Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 2.djvu/283

 ii. SEPT. 17, 1904.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

231

As one of the greatest authorities on gypsy- lore, tie much lamented Francis Hindes Groome, said in the Introduction to his 'Gypsy Folk-Tales,' p. xxxi :

certainty at present whether gypsies first set foot in Europe a thousand years after or a thousand years
 * ' All that I hold for certain is our absolute un-

before the Christian era But we do know that

India was their original home, that they must have sojourned long in a Greek-speaking region, and that in Western and Northern Europe their present dis- persion dates mainly, if not entirely, from after the year 1417."

It may be added that borrowings from Euro- pean languages constitute only a twentieth part of the gypsies' vocabulary. The total number of Greek loan-words in the different gypsy dialects may be about one hundred. Slavonic loan-words come next to the Greek. English R6many has some thirty of the former as against fifty of the latter. This fact rather militates against the theory that the Zigeuner can have lived in the midst of a Slav population ever since, and of course much earlier than, the time of Herodotus. W. F. PRIDEAUX.

EEL FOLK-LORE (10 th S. ii. 149). I am not acquainted with the proverb as applied to eels. Pescetti, whose collection of Tuscan proverbs was first published at the close of the sixteenth century, makes the creatures disturbed by the thunder not eels, but snakes. Here are his words : " Al primo tuon di Marzo escon fuor le serpi " ('Proverbi Italiani,' art. ' Stagioni '). Giusti presents the proverb with the reading " tutte le serpi," and adds a variant version, " Marzo, la serpe esce dal foalzo," without any allusion to thunder X* Proverbi Toscani,' 1853, p. 180).

It may be of interest to compare the above with old French proverbs relating to March thunder, of which I find the following ver- sions :

44 Le vendredy sainct & aourn6 vint & yssitdu Ciel plusieurs grans esclats de tonnoirre, espartisse- mens & merueilleuse pluye, qui esbahist beaucoup de gens, pource que les anciens dient tousiours que nul ne doit dire helas, s'il n'a ouy tonner en Mars." 'Chronique Scandaleuse,' .a. 1468. En mars quand il tonne Chacun s'en etoiine ; Enavril s'il tonne C'est nouvelle bonne. Calendrier of 1618 quoted in Le Roux de Lincy's

Tonnerre en Mars cause helas ! Et en Septembre n'estonne pas.
 * Proverbes,' 1842, i. 84.


 * Proverbes en Rimes,' 1664, ii. 301.

I know only two British proverbs relating to March in which snakes are alluded to. One is Scottish : *' March comes wi' adders' heads, and gangs wi' peacocks' tails." The

other, as given by Mr. W. C. Hazlitt, is : ' March wind wakens the adder and blooms he thorn " a saying to which he sees a reference in ' Julius Caesar,' II. i. 14 :

It is the bright day, that brings forth the Adder,

And that craues warie walking.

F. ADAMS.

Twan Ching-Shih (ob. 863 A.D.), in his Yu-yang-tsah-tsu,' Japanese edition, 1697, second series, torn. ii. fol. 5b, says :

"In Hing-Chau there is the so-called 'Thunder

Hollow,' regularly half full of water. Every time

thunder is heard, its water rises and flows out with

fish in it, so that the people wait for such occasions

and then capture numberless fish by means of sticks

>lanted and nets spread about the hollow. Even

svhen no thunder is heard, they can successfully

jsh by crowding and drumming close to it ; but

their capture in this manner amounts to only half

as much as what they could catch when it thunders."

The Japanese encyclopaedia, Terashima's

Wakan Sansai Dzue,' 1713, mentions a fish

named " hatahata," which swarms in the

north-east sea of Japan only in thunderous

weather. KUMAGUSU MINAKATA.

Mount Nachi, Kii, Japan.

HUMOROUS STORIES (10 th S. ii. 188). 'The Story of the Cornish Jury' will be found (with nineteen others) in * Tales of Devon and Cornwall,' related by William S. Pasmore, a native of Exeter. The little book is published by Besley & Dalgleish, Limited, Exeter. The recitations are the copyright of the author, and upon the fly-leaf is the intimation that " all infringements will be promptly proceeded against." HARRY HEMS.

1 For One Night Only,' by Richard Marsh, Appeared in To-day, edited by Jerome K. Jerome, 14 December, 1895. ST. SWITHIN.

I.H.S. (10 th S. ii. 106, 190). Though much information has already been given on this monogram, it may be of interest to add that it is the badge of the knighthood of the Seraphim of Sweden. B. W.

In connexion with this subject, it may be noted that SPG is sometimes found for Spiritus. Here the Greek form of S is no doubt borrowed from IHC and XPC.

J. T. F.

COUTANCES, WINCHESTER, AND THE CHAN- NEL ISLANDS (10 th S. ii. 68, 154). MR. J. B. WAINEWRIGHT asks for information about the transfer of the Channel Islands to the diocese of Winchester. The Societe Jersioise is now publishing a volume which will con- tain a number of interesting documents on