Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 2.djvu/228

 184

NOTES AND QUERIES. [io* s. ii. SEPT. 3, IOM.

Gossip, wait!" The fox said, "The world is a flight of stairs. See, gossip, one goes down and one goes up." The wolf was left in the well : the fox then hit upon the dog and said she had ^killed his enemy? on which he replied that .although he were in the well, yet the traitor did mot please him ; and he took her and gripped her by the throat, killed her and punished her malice ; .and thus justice took place.]
 * Where are you going ? Don't we want to fish ?

It will be seen that even the scoff

Dis is de way de worril goes ;

Some goes up en some goes down,

is represented, and the likeness to Uncle TRemus's fable becomes still more striking if we remember that "gossip" (compair) re- 'places "Brer" among the French-speaking negroes of Louisiana.

As is well known, the ' Morgante ' is a revision of two older popular lays with interpolations. Perhaps one of ' N. &Q.V readers could say whether these stanzas belong to the old material or are among Pulci's additions. Anyhow the date of the ^publication of ' Morgante ' fixes an inferior limit for the age of the fable in Tuscany. 0. W. PKEVITE ORTON.

GODFREY HIGGINS. In connexion with the 'meeting of the British Association at Cam- bridge, it may be of interest to note that the last meeting in the university town was followed by the death of the author of ' The -Celtic Druids' and ' Anacalypsis.' The 'D.N.B.,' vol. xxvi. 369, says of Higgins :

" He attended the meeting of the British Asso- ciation at Cambridge in June, 1833, returned home out of health, and died at his Yorkshire residence at Skellow Grange on 9 August, 1833."

W. B. H.

JEWS AND PRINTING. At the meeting of the Jewish Literary Societies, recently held at Ramsgate, Mr. Elkan N. Adler lectured on 'The Romance of Hebrew Printing.' The following is a short summary from the Daily Telegraph. In 1467 the first book was printed in Italy, and within the next few years at least a hundred books were known to have been printed by Jews, some seventy of them being now preserved in the British Museum. There were thirteen cities in Europe in which the first books printed of any kind were produced by Jewish typographers, and it was established that before 1540 there were -530 books printed in Hebrew characters by Jewish printers. A very notable volume was the polyglot Psalter of Genoa, which contained an account of the achievements of Columbus. The British Museum now con- tained 20,000 Jewish volumes. Dr. S. A. tHirsch also delivered an address on 'A

Survey of Jewish Literature,' in which he stated that the Talmud was not merely a book, but a literature in itself, and never were so many editions of it printed as within recent times. N. S. S.

" RUPEE." There are certain foreign terms in English which have been borrowed in their plural form. Thus we have taken from the Semitic languages assassin, Bedouin, cherubim, rabbin, seraphim* and from various American tongues mazame, mummychog, pdag, quahaug, scuppaug, squash (the fruit), succo- tash, <fec., all originally plural, but employed by us as singular. I venture to suggest that rupee, which existing dictionaries are content to derive from the Hindustani singular rujriya, belongs to this class, and is really from the Hindustani plural rupe. I cannot see why the English in India, who every day heard it correctly pronounced by natives, should have corrupted rupii/a by cutting off a syllable. On the other hand, I find that in Purchas and other old English works the trisyllable rupia or ropia and the dissyllable rupee were at first used side by side, and it seems easiest to conclude that these were respectively the Hindustani singular and plural, and that, owing to its more frequent occurrence in practice, the latter gradually replaced the former. JAMES PLATT, Jun.

"THE CAPTAIN" IN FLETCHER AND BEN JONSON. Who was " The Captain " in Fletcher's 'Fair Maid of the Inn' and in Jonson's ' Staple of News ' ? Dyce and Gifford leave this question undetermined. The latter, in a note to the ' Staple of News,' I. ii., says, " The Captain, of whom I have nothing certain to say, appears to have rivalled Butter [Nathaniel Butter] in the dissemination of news," &c. But in the same note Gifford apparently confounds the Captain with Butter the author with the printer.

The " Captain '' is often referred to. Ben Jonson has him again, probably, as " Captain Buz" in 'Neptune's Triumph,' written for a masque on Twelfth Night at Court in 1623-4, but put off " by reason of the king's indisposition," as we are told in ' Court and Times of James I.' (ii. 445-6). He appears to be alive here :

Her frisking husband That reads here the coranto every week. Grrave Master Ambler, newsmaster o' Paul's, Supplies your capon ; and grown Captain Buz, His emissary, underwrites for Turkey.

Of "Grave Master Ambler" I will say a word presently. In the 'Staple of News,' which appeared