Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 5.djvu/58

 NOTES AND QUERIES. [io* s. v. JAN. 20, ioc&

those of the Irish oar." Pliny (' N.H.,' xviii. 72) gives the earliest extant account of a European reaping-machine thus rendered in the article * Reaping ' in ' Charabers's Ency- clopaedia' :

"In the extensive fields in the lowlands of Gaul vans [?] of large size, with projecting teeth on the edge, are driven on two wheels through the stand- ing corn by an ox yoked in a reverse position. In this manner the ears are torn off, and fall into the van."

Pliny's word translated " vans " is valli. The illustrative cut from Woodcroft's Patents ' is, I think, quite wrong.
 * Appendix to the Specifications of Eng.

The Irish car figured in 'The Penny Cyclopaedia ' article above referred to would be more like what Pliny calls vallum than the V shaped projection in Rich's ' Diet, of R. and G. Antiquities,' as I think will be clearly seen from the following rough trans- lation of Palladius, * De Re Rustica,' vii :

" In the lowlands of Gaul they abridge the task of reaping in the following manner, which does away with the need of labourers, and completes the entire operation by the help of a single ox. A two-wheeled car is made whose four-sided floor is edged with boards sloping outwards, so as to in- crease its capacity. The board at the forward end is shallower, to which numerous reaping-hooks, with their points curving upwards, are attached, and adjusted to the height of the standing corn. At the tail of the car two short poles (temones) are shaped like the handles of a litter, to which an ox is yoked and harnessed, with his head towards the vehicle. He is so thoroughly broken in to the work that he obeys the driver's slightest motion. As soon as the latter turns his machine into the stand- ing crop, and proceeds to raise and lower the hooks from behind, so as to catch the corn-ears only, dis- regarding the straw, every ear, as it is caught and cut, drops into the heap in the car, and the entire field is rapidly reaped in a few turns of the machine back and fore across it. This plan is well adapted to flat and level ground, and where the straw is considered of no value."

The original is by no means free from difficulty. I may add that Mr. Mark Liddell has recently edited the fifteenth - century English verse translation of the work.

Here it is not difficult to explain Pliny and Palladius from each other. The latter's temones are simply Pliny's valli, which were for this special service more carefully finished than was usual, for the double reason that the animal would be yoked to them in a special way, and that the carter would be constantly handling one of them as he walked beside the ox (not sitting on the front of the car, as in Woodcroft's cut), thus reminding Palladius of the handles of a litter. This Gaulish reaping- car, then, which Palladius calls carpentum (its Gaulish name in all pro- babilitythe corresponding Welsh word is

cerbyd), is what Pliny calls vallum, from the fact that it was a wheeled adaptation of the drag-cart.

In the 'N.ED.' the Welsh drag-cart is called a gambo t or rather, the gambo is explained as a drag-cart on the authority of Downes, the author of 'The Mountain Decameron.' I have already (in Literature, 13 Oct., ^1900, 'The Sin-Eater in South Wales ') said that Downes nowhere shows any familiarity with the modes of life and thought of the Welsh peasantry ; and his use of the word gambo for the drag-cart is an instance of that lack of familiarity. The South Wales gambo is like the "Scotch cart with movable frame" figured under the article ' Cart' in ' Chambers s Encyclopedia.' Had the editors of the 'N.E D/ known that, they might probably have attached more importance than they seem to have done to the form "agambo" of "akimbo" when dealing with the latter word. The crooking out of the arms, almost at right angles to the shoulders, is an easy metaphor from the lateral projection of a loaded gambo on its movable frame. The quotation for "agambo" in the 'N.E.D.' is from Bulwer, the "chiro- sopher" (seventeenth century).

As a proof that the sole authority of the 'N.E.D.' for describing gambo as a wheelless vehicle is wrong, and that I am right, I need only adduce the evidence of a competent witness David Owen ("Brutus"). In his witty but coarse attack on the Welsh Dis- senting ministry, ' Wil Brydydd y Coed,' he gives a burlesque sermon on the " wheel " of the prophet Ezekiel. "This wheel it is, 1 '' cries the preacher, "that drives the gambo of _ salvation !' The phrase subsequently enjoyed an extensive circulation as clerical slang in Wales. Some years after the appear- ance of 'Wil Brydydd y Coed' in theJlaul (1863-5), there was a large clerical gathering at Abergwili (or Carmarthen), under the presidency of Bishop Thirl wall. The Rev. J.. Jones, of Llansadwrn, an eloquent and popular divine, was appointed to preach. He happened to take for his text the very same verse of Ezekiel that the great "Wil" had preached from. Instantly a broad grin spread over every face, and an audible titter, that no amount of blowing of noses or fits of coughing could conceal, ran through the reverend assembly. "The bishop looked- puzzled and displeased," my informant, who was present, told me.

I have written at much greater length than- I had intended ; but I have succeeded, I hope, in impressing the reader with the fact that the special Celtic aptitude for matters*