Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 12.djvu/201

 ID s. xii. AUG. 28, 1909.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

161

LONDON, SATURDAY, AUGUST 8, 1W9.

CONTENTS. No. 296.

NOTES : Tiffar : Tiffador : Tyfferen, 161' Horse Sub- secivse,' 1620, 162 St. Neots Booksellers and Printers, 164 Joseph Knight and the Rabelais Club " Fabius Pictor,* 165 Richard II. at Chester Temple Bar- Thomas Lake Harris Scarlet Pimpernel, 166 " Topsy- turvy " " Shortfall " Weltje's Club -To " Whip in," 167.

jQUKRIES : 'N. & Q.' Commemoration " Four regular orders of monks," 167 Combined Monastic and Parochial Churches Ownership of Scottish Churches St. Barbara's Emblems Cowhouse Manor, Middlesex Charles Lamb and his Pepe " Castle Inn," Birmingham " Noli altum sapere " Tildens of Tenterden Collinson Family Lincolnshire Names, 168 Devil's Saffron- Daniel FosquS ' Bishop King of Elphin Nelson's

Death Ragozine, a Pirate Ceylon Bibliography Oregon Gray Family Southey's Collections regarding Portugal, 169 "A nafedave" Exeter Cathedral

Custom Freeman on Gladstone's 'Studies on Homer' Diss " King of Hungary's peace," 170.

BEPLIES : Flying Machine in 1751, 170 Macaulay on Literature -Neil and Natt Gow, 171 The Parker Conse- cration The Pryor's Bank, Fulham John Abbot, 172 Constitution Hill" The " prefixed to Place-Names ' British Controversialist ' Rentier's Circus, 173 Pigott's ' Jockey Club ' " Culprit " " Bec-en-hent," House-NameLynch Law Fiennes of Broughton, 174 William the Conqueror and Barking T. L. Peacock George Selwyn's Fondness for Executions The Bonassus, 175 Sacred Place-Names in Foreign Lands" Sweet Lavender" 'The Oera Linda Book, 176 "Everywhere heard will be the judgment-call" "All the world and his wife" "And he was a Samaritan" 'The Complete Peerage 'Hews Family Paul Braddon " Moon-Dog" Parodies of the Poet Laureate ' The Yahoo, 1 177 " Horse-godmother" "Skyle ""No Flowers "Authors Wanted Sneezing Superstition Flint Pebbles Nimbus Aviation, 178.

JfOTES ON BOOKS : ' The Oxford Dictionary ' ' Intro- duction to Early Welsh ' ' Random Recollections of a Commercial Traveller.'

TIFFAR: TIFFADOR: TYFFEREN.

YULE, in his article on the word " tiffin " in ' Hobson-Jobson,' remarked :

" Rumphius has a curious passage which we have tried in vain to connect with the present word ; nor can we find the words he mentions in either Portuguese or Dutch dictionaries. Speaking of Toddy and the like, he says : * Homines autem qui eas (potiones) colligunt ac praeparant, dicuntur Pqrtugallico nomine Tiffadorea, atque opus ipsum Tiffar; nostratibus Belgis tyfferen ('Herb. Am- boinense,' i. 5)."

In works on the East Indies by Dutch and German writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries toddy-drawers are in- variably termed tyffadoors or tyfferaars, and the act of drawing toddy is denominated tyffereri. Thus Valentyn, in the list of officials, castes, &c., prefixed to his descrip- tion of Ceylon (1726), has (I translate) : " Casta Chiandes, or Tifidoors. These .... consist of ten kinds, ... .all of whom support themselves by the tyfferen of trees." And in describing the ten kinds he uses the words tiffidoor and tyfferen several times. Then, further on, he has : " Hangerema, or the

tyferaara of the jager Raggery] trees,

from the sap of which they make sugar."

The latest example I have found of the alternative form tyfferaar is in Haafner's 4 Reize te voet door het Eiland Ceilon,' published in 1810, after the author's death. In the description of Ceylon pre- fixed to the work the word tijferaars occurs, and a foot-note explains : " Tijferaar ; so the man is called who climbs into the palm or coconut trees, and brings away the pots with palm- wine." (This is an inadequate description of a toddy-drawer's duties.) I will only add to the above that Christoph Schweitzer, in his ' Journal und Tage- Buch,' published at Tubingen in 1688, has tivitors ; &nd that the English translator of this book, who, while omitting much, has perpetrated many gross errors, renders the passage : " After them are the Trivitors, who gather the Drink from the Trees and boyl the sugar."

Now as regards the origin of these words which puzzled Yule, and for which I have long sought in vain for a solution, attempt- ing, but unsuccessfully, to connect them with tap, or with some word imitative of the sound made by the toddy-drawer when beating the wounded spathe with his wooden mallet to make the sap exude more freely. How ever, I think I have at length solved the enigma ; and, strangely enough, Yule had the solution to his hand only a few pages on in his book ! I refer to the word "tiyan," which is thus explained in ' Hobson- Jobson * :

" Malay al. Tlyan, or Tivan, pi. Tlyar or Tlvar. The name of what may be called the third caste (in rank) in Malabar. The word signifies 'islander' [from Mai. tivii, Skt. dvlpa, ' an island '] ; and the people are supposed to have come from Ceylon."

So far the connexion with tiffador and tyfferen is not very evident ; but if we read the quotations given by Yule and by the editor of the second edition under this word and on a previous page under " tier- cutty," we see that, as Buchanan (1800) says, " the proper duty of the cast is to extract the juice from palm trees, to boil it down to jagory, and to distil it into spirituous liquors." Finally, if we look at Gundert's Malay alam-English dictionary we find : " tiyan, a. M. [ancient Mai.] tivan (Port., Fr. tives). An islander, the caste of the palm-cultivators, toddy-drawers, sugar- makers, &c." By the " Portuguese " and " French," who, according to Gundert, use the word tives (a plural form apparently), are meant, no doubt, the Indo-Portuguese of the Malabar coast and the French-