Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 2.djvu/385

 10* s. ii. OCT. is, 1904.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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recollect TKTIS occurring somewhere in Aris- tophanes' ' Acharnians ' as the name of some kind of bird, but I am away from books and therefore cannot give the reference.

C. S. JERRAM.

ANAHUAC (10 th S. i. 507 ; ii. 196,258). PROF. SKEAT'S note on this word is interesting and instructive, as usual. It does not, however, throw any light on the pronunciation of the word, which was the main point of the original query. T. F. D.

LEMANS OF SUFFOLK (10 th S. ii. 248). For particulars of the Lemans of Norfolk and Suffolk see 6 th S. v. 327, 436.

EVERARD HOME COLEMAN. 71, Brecknock Road.

" FREE TRADE "^SMUGGLING (10 th S. ii. 250). Information could probably be obtained by referring to Lieut. Hon. H. N. Shore's J. HOLDEN MAC MICHAEL.
 * Smuggling Days and Smuggling Ways.'

NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN PRONUNCIATION (10 th S. i. 508 ; ii. 256). We cannot discuss pronunciations without having a phonetic alphabet for reference; nor is it at all desir- able to neglect all that has been written by Ellis and Sweet and Murray on the history of English sounds. To say that our first letter is a, not a, tells us nothing at all, unless we are first informed what sounds such symbols are meant to represent. Our first letter is, at present, pronounced like the & in vein ; and (ei) is the usual phonetic symbol for it. But it was formerly pro- nounced in many words like the Italian short or long a in amare (like the former a if short, and the latter if long) for many centuries, from the earliest times till at least the Tudor period, and in many places is pronounced so still. Thus in Shropshire the first letter is called aa, where aa denotes the aa in baa, or the a in father. The symbol ar is a very bad one for this sound, because many might be misled into supposing that the r is trilled, as in the Ital. carro. The Romans did not say carstrum, as far as I can understand this slippery spelling ; they sounded the a as in Ital. cdstro, i.e. short, whereas carso better represents the long a in Ital. cdso. If the combination -arstro- occurs in Italian (which I doubt), of course both r's would be equally trilled, a thing which an Englishman can seldom either understand or achieve.

WALTER W. SKEAT.

I observe that YORKSHIREMAN, as South- erners also have done before, uses the letter r to ensure the shortening of the a in the examples he gives arsk, parss, larst, &c.

Cannot those who study word-sounds adopt some better method of illustration ? To one like myself, born in the county of Northamp- ton, who habitually pronounces the letter r with the tip of the tongue touching the roof of the mouth, such examples convey quite a different meaning from that which is intended. If I saw the examples written as ahsk, pahss, lahst, &c., the meaning would be at once apparent. Am I quite alone in this ? or do others experience a like difficulty *?

JOHN T. PAGE.

West Haddon, Northamptonshire.

One of the delights of my boyhood was to visit an ancient aunt, who was born in 1803. On her father's side she was of Worcestershire origin, but both she and her mother were born in Yorkshire, and she herself, although she passed part of her early life in London, was resident mostly in her native county. She was a complete storehouse of nursery tales, children's rimes, and children's games, and maintained to the last (she died in 1870) the old-fashioned pronunciations are, chaney, goold, obleege, and some others. W. C. B.

THE MISSING LINK (10 th S. ii. 249). Borneo is not the only place where men possessing tails have been discovered. In 1849 a M. du Couret communicated to the Academy of Sciences in Paris an account of a race of men with tails in Central Africa. They were called " Ghilanes." He had seen one of the race, a slave, about thirty years of age. This man had a tail about four inches long. He was perfectly intelligent, and spoke Arabic well. He stated that his race numbered about thirty or forty thousand, all idolaters and cannibals. An account of M. du Couret's paper is given, I believe, in the Athenceum somewhere about September, 1849, and also in a now extinct paper, the London Medical Gazette. This form of coccygeal development may be limited to a few individuals, but there is no a priori reason why it should not have remained a permanent characteristic of certain races, not necessarily of the lowest type. J. FOSTER PALMER.

8, Royal Avenue, S.W.

DEAN MILNER (10 th S. ii. 249). The parents of Joseph and Isaac Milner were in compara- tively poor circumstances, so that when their father died the two sons were on the point of becoming what we should now call factory operatives in the woollen-weaving trade of Leeds ; see the Dean's 'Life' of his brother Joseph, and Miss Milner's ' Life ' of the Dean. On the other hand, the first baronet of the Milner family was so created in 1717, and married a daughter of Archbishop Sir