Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 3.djvu/265

 10<" S. III. MARCH 18, 1905.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

217

bien en ce moment a propos de quoi, et dont je ne cite que les premiers vers afin de ne pas donner des proportions trop considerables a cette note :

Guerra tenia una perra

Y Parra tenia una porra

Y la perra de Parra

Se c en la parra de Guerra,

Y Guerra le pegu con la porra a la parra de Parra, c.

La richesse de la langue espagnole se pit'-tant facilement a ces sortes de jeux de mots ou d 'esprit, si je puis m'exprimer ainsi, je pourrais en citer beaucoup d'autres, rnais je crains m'ecarter trop du sujet de la ques- tion, et je prefere les tenir particulierement a la disposition de MR. PLATT, ayant compte de la trop grande liberte de langage avec laquelle ils sont ecrits.

Pour terminer, voici encore des vers f ran 9118 assez connus, dont la prononciation indique les six jours de la semaine :

L'un dit et 1'autre m'a redit Manges-tu maigre, dis?

Je dis,

Je mange ce que le ventre dit, Et 91 me dit : Mange.

A signaler encore une petite variante sans importance dans la phrase indiquee dans la note au pied de la question qui motive cette longue reponse,

Ton the" t'-a-t'il tari ta toux ? Le verbe tarir (faire cesser), applique ici, donne la lettre t comme initiate de tous les mots. FLOREXCIO DE UHAGOX.

Princesa 8, Madrid.

" CALL A SPADE A SPADE" (10 th S. iii. 169). When a querist admits that he does not know the origin of a phrase, it would be playing the game to refrain from guessing at it. Of course there is not the faintest reason for supposing that there is any allu- sion to a game of cards. Reference to King's 'Classical and Foreign Quotations,' advertised on the back of the final leaf in the very same number of 'N. & Q.,' will show that the saying occurs in Plutarch, who gave it in Greek. I cannot believe that playing-cards were common in Plutarch's time in Greece. WALTER W. SKEAT.

Thackeray also rang the changes on this phrase : "Chesham does not like to call a spade a spade. He calls it a horticultural utensil* ('Adventures of Philip,' xxiii.). Even if the latter part of the Greek phrase as used by Plutarch and Aristophanes, namely, Ta O-VKO. <rvKa ri]v CTKCI^V 8f (TKa^t-jv ovo/xa^oH', referred, as a correspondent in the Sixth Series suggests, to the "jakes," it is quite possibls that the Greek phrase suggested the refine- ment in use later in which the spade is

substituted for the former. See 1 st S. iv. 456; 6 th S. iii. 16; and 7 th S. i. 366 Tiie phrase occurs as early at least as the first part of the seventeenth century, and probably earlier. The imputation that the proverb alludes to the spade of the playing-card is not strengthened by the reflection that there would be little or no point in the allusion.

J. HOLDEX MAC'MlCHAEL.

"DIXKUMS" (10 th S. iii. 168). I remember that a young farmer at Saltfleetby, in N.E. Lincolnshire, used to talk about " fair diukunv' in 1848-9, but I know nothing of the origin of the word, or of its meaning beyond what appears in 'E.D.LX,' "Work, due share of work." J. T. F.

[PROF. L. R. M. STRACHAX, of Heidelberg, also refers to the 'E.D.D.']

"QUANDARY" (10 th S. iii. 4). Old people here used to say quandary, and I dare say it is still so used. R. B B.

South Shields.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &o.

Bygones Worth Remembering. By George Jacob

Holyoake. 2 vols. (Fisher Unwin.) IN these ' Bygones ' we have personal reminis- cences of many to whom are .largely due the freedom of the press, freedom in the expres- sion of religious opinions, as well as the im- provement in the condition of the working classes. Born on 13 April, 1817, Mr. Holyoake soon started on the war path, and in 1842 suffered six months' imprisonment in Gloucester gaol for atheism. Four years after this he founded The Iteasoner, its first number being published on 3 June, 1846. The office was situated in the parish of St. Bride's, where he soon got into trouble for refusing to pay church rates. " After two or three seizures of property I sent to the vicar pay- ment ' in kind.' The chief produce of my firm in

Fleet Street consisted in volumes of The Reatoner. I sent the vicar three volumes, which exceeded in value his demand. He troubled me no more." The Reasoncr from the first advocated the principle of co-operation, and Mr. Holyoake has been among its most active supporters, being one of the Rochdale pioneers, of whom he wrote an interesting account, published by Messrs. Sonnenschein in 1893. In the agitation for the repeal of the compulsory stamp on newspapers he took an important part, the fines he incurred by publishing unstamped papers amounting to 600,000^. The papers were The War Chronicle and The War Fly, containing news from the Crimea. The sale of these was 30,000 copies, the penalty being 20/. upon each. This was early in 1855. A hearing was never entered upon, as the duty was shortly afterwards repealed. Mr. Holyoake has related incidents concerning the "Holy War" of the unstamped press in his 'Sixty Years of an Agitator's Life.' Among others who were threatened with prosecution he mentions Mr. Edward Lloyd, the founder of the News which still bears his name.