Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 11.djvu/469

 10 8. XL MAY io, 1909. j NOTES AND QUERIES.

885

In Indian names Schroer proceeds on similar lines. Himalaya has two pronuncia- tions, Kabul three, Afghanistan four, and Peshawar five. No attempt is made to show which is scholarly and which is the coinage of the gutter.

But the best example of this uncritical method is affforded by the name variously written Dalyel, Dalziel, Dalzell, and Dalzil. It will scarcely be credited, but this book gives the unhappy German a choice of eleven pronunciations. No attempt is made to divide these, as might easily have been done, into correct Scotch and passably good or inexpressibly bad English.

When a name has only one pronunciation marked it is often wrong. Thus with Brough- ton, Devereux, Farquhar, Forbes, Gifford, and others, just when an alternative would have been justified it is absent. Bury is given with one pronunciation, though it is n-ell known that this name is differently sounded by the Albemarle and Charleville families. Featherstonhaugh is given only one, although there are at least five pro- nunciations of this name in use among different branches. Barham and Sotheby have two pronunciations each marked, but all four are wrong. Tintagel has different pronunciations assigned for the town and castle, which is absurd. Nigel has two, but neither is the one used by Scott. Brougham has three, but not the one which is now most in use.

Numerous important names are not in this list at all. Such are Ayscough, Beres- ford, Blyth, Cadogan, Carruthers, Chichele, Chisholm, Clanricarde, Crespigny, Denzil, Dumaresque, Elcho, Fildes, Foljambe, Gallagher, Geoghegan, Inchiquin, Keogh, Lysaght, Mahan, Meagher, Mohun, Moly- neux, Mowat, Osbaldistone, Ouless, Romanes, Saumarez, Scrymgeour, and Selous. In the next edition room could be found for these by omitting Scriptural and classical names. JAS. PIATT, Jun.

" THE IVEBY," WILTSHIRE LOCAL NAME. On the top of the tongue of hill by which the down over Wroughton descends to the vale is a piece of bare land lying between two combes, Elcombe and Marcum. This piece of land is called "The Ivery." The meaning of this local name is, I believe, quite unknown to the inhabitants, and this term for a piece of land does not, as far as I know, occur elsewhere within the British Isles. What is its original meaning ? I believe that the word is of French origin, and my friend Prof. Skeat concurs with me

in this opinion. In Godefroy's ' Old French Dictionary ' we find the word iverie, " haras, ' r and in Ducange there is given the original Latin form of the French iverie, namely,. equaria, " equorum grex, Gall, haras.''' From the citations in Ducange it appears that equaria was a bit of monastic Latin for a herd of horses or a place for breeding horses, and it should be noted that Wroughton, over which " The Ivery " i& situated, was formerly a manor of St. Swithun's Monastery ; so the appearance of the French word in this place is well ac- counted for. It may be added that the- Latin equa was quite regularly represented in Old French by the form ive ; so Lat~ cequalem became in O.F. ivel. Both forms iverie, " equaria," and ivel, " aequalem " occur in the poem of Guillaume de Tyr,. written in the thirteenth century.

A. L. MAYHEW. 21, Norham Road, Oxford.

BAGNIGGE HOUSE. (See ante, p. 103.) Not trusting to memory, I have made a special expedition, and found, let into the front of, and midway between, 61 and 63,. King's Cross Road (two houses), the following inscription, surmounted by a satyr's (man's?)/ head :

+

S T

THIS IS BAGXIGGE

HOVSE XEARE

THE FINDER A

WAKEFEILDE

1680

H. C N.

" Q IN THE CORNER." (See 7 S. iv. 287 ^ v. 15, 113, 198 ; 10 S. ix. 407.) At the last reference I gave an American instance dated 1813. I am now able to trace the expression- further back. A letter in The Massachusetts Spy, 13 Aug., 1772, is signed " Q in a Corner " ; and the same signature is ap- pended to some verses in The Maryland Journal, 19 Aug., 1788. It would seem that the pseudonym is of American origin.

RICHARD H. THORNTON. 36, Upper Bedford Place, W.C.

" DISAL.DER." This word does not appear in ' N.E.D.,' but it is to be found several times in the records of the Corporation of Lincoln as calendared by the Historical Manuscripts Commission in its fourteenth Report, Appendix, Part VIII. On 29 March,. 1593, for instance, a late mayor was " dis- justicied and also disaldered " for refusing to bring in his accounts, and for having gone away with sums of money remaining