Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 4.djvu/429

 iv. OCT. 28,1906.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 355 English Dictionary.' We there find : "£elap, v. obs., to lap about, clasp, enfold, envelop ; to environ, surround. Chiefly in pa. pple. belapped." And one of the examples given is : " 1586. A. Scot, ' Poems,' This belappit body here"; which is the very quotation required. What I have never been able to understand is this. My experience is that when an •editor has to explain a Latin or Greek word, he consults some good authority, and gives the right explanation, being in fear of the critics. But (as I can prove up to the hilt) many an editor who has to explain an English word (i.e.,a word for which he has no regard, -as it belongs to a barbarous and "unclassical" language) has no sense of responsibility, and has no fear of the critics, because many of them care no more about the matter than he does himself. Why should our noble language, to use Mr. Quiller - Couch's expression, be thus " down trodden " ? WALTER W. SKEAT. FARRANT'S ANTHEM "LORD, FOR THY TENDER MERCY'S SAKE " (10th S. iv. 265).— 'Lydney's Prayers' were reprinted by the Parker Society in their edition of Bull's ''Christian Prayers and Holy Meditations' {p. 174), but the words appear to have been partially altered to suit the melody. They also are given in the second edition of •Clifford's ' Divine Services and Anthems,' 1664. See 1st S. ix., xi. ; 3rd S. ii., iii. EVERARD HOME COLEMAN. 71, Brecknock Road. "PEARLS CANNOT EQUAL THE WHITENESS OF HIS TEETH " (10th S. iv. 307).—There is a Persian version of the legend, in a book called 'Makhzan al Asrar' ('Storehouse of Mysteries'), by Nizami, written about the year 1176 or 1179. " Pearls cannot equal the whiteness of his teeth " appears as " Durr ba supedi na chu dandan e ost." An English translation of this Persian form of the story was printed in Moncure D. Conway's ' Sacred Anthology,' 1874. Can any one trace where Nizami got it ? JAS. PLATT, Jun. FOXES AS FOOD FOR MEN (10th S. iv. 286). —Robert Lovel, in his ' History of Animals and Minerals,' 1661, in giving the food of foxes mentions that they feed on hens, geese, conies, hares, mice, and grapes. The mixture of these, combined with the probability of the grapes being sour and not agreeing, allows him to quote from Galenus, " The flesh is dry, somewhat like that of a Hare," and also from Rhases, "It is hot, viscous, hard of concoction, and of bad juyce, and is best in autumne." The following item of diet may account for some of our ancestors being termed " sly." The ancestor went, not for a rabbit to make something to roll baby-bunting in, but for a fox, for " the brain often given to Children preventeth the falling sickness." There are many wondrous uses for parts of the anatomy of the animal, and his brain must have been worth having when the sixteenth-century fox could reason that he would cure what hecould not endure. " When troubled with fleas they gently sink down in the water, having a little Hay, or some other thing on their backs for them to crepe to." We would all go a-hunting to-day if we could believe that " Coining into a Henroost, they will shake their tails, to affright them, and when off their perches they each them." HERBERT SOUTHAM. " CHRIST'S HOSPITAL " (10"" S. iv. 247, 310). —A reference to the Letters Patent, 26 June, 7 Edw. VI., will show that John Howes was perfectly accurate in describing this institu- tion as " Chryste his Hospital!." It is ex- pressly stated that " the hospitalls aforesaid, when they shall be so founded, erected, and established, shall be called, named, and stiled, the hospitalls of Edward the VIth king of England, of Christ, Bridewell, and of St. Thomas the Apostle." The hospital of Christ was, of course, Christ's Hospital. And a little further on in the same Letters Patent mention is expressly made of " the manner, or house, called Bridewell - place, or any other the houses called Christ's Hospital!, and St. Thomas's Hospitall in Southwarke." Further reference may be made to Trollope's 'History of Christ's Hospital,' 1834. Leigh Hunt was possibly misled by a fancied analogy between the name of the hospital and that of the neighbouring church, which is ordinarily called Christ Church, Newgate. W. F. PRIDEAUX. JOHN DANISTER, WYKEHAMIST (lO1" S. iv. 289).—I have searched in vain for any person of these names both in the original register of scholars at Winchester College and in the manuscript catalogue, which the same college possesses, of the fellows of New College, Oxford, 1386-1785. This useful catalogue, compiled with notes from the New College records, was, I believe, the work of Charles Pilkington, Canon of Chichester, who died in 1870. There was a William Banester, of Steeple Ashton, Wilts, not mentioned in Foster's 'Al. Oxon.,' who migrated from. Winchester to New College in 1508 ; but this date seems to be too early to justify the suggestion that he is the man about whom