Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 2.djvu/81

 io* s. H. JCLY 23,i9M.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

61

LONDON, SATURDAY, JL'LY SS, WOk.

CONTENTS. No. 30.

NOTES: Peak and Pike, 61 Cobden Bibliography, 62 Genealogy in America, 63 Shakespeariana "Poor Allinda's growing old," 64 Leonard Cox Diadems Rigadoon Footprints of the Gods-A Cabyle, 65-Names common to both Sexes- Blectric Telegraph Anticipated " Cry you mercy, I took you for a joint-stool," 66.

QUBRIBS : Shakespeare's Sonnet xxvi. Thackeray Illus- trationsBrowning Societies Milton's Sonnet xii Disraeli on Gladstone Bathing-MachinesScandinavian Bishops Thomas Hood Glass Painters Fleetwood Cabinet, 67 Rev. John Williams William Warton. 1764 Hone: a Portrait Lisk Klias Travers's Diary The White Company: "Naker " Airault Coutances. Win- chester, and the Channel Islands St. Ninian's Church, 8 Rectors of Crowhurst Isabella Basset, 1346 ' Road Scrapings,' 69.

EBPLIES : Margaret Biset, 69 Classic and Translator- Beer sold without a Licence Lament Harp, 71 Paste Phillipps MSS. : Beatrice Barlow "Was you?" and "You was," 72 Browning's "Thunder-free" Roman Tenement Houses, 73 Bass Rock Music "Birds of a feather " Phicbe Hessel Cold Harbour, 74 Isabelline as a Colour Scotch Words and Bnglish Commentators " Withershins " Natalese, 76-Tideswell and Tideslow Pigeon Bnglish at Home "Let the dead bury their dead," 77.
 * 'Kick the bucket "North Dflvon May Day Custom, 75

NOTBS ON BOOKS: 'Cambridge Modern History,' Vol. VIII. 'Great Masters '' History of Fulk Fitz- Warine ' ' Eglwys Cymmin Papers ' Booksellers' Catalogues.

Notices to Correspondents.

gate*.

PEAK AND PIKE. I AM at present trying to discover the history of these words, and the relation between them, in their application to pointed mountains or their summits. In prosecuting the inquiry I find that much more informa- tion is needed than I possess as to the chronology, history, and topography of nike, as entering into the names of British nills. One knows generally that these names have their centre in the Lake district, in Cumber- land, Westmorland, and Lancashire - above- the -Sands, and that they extend into Northumberland, Durham (?), Yorkshire, Derbyshire, and Central Lancashire ; but I should be obliged to local readers who will send me lists of all the pikes in these latter counties. So far as I know the term is not applied in Scotland. But the author of fjavenny's Pike. Is there any height so called at Abergavenny 1 or to what does the phrase refer 1 ? Grose also, in 1790, explains pike as " a hill rising in a cone, such as Cam's Pike," which, from the ' Dialect Diet.,' I infer to be in Gloucestershire. Will any one tell me if " Cam's Pike " is a current name, and inform me exactly of the situation ? Are any other
 * Horse Subsecivse' in 1777 writes of Aber-

examples of Pike known outside the counties above mentioned'? Then, as to chronology: How far back can the name " pike " be found as thus used ? Are there any old records, or maps, that name any of the *' pikes" of the Lake district, or of any other part of Eng- land 1 At present (with the exception of the two which I have queried) I know of no examples before the nineteenth century ; but surely the Langdale Pikes, Stickle Pike, Causey Pike, Grisedale Pike, Pike of Blisco, Red Pike, Whitelees Pike, and others, must occur earlier ! Probably Scafell Pike, now " the Pike " par eminence, does not, since it was only in the nineteenth century that its pre-eminence in height over Scafell itself was ascertained. The 'Craven Glossary 'has "Pike, the rocky summit of a mountain, as Lang- dale pike, Haw pike." I think Wordsworth must also have been using the Lakeland term when, in his 'Descriptive Sketches' of 1793, he says of the Finster Aarhorn, Schreckhorn, and Wetterhorn in Switzerland, And Pikes, of darkness named, and fears, and

storms, Uplift in quiet their illumined forms.

A still earlier reference appears in Penni- cuick's 'Works ' of 1715 (ed. 1815, p. 49), "These piles of stones are often termed Cairn, Pike, Currough, Cross, &c." A very enigmatical one occurs in Aubrey's ' Wiltshire,' a. 1697 (as cited by Halliwell) : "Not far from War- minster is Clay-hill ; and Coprip is about a quarter of a mile there ; they are pikes or vulcanos." What did he mean or refer to 1 ?

But the earliest use of " pike," in reference to a mountain top, known to me, is that contained in the ' Wars of Alexander,' an alliterative poem, apparently before 1400, edited for the Early English Text Society in 1886 by Prof. Skeat. In describing the crossing by Alexander of the lofty mountain barrier between Bactria and India, it is said (1. 4814) :

Thai labourde up agayne the lift an elleven dais And quhen thai covert to the crest, then clerid the

welkyn. Than past thai doun fra that pike into a playne

launde, Quhare all the gronde was of gols, and grouen full

of inipis.

Here "pike" seems to mean summit, but to be applied to a crest or edge rather than a peak or point.

In the names of certain foreign mountains " pike " was common from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, when it was superseded by "peak." The first of all the pikes was the Pike of Teneriffe, for which there exist hundreds of references, from Eden in 1555 to Capt. Cook in 1772-84. In this we have a