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NOTES AND QUERIES, [10* s. n. SEPT. 24, 190*.

a few years ago to Dr. Furnivall. Concerning the achievements of Mr. King the book tells us little. Personal inquiry establishes that he was a geologist, and the author of a work entitled ' Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada.' He wrote also ' The Helmet of Mambrino,' a sketch -in Don Quixote land, more saturated with local colour than any opuscule we can recall. This, which first appeared in the Cen- tury Magazine for May, 1886, is reprinted in the front of the volume, the remainder of which is occupied with reminiscences and appreciations by the King Memorial Committee of the Century Association. A very gratifying tribute is thus afforded to a man of a singularly amiable and sociable disposition and of fine and cultivated tastes. Portraits of Mr. King and his associates enrich a volume which may be read with pleasure and interest by those who were not privileged to know its hero. Mr. James D. Hague, the chairman of the committee, and, apparently, the editor of the volume, claims for King that he perpetrated a literary hoax having reference to the quotation ^'Though lost to sight to memory dear," which has been frequently discussed in our columns. A full account of this, in which the line is said to have been by one Ruthven Jenkyns, and to have appeared in the Greenwich Magazine for Marines in 1707, is given on pp. 65-71. Mr. King's death took place at Phcenix, Arizona, on 29 December, 1901. Among those taking part in the tribute are Messrs. John Hay, W. D. Howells, and E. C. Stedman, and many other "Centurions." English readers who chance on this volume will do well to acquire it. 'The Helmet of Mambrino ' is a gem, as good, in a different line, as a story of Guy de Maupassant.

Old HendriUs Tales. By Capt. A. O. Vaughan.

(Longmans & Co.)

THESE stories, something in the line of 'Brer Rabbit,' are supposedly told by a Hottentot servant to some English or Dutch little children. They .deal principally with the exaltation of the jackal, chiefly at the expense of the wolf, and are an agreeable addition to our knowledge of negro folk- lore. Some difficulty is offered to English readers by the dialect, and we should be thankful for a short glossary explaining the meaning of words such as pampoene, byivoner, anjd many others, con- cerning the significance of which we are in doubt. Many of the stories such as 'Old Jackal and Young Baboon,' and k Why Little Hare has such a Short Tail' are decidedly humorous. Mr. J. A. 'Shepherd supplies some characteristic illustrations.

The Folk and their Word-Lore. By A. Smythe

Palmer, D.D. (Routledge & Sons.) OVER the domain of folk-etymology Dr. Smythe Palmer reigns supreme, and his dictionary is at once the best work on the subject we possess and one of the most entertaining of volumes for the scholar and the general reader. The present work seeks to popularize the subject, and bring it within universal ken. We are glad, for many reasons, to commend it to general perusal, one of the reasons being that familiarity with it will relieve greatly pur congested columns. A marvellous amount of information is compressed into something less than two hundred eminently readable pages. Herein the reader will find not only such whimsical derivations as the Jerusalem artichoke and its outcome Palestine soup; such popular delusions as the sirloin of beef and its companion the

baron ; and such attempts at sentimentality as the folk's-glove for the foxglove, but the reason why ignorance changes into rhyme a word correctly spelt rime ; why orlocl, an altered form of oar-lock, developes into rowlock, as though it were " the rowing contrivance" ; why beef-eater is taken for an alteration of buffetier; why Spenser, and others after him, altered eclogues into aeglogues ; why hocus pocus is fantastically derived from hoc est corpus ; why Jew is supposed to be crystallized in jewellery and Moses in mosaic; and why Ruskin, even, theorizes that play is the pleasing thing (il plait\ Not a dull page is there in a little book that is filled to overflowing with- instruction and edification. The index might with great gain be amplified.

MR. HENRY FROWDE is about to publish in two volumes, of which only 240 copies will be offered for sale, an exact facsimile of the original English edition of the ' German Popular Stories ' collected by the Brothers Grimm. All the illustrations by Cruikshank which appeared in the First and Second Series of the 'Stories,' issued in 1823 and 1826 respectively, will be reproduced, and these will be printed from the original plates. Ruskin in his ' Elements of Drawing ' declared that the etchings in these two volumes were " the finest things, next to Rembrandt's, that, as far as I know, have been done since etching was invented,"

ijtotkea ia

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