Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 5.djvu/421

 .V.MAY 5, 1906.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

345

the volume to the second Lord Lyttelton, who died in 1779, at the age of thirty-five.

In justice to ' N. & Q.,' I should like to point out that the whole question was long ago threshed out in these columns. One con- tributor gave a much earlier reference, from The, London Magazine for July, 1745 ; while the late MR. EDWARD SOLLY, than whom no one had a closer acquaintance with eighteenth- century literature, afterwards quoted from The Westminster Review of 6 July, 1745. The first to give a. reference to Mr. Dobell's volume of 'Poems' was MR. C. A. WARD. MR. SOLLY pointed out that if Lord Lyttelton really wrote the poem, which was partly dis- owned by his executors, he probably bor- rowed the idea from Louis Sebastien Mercier's 4 L'An Deux Mille Quatre Cent Quarante,' which was written in 1768, but first pub- lished at Amsterdam in 1770, and a second time s.l., but probably at Paris in 1786.

The quotation from the -magazine of 1745 has been twice printed in 'N. & Q.,' and is well worth perusal. The following refer- ences will entertain those who are interested in the subject : 1 st S. ix. 74, 159, 361 ; 2 nd S. iii. 286, 397, 439 ; 4 th S. ix. 343, 396 ; xi. 253 ; 5 th S. v. 45, 214, 338 ; vi. 311, 420, 489 ; 6 th S. iii. 208, 331 ; 7 th S. iv. 489 ; 8 th S. vii. 26, 99 ; and an article in Once a Week for 11 Sept., 1869, headed ' Literary Similarities.'

W. F. PRIDEATJX.

m " REBOUND," VERB. The earliest quotation given for this word in the 'New English Dictionary' is from the 'Alliterative Poems of the Fourteenth Century,' edited by Morris for the Early English Text Society, where (p. 49, 11. 421-2) it is said of the Ark that it

Jflote forthe with the flyt of the felle wyndes ;

Wheder-warde so the water wafte, hit rebounde.

It floated forth with the force of the fell winds ;

Whithersoever the water carried it, it rebound. The word is interpreted as meaning that it bounded or leaped under the impact of the waters.

^One feels diffident in dissenting from so high an authority, but it seems a little suspicious to find rebound bearing this meaning at so early a date. The old French rebundir, from which it came, meant to resound or to reverberate, e y., ' Vie de St. Auban' (ed. Atkinson, 1. 1336).

L'eir fait a sun talent rebundir e suner.

He made the air at his will re-echo and sound. Rebundir is from a Latin re - bun-dare (*-bonter), re bombitare, to yield a humming sound (bombus). 1 venture to think that rebounde in the passage quoted is a distinct word, the past tense, as the sense demands,

of re-boun, and is to be analyzed as reboun-d (rebonned). The old verb to boun, meaning to go, proceed, or betake oneself, was in frequent use down to the sixteenth century, and occurs in this same poem (1. 1398, p. 77).

Barounes at the side-bordes bonnet ay-where.

Barons went about (=boun-d) everywhere. See 'N.E.D.,' s v. 'Boun,' quoting " Pirrus boivned to Delphos yle " from Barbour's 'Troy -book,' about 1375. " Boun(d) for home " is the same word.

The meaning of the passage then would be merely that the Ark went forward and went backward as the winds and waters- carried it. The earliest quotation for rebound would then be Trevisa, 1398.

A. SMYTHE PALMER.

S. Woodford.

CRESWELL OF ODIHAM, HANTS. Some Chancery pleadings of 1661 give a very in- teresting scrap of the pedigree of this family. The suit is brought by Edward May, of Odiham, yeoman, and Mary his wife, and Elizabeth Okely, of St. Andrew, Holborn, Middlesex, widow. It is about an inn called "The White Hart" in Katheryn Street, New Sarum, and recites that the ladies above named were sisters and coheirs- of Robert Creswell, of Odiham, gent., de- ceased, who was brother and heir of John Creswell, late of the same, gent., deceased, who was brother and heir of Thomas Cres- well, late of the same, esquire, deceased, who was son and heir of Robert Creswell the elder, late of the same, esquire, deceased, who was brother and heir of Sir Edward Cres- well, late of the same, knight, deceased. No answer is filed therewith, so we do not know if the pedigree was accepted by the defen- dants. The full reference to the document in the Record Office is " Chancery Bills and Answers before 1714, Reynardson, 408/313." GEORGE F. T. SHERWOOD.

50, Beecroft Road, Brockley, S.E.

BTJRNS'S ' BONNIE LESLEY.' In the revised and enlarged edition of 'The Golden Treasury ' (Macmillan, 1904), the second stanza of this song is given thus : To see her is to love her,

And love but her for ever ; For Nature made her what she is,

And ne'er made sic anither ! The poet transcribed the first version of the song in a letter to Mrs. Dunlop, written from Annan Water-foot in August, 1792, and Currie uses this text in his 'Works of Robert Burns,' vol. iv. p. 15. His reading of the fourth line in the stanza just quoted is,