Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 5.djvu/383

 io'"s.v.AnuL2i,i906.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

315

HOPES USED AT EXECUTIONS (10 th S. v. 266). Many French ladies who should know better are anxious, for "luck," to obtain, from the few countries which still retain the punishment of hanging, bits of " corde de pendu." Applications are often made, with- out success, to influential Britons, to get such ghastly objects, through the Home Office, from the hangman. R. U. A.

ROMAN BAGPIPERS (10 th S. v. 208). In King's 'Munirnenta Antiqua,' vol. ii. p. 21, mention is made of " a little bronze figure of a Roman soldier, playing upon a pair of bagpipes," but I do not find any reference to a second figure. The three illustrations on the accompanying plate are of the same figure in three different positions.

The one referred to is doubtless now in Trinity College Library, Cambridge, accom- panied by the following description in the hand writing of theautborof the 'Muniment Antiqua':

44 This curious little bronze of a Roman soldie playing upon a pair of bagpipes was dug up ii Richborough Castle, in 1775; and being found unde the lowermost, and third, artificial ground ana flooring of the Castrum, must have remained there ever since the first foundation and building of thi fortress in the time of the Emperor Claudius. I therefore plainly proves the use of bagpipes in those early times. This seems to have been part of the ephippia, or horse-trappings, of a Roman knight It was given me by my worthy friend Mr. Boys of Sandwich, the present occupier of the estate who himself dug it up. E. King."

HORACE WHITE. Trinity College Library, Cambridge.

BOHEMIAN LANGUAGE (10 th S. v. 168, 217, 297). With reference to my reply, ante, p. 217, my friend Prof. Mourek writes that a manual of Cech, by a Mr. Drubek, was pub- lished in America some time ago. Dr. Mourek who is an adopted son of Glasgow Uni- versity, having received LL.D. in 1901 is engaged in the preparation of a grammar of Cech for English scholars, now that his well- known dictionary is complete. Many of his fellow ;- ? countrymen e.g., Prusik, Sladek, Vrcnhcky, and prominent above the rest Count Liitzow, D.Litt.Oxon. are good Eng- lish scholars, but few possess a more thorough mastery of our language than Prof. Mourek, whose qualifications for such a task are un- disputed. English authors visiting Prague for study have found no more helpful friend.

FRANCIS P. MARCH ANT, fetreatham Common.

THE GERMAN EMPEROR AND POETS LAU- REATE (10 th S. v. 187, 237).-Isaac D'Israeli was not a very exact writer, and he erred in

writing of the Emperor of Germany, who was a personage who never existed. He was thinking of the Imperator or Caesar, the titular heir of Augustus and Diocletian, and the head of the Holy Roman Empire. If Mr. Bryce's book is too long to read, the excellent review of it by Freeman (North British Review, March, 1865), which was revised and reprinted in ' Historical Essays : First Series,' may be profitably consulted. W. F. PRIDEAUX.

THEODOR REYSMAN : ANDREAS KELLER (10 th S. v. 268). According to Jocher's 'Gelehrten Lexicon' (Bremen, 1819), Theodor Reysman was a Suabian poet, who wrote a Latin poem of some twenty-two octavo pages, under the title of * Fons Blavus,' on the beauties of the Blauthal. There is no indication of any date or place, but it was probably written at Ulm between the autumn of 1530 and the summer of 1531. Cf. 'Neuer allgemein. literar. Anzeiger,' 1807, p. 552. His name does not occur in the British Museum Cata- logue.

Keller or Cellarius is not an uncommon name. An Andreas Keller was, at the be- ginning of the sixteenth century, the author of several theological works, sermons, &c., in the British Museum Library ; but the writer about whom your correspondent inquires must have appeared on the scene some cen- turies later, to judge by the title of his book.

L. L. K.

" HAMBERBONNE " OF WHEAT (10 th S. v. 190, 270). I think that your readers must all dissent from the remarkable proceeding advocated at the latter reference.

It is there proposed in order to establish an etymology that cannot so conveniently be otherwise shown to assume a form, and to attribute to it a sense, when all the while
 * here is nothing to show for either. And

"urther, the senses are manipulated instead of being quoted from authorities.

The word bung is assumed, and the sense assigned is "cask." But some of us expect evidence.

In the first place, we are told that the

'orm is "bung, bouny, or bongue" which

meant originally "a cask." But in what

anguage 1 Is bung English, or French, or

)utch ? Is bouncj English, or French, or

Dutch 1 And which is bongue ? Are all

hese forms imaginary ? If so, why restrict

he forms to three ? It would be just as

asy to imagine three or four more, all

qually useless.

As a specimen of manipulation of evidence, ake the following.