Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 7.djvu/133

 10 s. VIL FEB. 9, 1907.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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" MESTEQUE " : ITS ETYMOLOGY. In the review (ante, p. 58) of the last section of the ' N.E.D.,' mesteque, a term applied to the finest cochineal, is said to be of obscure origin. I should like to suggest that it is merely a corrupt or hispanicized form of the tribal name Mixtec, familiar to readers of Prescott. In Rees's ' Cyclopaedia,' 1819, s.v. ' Cochineal,' there is a sentence which confirms this theory :

" The cultivated cochineal, called also mcxtique from a Mexican province of that name, is the product of slow and progressive improvement in the breed of the wild cochineal."

It will be perceived that the name of the province is not precisely stated. We may, I think, safely assume it to be Mixtecapan, the province of the Mixtecs, who were an Indian race allied to that remarkable people the Zapotecs, who have given to Mexico some of her greatest statesmen.

JAS. PLATT, Jun.

" ADESPOTA." MB. RALPH THOMAS in a note upon Mr. King's book says (ante, p. 25), with reference to the title given by Mr. King to his anonymous quotations: " I do not think much can be said in favour of ' Ades- pota.' " May I be allowed to say that I think a great deal may be said in its favour ? In various editions of the Greek ' Anthology ' aSecrTTOTOf literally, without master, owner- less is the proper term for a piece the author of which is unknown. The word is used by Plutarch in this sense. I cannot see why

in a literary sense, just as ' Anecdota ' and
 * Adespota ' should not be used in English

Oxford.
 * Analecta ' are so used. A. L. MAYHEW.

WATTS AND THE ROSE. Most of us when children were familiar with Watts' s ' Divine and Moral Songs,' and probably many will remember how infelicitously Capt. Cuttle (the author of the motto of ' N. & Q.') quoted the one on the sluggard in his delight at hearing again the voice of his old friend Sol Gills. I wish, however, to refer to the one relating to the rose, which begins :

How fair is the rose ! what a beautiful flower !

The glory of April and May.

With the first line all will agree ; the rose is undoubtedly the queen of flowers, and deserves all the praises which the poets have lavished upon it. But it is essentially, in this country, a summer flower : June is its principal month, and rarely is it to be seen out of doors earlier.

Whilst speaking of the rose, I may perhaps be allowed to call attention to a singular error of etymology in Syme's ' English Botany '

(vol. iii. p. 203), where we are told not only that " rose " is derived from the Greek p68ov, but that that word means red. We have,, indeed, the Greek adjective pdSeo?, but that comes, like our word " rosy," from the rose, not the rose from it. W. T. LYNN.

" SPABTAM NACTUS ES, HANG EXOBNA." (See ante, p. 25.) The tracing of this quota- tion to its Greek source in a fragment of Euripides has been sufficiently shown in 3 S. v. 260, 307, 444; but it had been observed earlier in a characteristic note by Archdeacon Wrangham in his edition of Dr, Thomas Zouch's 'Works,' 1820, vol. i. pp. xiii, xiv. I recorded at 10 S. vi. 486 its- use by Henry Cornelius Agrippa, and I have a memorandum that it occurs in the dedica- tion of Schrevelius's ' Juvenal.' It appears on the title-page of Chamberlayne's ' Present State,' 1684, the 'Whitaker's Almanack' of that time ; but it is perhaps most familiar to English readers by being quoted in Ed- mund Burke's ' Reflections on the Revolu- tion in France' (ed. Daly, 1841, p. 181), where he terms it " a rule of profound sense.''

W. C. B.

" CABBYING COALS TO NEWCASTLE " : EBBOB IN RTJFFHEAD. In Ruff head's ' Sta- tutes at Large,' 1769, vol. i. p. 516, the statute 9 Hen. V. s. i. c. 10 is headed " Keels- that carry Sea-Coals to Newcastle shall be measured and marked." Whether the phrase quoted above was in use or not in 1769 I do not know, but Ruffhead's curious title did not state the effect of the Act correctly. He should have written at instead of " to." A customs due of 2d. was payable to the king on every chaldron sold to people not franchised in the port of the town of Newcastle-on-Tyne. The keels- by which the coals were carried from the land to ships in the port were assessed to a portage of 20 chaldrons each ; but larger ones had been built, with the result that the king was cheated of his dues. Hence the provisions for marking and measuring.

R. S. B.

[The late MR. F. ADAMS quoted at 8 S. ii. 484 an instance of the use of the proverb before 1614. See also 4 S. vi. 90 ; 5 S. xi. 486 ; 8 S. iii. 17, 136 ; 9 S. xi. 495.]

FALLING BIBDCAGE AND ILL LUCK. The Standard for 4 January contained the following :

" While Mrs. Dunn, a lodging-house keeper, of Aldershot, was working in her wash-house on Boxing. Day, her caged blackbird fell down. She took it to be an omen of ill luck, and it so affected; her that she went all over the house to see if there