,' Iter. II., MS. Parisinus Regius, Bibl. Nationale, suppl. Lat. 671, ssec. XV., edd. Finder and Parthey, p. 225.

4 'Itinerarium eiusd.,' from the uncial MS. in the Imperial Library at Vienna, No. 181, ssec. VIII., Iter. II., p. 225.

5 Muirchu's ' Memoirs of Patrick,' Brussels Codex, No. 64, ssec. XII., ed. Hogan, 'Analecta Bollandiana,' 1882, i. 549, 575.

6 ' Historia Brittonum,' u }, p. 217, 1. 18 ; MS. C.C.C., Cantab., 139, ssec. XIII.