Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 5.djvu/384

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io* s. v. APRIL 21,

"In the 'E.D.D.' lunf/y means short, round, and stout, shaped like a cask." But the 'E.D.D.' has: " Bunyy, adj., 1, short and squat ; 2, stupid, clumsy ; 3, sb., a person who is short and stout ; anything thick and squat." That is to say, the writer inserts both "round," and "shaped like a cask," out of his own head.

If \ve are to be convinced, it must be by some better method than this. Anything can be proved if both forms and senses are coined for the purpose.

As to tun, there is not the faintest pretence for connecting it with the sound of thunder. It is derived immediately from the Late Latin tunna, of the fifth century, and it is shown, by Stokes and Macbain, that it was adopted from the Celtic type *tunna, fern., a skin, hence a wineskin, represented by the Irish tonn, a hide, skin (O'Reilly), and the Welsh ton, a skin.

A further specimen of the extremely casual and careless method employed is seen with regard to the indiscriminate handling of the F. foudre, which practically equates the Latin fulgur with the German fuder. There are two totally different words in French that happen to be of the same form. The first is fauare, a thunderbolt, derived from the Latin fulgur ; and the other is foudre, a tun, which is merely the German fuder in French spelling. And the G. fuder is cognate with the E. /other, formerly used to denote a great weight.

We can hardly be expected to pay much attention to such a mass of confusion. Nor can we be reassured by such a statement as that "from fuder [a German word] came our fudder and /other" For it really ought to be known by this time that Middle Eng- lish words are not derived from High Ger- man, and that /other is a far more original form than the German one.

WALTER W. SKEAT.

[MR. NICHOLSON has sent a note on 'Bung' and
 * Tun ' which will appear shortly.]

ME. THOMPSON OF THE GTH DRAGOONS (lO* S. v. 2G9). - Alfred Thompson was gazetted cornet by purchase in the 6th Dragoons on 18 January, 1855.

W. S.

L. L. K. has, I think, mistaken 6th for 7th (Princess Royal's) Regiment of Dragoon Guards. When Charles Bradlaugh was in the army, between December, 1850, and October, 1853, his friend and acquaintance was the young schoolmaster of this regiment no other than James Thomson ("B.V.") author of 'The City of Dreadful Night ' and

other poems. He was in the habit of singing the praises of Kossuth, and in 1863, at Mr. Bradlaugh's solicitation, succeeded Mr. W. E. Adams as secretary to the Polish Committee in London.

Reference to * Life of Charles Bradlaugh,' by Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner, 1894, vol. i.

Ep. 38, 40, 44, 45, and 109, will convince . L. K. that this is the individual he wishes to identify.

JOSEPH COLYER MARRIOTT.

AUTHORS OF QUOTATIONS WANTED (10 th S. v. 248).

In men whom men condemn as ill, is by Joaquin Miller (i.e.,C. H. Miller). In my copy of the verse pronounce is given in 1. 3 for ''proclaim," and a line for "the line" in 1. 5. P. JENNINGS.

" PLACE" (10 th S. v. 267). In its earliest application in Newcastle the term " Place ;? refers to an important mansion. In 1649 William Gray described Pandon Hall in his ' Chorographia' as the ancient palace of the Anglian kings of Northumbria. In his own copy of the book, on p. 6, an autograph interlineation reads : " There is an ancient place and house called the Duke's place ; the house of y Earls of Northumberland." This meaning was still current in the latter part of the eighteenth century. In 1782 Mr. George Anderson purchased from the suc- cessor of Sir Walter Blackett, of Matfen, Bart., " the ancient and beautiful buildings," originally constructed by his ancestor Robert Anderson, in 1580, from materials taken from the Franciscan priory on its site. This building, it is alleged, had been occupied by Charles I. and his Court from 13 May, 1646, to 3 Feb., 1647. After reoccupation in 1782 by the descendants of its original owners, Major Anderson, a son, styled his property "Anderson Place."

In 1782 the terra is also found extended to- denote a group of important mansions, and their location is called a " place." Clavering Place, called after Sir Thomas Clavering, who sat as M.P. from 1754 to 1784, was a group of stately houses on either side of the lower part of Westgate Street.

From 1789 to 1820 it is further applied to- houses of some pretension facing into a courtyard, or built as a cul de sac, retired from a thoroughfare ; also to buildings erected at the earlier date, and described by a local historian thirty-eight years later as "a range of good houses, named Saville Place, which is continued by a noble row of grand and elegant buildings, called Ellison