Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 7.djvu/443

 10 s. VIL MAY 11, 1907.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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the characteristics of an ill-bred man that " he can't play at hombre." See also Wycherley's ' Country Wife,' II. i., and ' The Plain Dealer ' (1674), II. i.

In 'Hudibras,' Part III. canto i. (1668), we have at lines 1006-8 :

Love your loves with A's and B's, For these at Beste and L'ombre woo, And play for love and money too.

Addison in No. 105 of The Spectator, 20 June, 1711, writes :

" Many a pretty gentleman's knowledge lies all within the verge of the Court, and if the sphere of his observations is a little larger than ordinary, he will perhaps enter into all the incidents, turns, and revolutions in a game of Ombre." In The Spectator, No. 140, 10 Aug., 1711. Steele writes :

" I have observed Ladies, gentle, good-humoured, and the very pink of good breeding, who as soon as the Ombre table is called for, and set down to their business, are immediately transmigrated into the veriest wasps in Nature."

Addison in No. 435 of The Spectator, 18 July, 1712, observes :

"Ladies of Fashion, when they made any parties of diversion, instead of entertaining themselves at Ombre, would wrestle and pitch the bar for a whole afternoon together."

Pope in ' The Rape of the Lock ' alludes frequently to the game. In canto i. 11. 55, 56, we find :

Her joy in gilded chariots, when alive, And love of ombre, after death survive.

In canto iii. 11. 25-7, the poet writes : Belinda now, whom thirst of fame invites, Burns to encounter two adventurous knights, At ombre singly to decide their doom. In the following seventy lines the game is described, with its technical names for important cards : Matador, Spadillio, Manil- lio, Basto.

Prior has a poem 'Upon playing at Ombre with Two Ladies ' ; and Gay in 1720 in ' The Tea-Table : a Town Eclogue,' puts these lines into the mouth of Doris :

Since I was last so blest, my dear, she said, Sure 'tis an age ! They sate ; the hour was set, And all again that night at ombre met.

JAMES WATSON. Folkestone.

(To be concluded.)

EARLY BRITISH NAMES: THEIR INTERPRETATION.

(See ante, p. 101.)

Isca and related Names. It will be con- venient to consider next some other river- names, and to begin with those connected with the Celtic words for water, Gaelic

uisge, and Welsh dobur, its earliest form. These, as will be seen below, I have treated as variants that is, as derived from the same root. As the frequent repetition of the same river- name suggests that such a name is an appellative generic, not specific signifying water, and as we found that several river-names involve the root vad or wat of this signification, so we might expecfc that a large number of river-names would involve the root of the Celtic word for water

isge) ; and such is the conclusion to which an examination of many river-names leads. The root appears in a great variety of forms,, as in Sequana, ancient name of the Seine ; Esk, the Isca Silurum of the Romans ; in Segontium, ancient name of Carnarvon ; Abersoch (Carnarvonshire) ; in the river- name Sowe (Warwickshire and elsewhere), where the g has disappeared ; in Esk in Scotland ; in Sena, ancient name of the Shannon, and Suir in Ireland ; and appa- rently in the river-names Sabrina and Sombre, the former the ancient name of the Severn. Further, it is, I think, the root involved in the names Biscay, Gascony (Vascones of the Romans), and Euskarian the last the name by which the Basque people call themselves, given to them pro- bably from without and not indigenous,, as in other cases.

Now, by comparing the above names with each other, it will be seen that they can all be derived from a common primitive root svac, which by transposition of the letters might easily be transformed into some such form as vase, yielding ultimately that seen in uisge (Gaelic for water), in Esk, and Biscay ; while by suppression of the v in svac we get Segontium, Sowe, &c. Cf. for suppression of v English son with Greek huios and Latin fi-lius, Gaelic cethir with Latin quatuor. Once more, by changing the s in our postulated root into h we get the form hvac or vac, or by transposition acv. The Welsh word for water (dobur) seems to be thus derived, that is, from such a form as vac, do being a very common Celtic prefix, r a formative element, the guttural dis- appearing, and the v provected into a b. The original form of the word would there- fore be something like do-vacr. The ancient name of Worcester (Vigorn), now repre- sented by the first syllable, seems to confirm this ; and it is in the same way that such names as Yarrow, Aeron (in Wales) and Barrow (in Ireland and Britain), where b represents an original v, are most easily explained, that is, by the loss of a g before the r. In passing we may note that Vigorn*