Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 11.djvu/255

 10 s. XL MAR. 13, 1909.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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The phrase seems to be a grammatical eccentricity, peculiar to the Spanish lan- guage, and indefensible according to the laws of speech as other nations understand them. JOHN T. CURRY.

CHTJBCH AT WARDEN POINT : OLD LONDON BRIDGE. A few days ago I went with some friends to Warden Point, in the Island of Sheppey, to see a landslip which recently occurred there. Outside some farm build- ings I came across a tablet with an inscrip- tion stating that

" the tower of this church was presented by Dela- mark Banks, Esq., in 1836, and is constructed of stones from old London Bridge, which was built in 1176, and removed in 1832.

The farmer informed me that a church had stood near the cliffs, but had been taken down some thirty years ago, and its remains had since slipped into the sea.

Some of the stones of the church are still to be seen in neighbouring farm buildings, but there is no means of identifying those from the church tower. H. KING HALL.

H.M.S. Indomitable, Sheerness.

" VIOLET " IN WELSH. It is a little mis- leading to say (see ante, p. 84) that there is no word for " violet " in Welsh. The regular word is fioled, which is, of course, simply violet in a Welsh form, but it has been in use long enough to be naturalized by this time. I do not know how far back it can be traced, but it certainly occurs in the fifteenth-century Cott. MS. Titus D. xxii., f. 179b (Rees, ' Cambro - British Saints,' p. 214). It is in the life of St. Catherine. The writer describes the scourging of the saint " yny reddawd y gwaet allan ym pob lie ar y chorf mal y redei y dwfyr y gaeaf ac yny yttoed y chnawt gwyn hi yn velyn megys y violet " ; i.e., " till the blood flowed forth in every part of her body like the rain in winter, and till her white flesh become yellow, like the violet." Surely, if five hundred years' use does not naturalize a, word, we might equally declare that there is no word for " violet " in English.

As a matter of fact, however, the Welsh dictionaries do give native words. Gwiolydd is doubtless a derivative direct from the Latin, not, like fioled, through the English (or French) ; but crinllys, llys y Drindod, and meddygyn are also given by the diction- aries as = "violet." Whether they ever occur in common use I do not know ; a Welsh friend whom I consulted did not know any name but fioled. I should have added that violet in the Cotton MS. is simply the old way of spelling the modern fioled. H. I. B.

WE must request correspondents desiring in- formation on family matters of only private interest to affix their names and addresses to their queries, in order that answers may be sent to them direct.

SASKATOON." What is the botanical name of the wild fruit-tree called " saska- toon " in Canada ? Is the word Indian ; or what is its origin ? I observe that Saska- toon occurs as a place-name in Canada ; presumably this conies from the name of the tree, and not vice versa. Any quotations exemplifying the use of the word earlier than 94 would be

1894

)e welcome.

HENRY BRADLEY.

Clarendon Press Oxford.

GOVERNOR WALTER PATTERSON. Walter Patterson, Governor of Prince Edward Island, 1770-86, was married 9 March, 1770, to a Miss Hester Warren of Stratford, Essex, England (Gent. Mag.). He died in London 6 Sept., 1798 (Gent. Mag.). In a memorial to William Pitt, dated 7, Tufton Street, Westminster, July (?), 1799, his widow sets forth that the greater part of the fortune which she had brought to her husband " was spent in promoting the pros- perity of the island," &c. Mrs. Patterson had at least four children (P. E. T. Corre- spondence, Record Office). Who was Mrs. Patterson, where was she married, and when did she die ? What were the names of her children ? Is anything known about them ?

Walter Patterson was a son of William Patterson (d. 1783) of Foxhall, co. Donegal. When was he born, and what was his career before being appointed Governor ? It is said that he served with the 80th Regiment in America before 1763 ; and in a document of 1764 he is certainly referred to as Capt. Walter Peterson, " a reduced officer."

R. C. ARCHIBALD.

Brown University, Providence, R.I.

HIPPOCRATES AND THE BLACK BABY. Ambrose Pare in the ' (Euvres,' Lyons, 1641, and Perls in his ' Lehrbuch der allge- meinen Pathologic,' 3 Aufl., S. 629, edited by F. Neelsen, Stuttgart, 1894, relate a story, without references, that Hippocrates saved a woman who was accused of mis- conduct, as she had borne a black child to her husband, by pointing out to the judge that a picture of a negro hung in her room. Can any of your readers inform me where the original of this story is to be found ?

KARL PEARSON.

University College, W.C.