Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 12.djvu/14

 NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. XH. JULY 3, im

I feel doubtful, however, regarding tin origin of the name " ducks " as descriptivi of Bombay soldiers or civilians (the ' N.E.D. and Yule differ as to which is meant). Wer< the Bombay men so called from the popula name of the fish, or from the fact (if it be a fact) that they wore clothes ( ? trousers of duck ? The * N.E.D.' I notice, favour neither of these derivations, but implie that the soldiers of the Bombay Presidenc got their name from the bird. Perhap some reader of * N". & Q.' can solve this question.

Returning to the dried fish, I may men tion that in Ceylon it is called by the Sin halese bombili, but I suspect that this name was introduced into the island with the condiment, which has a large sale there. DONALD FERGUSON.

CHAUCER'S Two ALLUSIONS TO PERSIUS In ' The Canterbury Tales,' F 721, occur; the line

I sleep never on the mount of Pernaso, which (as we learn from a side-note in the Ellesmere MS.) was suggested by 1. 2 of the prologue to the Satires of Persius, viz., Neque in bicipiti somniasse Parnasso Memini, &c.

I now find that Chaucer was indebted t another passage in the same very short prologue for the remarkable form " Pegasee " (for Pegaseus), which occurs in ' The Squire's Tale,' F 207. Here another marginal note in the same MS. has equus Pegaseus. I have noted (Chaucer's * Works,' v. 376) that Chaucer was thinking of the adjectival form Pegasew rather than of Pegasus as a sub- stantive. This is not quite right, but very nearly so. For a side-note in the Cam- bridge MS. Dd. tells us a little more. It runs thus: "id est, equus Pegaseus: Percius 4to." Here either " 4to " is an error for " Hto," or it is short for "quatuor- decimo," sc. " versu," as the allusion is obviously to 1. 14 of the same prologue, viz.,

Cantare credas Pegaseium nectar ; the only allusion (I believe) to Pegasus that occurs in Persius, and only twelve lines distant from the line quoted above. This shows that Chaucer evolved the form Pegaseus as a sb. from the adjectival form Pegaseius. WALTER W. SKEAT.

DOLMA BAGCHA, CONSTANTINOPLE. The B of this alace has been before the

morning I counted four entirely different orMiographies of this name. The spelling at the head of this note I take from an excellent authority, Redhouse's ' Turkish Lexicon,' 1890. It has the merit, at any rate* of being easy to pronounce. Dolma Bagcha means " the filled-up little park," this part of Constantinople being on the site of a former harbour : dolma, filled up ; bagcha, a little garden or park.

JAS. PLATT, Jun.

" YAMUYLE," A VICTUAL. ' The Brut ; or, the Chronicles of England' (E.E.T.S.) has at p. 435, dating c. 1480, and referring to the siege of Orleans : " vij M : of Frensshe men fill vpon oure men as they went toward the Toune with vitaill that is called yam- uyle" This can hardly be other than the French gamelle (Lat. cametta), a military term for a mess bowl, or platter ; hence the mess itself. H. P. L.

JOHN ANGEL OR ANGER. In Musgrave's 4 Obituary ' there are two entries, John Anger and John Angel, under date 25 Jan., 1751, The London Magazine has both of them in its list of deaths. The Gentleman's Magazine has only that referring to John Anger. John Anger is described in both as a proprietor of lighthouses in the North for the conveniency of shipping ; John Angel as in the commission of peace for Surrey. John Anger is a myth. John Angel was the proprietor of the lighthouses in the North, as will be seen by a reference to his will, proved (P.C.C. Busby 68) 1 March, 1751, as follows :

"I do hereby give devise and bequeath unto my good friends and executors Mr. Robert Alsop one

?-# ie ld ? ri V, en * ?? the Cit Y of London Mr. William Cockell of Blackwell Hall London Factor and Mr. Nicholas Spencer of the Parish of St. Margaret Westminster in the County of Middlesex Sadler and their heirs all that my Lighthouse or Lights erected and built upon a piece of ground situate lying and being on the Spurne Point or Head at the Mouth of the River Humber in the County of York."

Owing to a printer's or possibly clerical error, Gent. Mag. makes Angel read Anger, and this, being copied by the London, has been perpetuated in Musgrave. M. B.

LORD ALTHORP IN THE HOUSE OF COM- MONS IN 1806. In Le Marchant's ' Memoir of Viscount Althorp, Earl Spencer ' (p 88) t is stated that Althorp, " having been obliged to retire from Okehampton when he tood for the University " (of Cambridge on Pitt's death), "had to seek another seat tound one very expeditiously at St.