Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 7.djvu/37

 10 s. VIL JAN. 12, 1907.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

do not find that which Manningham heard. The quotation is still to trace.

EDWARD BENSLY.

University College, Aberystwyth.

When at Brighton lately I happened to take down from the Free Library reference shelves, freely open to readers, a book with which I am sorry to say I was not before acquainted, King's ' Classical and Foreign Quotations.'

In the ' Quotations Index ' I observe one I have never been able to find in any other work " Spartam nactus es, hanc exorna." Mr. King tells us that the usual translation or interpretation of the Latin, " You have lighted on Sparta, (therefore) be an orna- ment to it," or more generally " You are by accident of birth a Spartan, so do your best to adorn your country," is wrong. The explanation is too long to quote (see pp. 332-3).

Mr. King gives us anonymous quotations under the title of ' Adespota.' Now "anony- mous " is a cumbersome word enough, but I do not think much can be said in favour of such a word as " adespota."

One translation I note seems to have the authority of a great name : " L' ami tie est 1' Amour sans ailes." This Lord Byron translated, we are told, " Friendship is Love without his wings." But this does not appear to me to be an exact translation. There is no " his " in the original ; and love here is quite as impersonal as friendship.

The preface tells us of a most unfortunate suppression which has been made in this edition, namely, the omission of the mottoes of the English peerage, on the absurdly ridiculous objection of a correspondent that their insertion was " lordolatry." To this, Mr. King observes, he had no reply. Well, I should have given a pretty forcible reply. Many classical quotations and many of our most trenchant mottoes, the pride of the English, are consequently omitted. One of these is " Hoc age." Shortly translated, it means " do this," that is, attend to what you are about, or attend with all your might and main to the matter you have in hand. RALPH THOMAS.

" BUSKIN." Prof. Skeat has been lately proposing to the Philological Society an etymology for this extremely difficult word. He finds in Florio the word borzachini, buskins, and he sees no difficulty in deriving from this comparatively modern Italian word the Old French forms brousequin, brosequin, bousequin, and brodequin. He

thinks it is quite easy to derive all the forms of buskin in Spanish, Dutch, and English from the Florio form borzachini. Is it possible to accept this account of the source of our word " buskin " ? It seems to me that such an etymology is impossible. How can the French forms be derived from the Italian form, when, so far as the evidence goes, the French forms are older than the Italian one by more than a century ? But let it be granted that the Italian borzacchini (as it should be spelt) is the original of all the buskin forms, it is impossible to find an ety- mology for the Italian word. Certainly, Prof. Skeat's etymology will not do. He explains borzacchino as a diminutive of It. borza, a form of borsa, a purse, Gr. ^vpcrtj^ a hide. But how can this be ? There is no diminutive suffix -cchino in Italian. Prof. Skeat has been thinking of the diminutive -ino ; but how is the ch- to be explained ? I am afraid the word cannot be explained as a word formed on Italian soil. It is far safer to explain it as a borrowing from one of the non-Ital an forms. These all point as Dozy suggests, to a Spanish source ; cp. Sp. borcegui, Pt. borzeguim. For the rela- tion of these old forms to the Arabic origin sherqi sheep's leather, I beg to refer the eager inquirer to the learned pages of Dozy. See his ' Glossaire des Mots Espagnols et Portu- guais derives de 1'Arabe ' (1869), s.v. ' Bor- cegui.' A. L. MAYHEW.

PENNELL'S ' LIFE or LELAND.' In Mrs. Pennell's ' Life of Charles Godfrey Leland," 1906, vol. i. p. 244, we are told that "he astounded the passing Magyar almost to tears- with an unexpected Bassama Teremtete." Mrs. Pennell seems to think this is a sort of national salutation. Lest any of her readers should be tempted to try experiments with passing Magyars, I feel bound to point out that it is a blasphemous oath, such as I am sure would never have soiled her pages if she had known its meaning. Readers of Borrow will remember the prominent part it plays in his ' Gypsies of Spain,' owing to- a theory he had that from it is derived the name Busne, given by the Spanish gipsies to all who are not of their race. Borrow calls it "a term exceedingly common amongst the lower orders of Magyars, to> their disgrace be it spoken." I have been in Budapest, and often heard it, but never from an educated Hungarian.

JAS. PL ATT, Jun.

WASHINGTON PEDIGREE. About eight weeks ago I saw in either The Daily Chronicle or The Daily Mirror a letter from a gentle-