Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 11.djvu/447

 10 s. XL MAY s, im] NOTES AND QUERIES.

367

" FACTS ABE STUBBORN THINGS." In

Bartlett's ' Familiar Quotations ' ; in ' The Cyclopaedia of Practical Quotations,' by J. K. Hoyt and Anna L. Ward, 1892 ; and at 8 S. x. 498, this proverbial saying is alleged to occur in Smollett's translation of ' Gil Bias.' Book X. chap. i.

The Rev. James Wood in his ' Dictionary of Quotations ' attributes it to Le Sage.

Mr. W. Gurney Benham in ' Cassell's Book of Quotations ' does not refer the saying to either Le Sage or Smollett.

I have not found it in the said chapter. A little before the middle of the chapter is " For their actions speak," being the trans- lation of " Car les faits parlent."

Perhaps my little edition (viz., Cooke's, the illustrations of which are dated 1797- 1810) is at fault.

In ' Le Livre des Proverbes Francais,' by M. le Roux de Lincy, seconde edit., 1859, tome ii. p. 333 (Serie No. xiv)., is the fol- lowing proverb :

Les faits se montreront Et les ditz se passeront.

This is apparently quoted from ' Proverbia Gallica,' alias ' Recueil des Proverbes fran- ^ois, avec des Commentaires latins ' ; MS. of the fifteenth century (see ibid., p. 557).

At 10 S. iv. 204 W. C. B. quotes from the p. 23, " Matters of fact, as Mr. Budgell somewhere observes, are very stubborn things."
 * Copy of the Will of Matthew Tindal,' 1733,

Smollett's translation of ' Gil Bias ' was published in 1749. ROBERT PIERPOINT.

FIFTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH POEM IN WELSH METRE. In the ' Gwaith Barddonol Howel Swrdwal a'i Fab leuan,' the first publication of the new " Bangor Welsh MSS. Society," is a curious poem entitled ' I Dduw^ac i Fair Wyry ' ('To God and the Virgin Mary ' ). The heading may be thus translated :

" Here is another ode to God and to Mary which a Welshman in Oxford made while he was studying there, because one of the Englishmen said that there was neither measure nor cynghanedd [see below] in Welsh. He answered that he would make a poem in English to Welsh measure and cynghanedd such that neither the Englishman nor any of his companions could make one of the kind in their own language, and he composed it as follows ; but since I write this book all in Welsh orthography, this in English must follow our way ; read it like Welsh."

The poem, then, is in English, but written in Welsh metre, as an awdl, with cynghanedd, the complicated system of alliteration dis- tinctive of Welsh " strict metres," and quite alien to anything in English ; and the

spelling is phonetic according to Welsh pronunciation. Much of it is obscure to me, perhaps owing to MS. corruption, or perhaps because the English was in the first instance incorrect. As a specimen, I give the first two stanzas, which are in the englyn metre, the most elaborate of all the " strict metres " :

meichti ladi owr leding tw haf

at hef n owr abeiding in tw thei ffest eferlesting i set a braints ws tw bring

yw wan ddus wyth blus dde blessing off god

ffor ywr gwd abering wher yw bunn ffor ywr wunning syns Kwin and ywr sonn us King.

1 give it as in the original without punctu- ation, the dashes which I have inserted having merely metrical value. I read it as follows :

" O mighty lady, our leading, to have at [= in ? ]

heaven pur abiding; into thy feast everlasting

us to bring. You wan this with bliss, the blessing of God, for your good abearing ; where you bin [=are], for your winning, since Queen, and your son is King."

The whole poem would repay study by students of English phonology " I set a braints " is obscure to me. I should add that Howel and leuan Swrdwal were poets of the fifteenth century. H. I. B.

" WATCHET." In his ' Miller es Tale ' Chaucer manifestly revels in his account of the parish clerk " that was i-cleped Ab- solon." Part of the elaborate delineation runs thus :

In his hoses reed he wente fetusly.

I-clad he was ful smal and propurly,

Al in a kirtel of a t'yn wachet,

Schapen with goores in the newe get.

" A sort of blue cloth " is the definition given of " wachet " by Dr. Morris in his glossary to the revised edition of the Aldine Chaucer. Later poets such as Browne in ' Britannia's Pastorals,' ii. 3, and Warton in the ' Ode on Approach of Summer ' use the form " watchet." These authors com- mand the attention of the lexicographer, who says that as an adjective the word is employed in the sense of " blue, pale blue," while as a substantive it denotes " a blue or pale blue colour or tint." The origin of the word appears to give trouble, and the suggestion offered by the philologist is that it is " perhaps from a Low Lat. wadio=to dye with woad, from Ger. waid=v?o&d."

Athwart this tentative interpretation Mr. C. G. Harper confidently moves in his new book, ' The Somerset Coast.' He misquotes Chaucer's description of the parish clerk