Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 4.djvu/39

 iv. JULY s, 1905.) NOTES AND QUERIES. 27 Monarch. But is it the case that any other his- torical date was similarly tinkered? I venture to think that the point is worth noting and clearing up.—I am, Sir, your obedient servant, DAVID HONTER-BLAIB. Oxford, June 5. [MR. A. F. ROBBIKS had an interesting note on George III.'a birthday at 9th S. iv. 305. In it he called attention to the fact that George III. and Queen Victoria were both born on 24 May, and, besides citing The London Gazette of 26 May, 1738, gave an extract from The Morning Chronicle of 3 Jan., 1801, which pointed out that the king was born OD -4 Hay, and not 4 June.] MIDSUMMER DAY.—In the West Country on Midsummer Day, exactly at noon, maidens have been wont, for generations, to take a glass and half fill it with water. Into this is thrown the white of an egg, care being taken to keep it free from yolk. The receptacle is then left to stand for five minutes upon a •window sill exposed to the sun's rays. The form the contents are then supposed to assume, as they float upon the water, is believed to indicate the trade of a possible prospective husband. If they look like a ship, he will be a sailor ; if a house, a builder, and so on. Speculation is naturally rife on these occasions, and the various guesses afford mnch amusement. On Midsummer Day just past, in one hospital here, I heard a large wardful of women sorely lamenting they had not been able to procure eggs that morning for the purpose of reading their fortunes after the manner described. HARRY HEMS. Fair Park, Exeter. " PICCANINNY " : ITS ORIGIN.—Prof. Skeat, in his 'Notes on English Etymology," has shown the improbability of Ogilvie's explana- tion of this terra from Spanish pequeno nifio, i.e., young child. Prof. Skeat thinks that it is all one word, and was originally peqtteiiin —diminutive of Spanish pequeno—and I am inclined to agree, except that perhaps instead of Spanish it is Portuguese. The Portuguese dictionaries have pequeno, small, and the diminutive pequemno, very small. There is, however, another possible etymology which has hitherto escaped lexicographers. Prof. Skeat quotes from Stedman the negro words for "small," peekeen, and for "very small," peekeeneenee. He does not seem to be aware that there is a good vocabulary of the jargon spoken by the blacks — Focke's ' Neger- Engelsch Woordenboek,' 1855, written for the ose of Dutchmen. It contains an entry, "Pikien, klein, weinig, Jong; kind. Jong troost." This p'ikien is the Dutch spelling oi peekeen. Focke has nothing equivalent to Stedman's peekeeneenee, but he gives the compound " Pikien-ningre, negerkindereu, kreolen," which he explains as an African corruption of Portuguese pequeno neyro, little negro. Here, then, for those who prefer to ook upon piccaninny as made up of two elements, is a substitute for the exploded nequeiio nirio. The terra is admittedly diffi- cult, and every hypothesis is worth discus- sion ' JAS. PLATT, Jun. (Queries. WE must request correspondents desiring in- formation on family matters of only private interest to affix their names and addresses to their queries, in order that answers may be sent to them direct. HORSE-PEW = HOKSE-BLOCK.—In the course of a recent investigation of the very difficult history of the word pew I have received from the Ilev. Dr. J. C. Cox information of an interesting use of the word, which forms a link in its English history, and which, with Dr. Cox's permission, I think worth preserv- ing in ' N. & (j.' He says :— " Walking out from Southwold to the neighbour- ing church of Revdon, on the afternoon of the last Sunday in May. I was struck with the appearance of the old horse-block in the churchyard wall by the side of the highway, with brick steps on the church side and then a flat stone on the top of the wall. I fancy it was early eighteenth-century date, and was evidently for the women to get off their pillions. As 1 was looking at this with interest a very old man—a Southwold fisherman—passed by. lor curiosity, to hear what he would say, I asked him what the steps and flat stone were for. Oh, he said ' it is but a horse-pew that they used to mount and dismount when they rode to church with the women behind them, as I have heard tell and seen in old pictures.' Tasked him to repeat the word he had used, and he said again quite plainly fione- pew I asked him to spell it, but he said he was no scholar; he supposed it was the same word as used for a seat in church, but he had never thought of that before. He had always called it a horse- pew,' Sic." Now the interest of this lies in the fact that pew represents Latin podium, a " stump," platform, or raised post, and that pogr/io, the Italian representative of podium, is rendered by Florio "a hill or mounting side of a hill, a block to get upon horsebacke." A kindred use is that of Middle Dutch puyde, later puye, explained by Hexham, 1687, as "a Pue, or place elevated in a market, to proclaim or to cry of anything," the platform with steps on which a market-cross stands ; in which sense also puie occurs, or used to occur, in Northern France. Thence we pass easily to mediseval Lat. podium, in Du Cange "Lectrum, ana- lectrum in ecclesia, ad quod gradibus ad-