Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 3.djvu/432

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io a. HI. MAY e.

ROGESTVENSKY (10 th S. iii. 304). The y in this form is misleading, as the pronunciation of the admiral's name is Rozhestvensky (see my note on Russian names, ante, p. 260)- There is no suggestion of d, although I observe that The Times, inter alia, writes the name as though it were related to the Christmas festival. The abbreviations "Roj " and "Rodgy" are in the true cockney music- hall vein. FRANCIS P. MARCHANT.

Streatham Common.

PROF. LAUGHTON is doubtless quite right about the admiral's way of writing his name ; but the g, or more properly /, is emphatically soft, not hard. Russians are not very reliable about transliterating their own language. The word from which the name is formed is Rojdestvo ( = Nativity), but for some reason the d is dropped, possibly for euphony. I spoke of such a reason once to a pupil of mine, who replied, "Fancy a language which begins a word with vzgly [v2gr/?/a5=glance or look] talking of euphony ! " The zh spelling is much used. I agree with the Professor as to its being misleading. Perhaps some reader can tell me where it comes from, possibly Czech. It is certainly not Polish.

H. HAVELOCK.

[MR. MARCHANT, in the note to which he refers above, suggests that the admiral's name comes from rozh, barley, or rozha, a face. ]

COCKADE (10 th S. ii. 407, 537). If not too late, I should like to add t the editorial note of references to this subject namely, the right to use cockades what has been pithily said on the matter by that excellent herald and old correspondent of ' N. & Q.,' the late Dr. Woodward, in vol. ii. p. 376 of his work on ' Heraldry : English and Foreign ' (1896) :

" The use of the cockade by their livery servants has been supposed to be limited to officers in the armyand navy, militia, and volunteers; to members of the Royal Household ; and to those (e.y., deputy- lieutenants) who hold the sovereign's commission. But this is by custom, and by custom only. To be consistent those who insist on the use of cockades as a matter of right and privilege should wear them themselves."

From this instancing of deputy-lieutenants of counties as being customarily entitled to this privilege, Dr. Woodward would seem to infer that "ordinary J.P.s," as mentioned by your correspondent., would not be so entitled, the reason probably being that their commis- sions emanate from the lord lieutenant of the county only, and not from the sovereign, from whom, presumably, the deputy- lieutenants proceed. I cannot do better than refer EAST GRINSTEAD to what Dr. Woodward has written on this subject, and of which I myself made use in a previous

contribution to ' N. & Q.' on the Hanoverian- cockade some few years ago.

J. S. UDAL, F.S.A. Antigua, W.I.

SATAN'S AUTOGRAPH (10 th S. iii. 268). Anthony Wood, in his 'Life and Times' (ed.. Andrew Clark, 1891, i. 498), under date 29 Sep- tember, 1663, mentions how the king and queen, then upon a visit to Oxford, were shown over Queen's College, which since those days has been entirely rebuilt. From the chapel they went into the library " to see the divell's hand." A facsimile of the infernal script faces the page, and a long note at the foot of the latter gives the following explana- tion from The Oxford Magazine (1890) :

"19 Aug., 1710, Z. C. von Uffenbach says: 'In the morning we saw Queen's College Our guide- showed us a book said to have been written by the

Devil, "Ambrosii introductio in Chaldaicani

linguam " (Papiae, 1539), where, at f. 212 v, are "Ludovici Spoletani praecepta, sive, ut vulgo- dicitur, coniuratio cum subscripta IJAEMONTS re- sponsione." The letters look like Chinese.' The book narrates how an Italian conjured the arch- fiend, ' per Talion, Ansion, et Amlion,' to tell him. whether all the property which devolved to him by right had been received, and if not where the rest

was. No sooner had this question been written

down, than an unseen hand whisked up the pen and scribbled at a great pace a most remarkable reply, in letters based on old Iberic, and probably chosen for the profusion of prongs and tridents which em- bellish the alphabet. Unfortunately, just as the excitement is rising as to the real nature of the response, Ambrosius says coolly that he did not care much to unravel the answer, since no good comes of investigating such things : and no one else has deciphered a letter of it so as to form any sense. The Bodleian had a copy, from which a collector of autographs had cut out tl\e engraving in question :. an unnmtilated copy has recently been presented. In the Queen's College copy the page is well thumbed, and testifies to the interest excited by the story."

A. R. BAYLEY.

The latest reports show that there are- divers persons on sufficiently intimate terms to have acquired one, but it does not appear that they are so proud of it as of other examples in their collection. This difficulty being excepted, there is a facsimile of " the only known specimen " of Satanic writing given as a frontispiece to Mr. John Ashton's work 'The Devil in Britain and America, 1896. It is taken from the 'Introductio in Chaldaicam Linguam,' <fec., by Albonesi (Pavia, 1532). Mr. Ashton was told by ex- perts that in some of the characters may be found a trace of Amharic, a language which is spoken in its purity in the province of Amhara (Ethiopia), and which, according to a legend (so we are informed in the preface,