Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 2.djvu/456

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io* s. n. NOV. 5, 190*

nexion with our own " blue and buff" 1 habel/arbe in German is "yellow-dun." In Dutch Isabel applied to horses is the synonym for bay. The word is also used in this latter form in Spanish, Italian, and Portu- guese. In Spanish it is explained in Lopez and Hensley's ' Spanish-English Dictionary ' as " color pajizo claro," a bright straw-colour ; in Ferrari and Caccia's * Italian - French Dictionary' as "color sauro," a mixture of grey and tan ; in Fonseca's ' French-Portu- guese Dictionary' as "amarillo alvacento," a whitish yellow. The Italian zibellino is equivalent to the French zibelline, Spanish cebellina, and Portuguese zebelina^ which again brings us near to the form zebelah in Endymion Porter, who, of course, knew Spanish, if not Portuguese, well, as he was in attendance on Charles I. on his expedition to Madrid in 1623.

It would, however, be very interesting to know if Isabella colour occurs in any Italian portraits of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in connexion with any of the great Italian ladies named Isabella of those days. Isabella d'Este and Isabella Gonzaga occur to one's mind as ladies who were famous not only for their taste in dress, but who were in power in the great silk-weaving districts of Milan and Mantua, whence our own words "millinery," "Mantua," are derived.

It is curious, too, that, as Littre points out, Isabel is the same word not only as Elizabeth, but as Jezabel, the wife of Ahab, who, after her death, was devoured by dogs, save for her skull, "and the feet and the palms of her hands" (2 Kings ix. 35). Isabella is not very unlike the colour of half- dried bones.

Had, indeed, the quotation from Queen Elizabeth's wardrobe accounts been dated some fifteen years earlier, one might have thought the colour took its name from some charnel-house fancy of Henri III. and his Mi<mons. His sister Elizabeth, who diec under circumstances much suspected at th French Court, was wife of Philip II. and mother of the Archduchess Isabella. Eliza beth is, of course, in Spanish Ysabel.

H. 2.

'THE OXFOED SAUSAGE' (10 th S. ii. 227). Wooll's * Biographical Memoirs ' of Dr. Joseph Warton, published in 1806, contain a lette from the doctor to his brother Tom, date( " Brighton, July 5th, 1769" (sic), in which th following passage occurs (p. 348) :

"This morning we have been reading, at one < the booksellers' shops, ' The Oxford Sausage ' suspect you had some hand in that roguery ; som

t the prints I like much I see there are all your mailer things and truly I see my verses to you s an Antiquary, and Frampton's version of the ,pitaph : how should they come by these I shall eep your secret, but is it not so ? I hope to hear rom you as soon as I get to Winton."

I have not a copy of the * Sausage ' at hand, ut gather from a foot-note to p. 159 of the Memoirs ' that, in speaking of " my verses o you as Antiquary," the doctor was alluding o the * Epistle from Thomas Hearne, Anti- uary, to the Author of the Companion to tie Oxford Guide, ' which begins, riend of the moss-grown spire and crumbling arch- N\\Q was the Frampton to whom the doctor efers 1 Was he Matthew Frampton, D.C.L.,

Wykehamist, who became vicar of Brem- ill, Wilts, in 1768, and died there in 1781 Hoare's ' Wiltshire,' sub ' Chalk,' p. 35) ?

As the * Sausage ' was published in 1764 'Brit. Mus. Catalogue'), and is mentioned n a list of new books in the Gentleman's Magazine for June, 1764, p. 304, it looks as if /Vooll misread the date of the letter, its true late being 5 July, 1764. Joseph Warton )robably wrote the letter when he was about X) return to Winchester College at the end f the summer holidays. H. C.

Cooke's edition (printed 1800) of 'The D oetical Works of Thomas Warton, with the Life of the Author,' mentions that Warton Dublished the * Oxford Sausage ' (in 12mo) in 1764, and that " in this collection the * News- man's Verses ' and several other pieces of pleasantry " were contributed by Warton.

The ' Progress of Discontent ' was written in 1746. Warton's death took place Friday, 21 May, 1790. H. L. WAINE WRIGHT.

In 2 ncl S. ii. 332 it is stated that the original edition was published without a date. A copy of the title-page to the edition issued in 17CJ4 will be found at 2 ntl S. iii. 199.

EVERARD HOME COLEMAN.

71, Brecknock Road.

PIN WITCHERY (10 th S. ii. 205, 271). The paragraph sent herewith is extracted from the Lindsey and Lincolnshire Star of 1 Octo- ber. It deserves a place in ' N. & Q.' as a very recent instance of the well-known effigy superstition, in which, as is usual, pins figure as symbolic means of torture. These magi- cal effigies were usually moulded in wax or clay. I do not call to mind another case of straw being the material employed :

"Superstition dies hard in Belfast. A case which had delighted the author of ' The Ingoldsby Legends' has just occurred in the town of Coote- hill, co. Cavan. On Sunday evening last informa- tion was brought to the police of a sudden death having occurred in Church Street. Hastening t