Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 4.djvu/642

 532 NOTES AND QUERIES. [ io«s.i V.DEC. 30. JWB. The above, like a good deal more in this hook, is conveyed, without acknowledgment, from J. J. Saar'u work, from which Yule quotes, but from the second edition, which has Palebunze in place of Pulebunze. 1677. "They [the French at Swally, near Surat, n 1671] also make use of another drink that is no better, which they call ponce, composed of harer [arrack], water, the juice of citrons, sugar, nutmeg, and cinnamon, a pint [peinte of which costs a sol."—* Relation ou Journal d'un Voyage fait aux Indes Orientates,' by Fr. 1'Estra. 57-58. 1705. " Pontz or Burepontz, as the Hollanders call it, they make thus: They take fresh spring water and squeeze therein the juice of lemons or limes, then they make it sweet with sugar, and pour A rack into it. This drink, it is true, is not altogether wholesome to drink, yet the English think much of it, and consider it a peculiar honour to treat their friends, when they visit them, with Pontz."—Christoph Langhauss, 'Neue Oat-Indische Reise,' 201. On pp. 573-5 the author describes the tomb of a Dutch .skipper in the burial-ground at Surat in 1G95, and says :— "Above on each side is a stone bench, and on each corner a big ciimor drinking bowl, from which one is accustomed in India to drink Pontz, because, as this deceased skipper had been a great lover of Pontz, he had himself desired that his tomb should be thus adorned. He then quotes some curious verses, composed by the skipper's steersman and engraved on the tomb, adding a German translation. In the latter the Pontz of the Dutch is rendered Ponch. It is strange that while all the English writers quoted by Yule call the drink punch (except Fryer, who spells it paunch, which," he says, " is Indostan for Five, from Five In- gredients "), the earliest foreign writers agree in describing it by a name in which this punch appears with a puzzling dissyllabic prefix. The earliest form of this compound word is palepuntz, as it is spelt by Mandelslo, who is also, as yet. the earliest known writer to mention the drink. (By the way. why does MR. MOUNT twice call Mandelslo a ''Dutchman"? He was a Mecklenburger.) Then we have bolleponrye, pulebunz, boulejwnrie. paliixmts, pale/runts, palapuntz, burepontz, aiia lastly follepons. Yule would have us believe that all these forms represent an English " bowl o' punch "; and certainly some of them bear a close resemblance thereto, while the second passage I have quoted above seems to give colour to the theory. Were the last form not unique and suggestive of a mis- print, we might imagine tiwfolle to be Hind. phul (cf. ' Hobson-Jobson,' s.v. ' Fool's Rack '). But it will be seen that in nearly half the instances the first vowel of the prefix is an a, which rather militates against Yule's theory. As regards punch without the prefix, in spite of MR. MOUNTS arguments. I think that Fryer's derivation still holds the field as the most likely. DONALD FEROUSON. Croydon. MR. MOUNT assumes that the name "punch" was invented, fixed, and made "so generally known as to have become a household worn among Dutchmen" by the agents of the East India Company between 1014 and 1638. But there is no proper ground for the assumption that it was invented by the English traders at all. The Dutch were in the East before the English, and the Portu- guese before the Dutch. Both understood how to obtain spirit by distillation—as, indeed, did the natives of India they traded with—and both knew how to mix their grog. It is much more likely that the English new- comers adopted the native word from the Dutch who preceded them than that the Dutch adopted it from the English new- comers. FRANK PENNY. The song which doubtless MR. YARDLBT has in his mind is in Fletcher's play, ' Rollo, Duke of Normandy,' published 1640, Act II. sc. ii. (The play was published in 1639, with title 'The Bloody Brother,' in which the song does not appear, merely a stage direc- tion, " The}' sing.") Wine, not punch, is the thing celebrated. One verse, Wine works the heart up, wakes the wit, There is no cure 'gainst age but it; It helps the headache, cough, and tissick, And is for all diseases Physick, is thus reproduced in the later song, 'Three Jolly Postboys':— Punch cures the gout, the cholic, and the phthisic, And is to all men the best of all physic. In 4th S. v. 543 and vi. 33 both songs are given at length. C. B. MOUNT. MR. YARDLEY'S memory has deceived him, as there is no mention of punch in any of the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher. The drinking song that MR YARDLEY had in his mind occurs in ' The Bloody Brother,' Act H. BC. ii. As regards the main question, there is a good deal to be said for MR. MOUNT'S con- tention, but I think the weight of evidence is in favour of punch, like arrack and toddy, being originally an East Indian drink. Is there any evidence that the expression "punch-house" was ever used out of India during the seventeenth century ' W. F. PKIDEAUX. I see a song quoted that begins " Three jolly postboys," in which it is alleged that