Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 7.djvu/459

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

379

many such stoppings, and step-dancers are by no means dead, though gone out of village life, maybe. A good dancer was one capable of taking any step music, or without any music whatever. Many of the dancers used stepping shoes or light clogs the latter preferred in the clog-wearing localities. Nimbleness and clatter were essentials, with a good " crowdy " to give the music. There were a number of men who were good " crowdies " = fiddlers, playing from ear the tunes to which the dancers stepped. The dancing was always on wood a floor or large table : the latter preferred, as the stoppings and beats could be seen to the better advantage. Some danced without the crowdy, but it was to music which they knew by heart and carried in their feet.

I think the Notts woman mentioned by G. W. meant the tune of the dance, not the " time," for this would be in the music. When the dancing was done without a crowdy, the listeners could tell the tune by the steps and beats on the boards. Some- times there would be a couple of dancers on the table. When one had gone through an arranged number of steps, he stopped, the other taking his place ; and this was done so deftly that there was no break in the music whilst the change was made. The old fiddlers were hard to tire, and one crowdy, with intervals " to wet his whistle," could keep it up for hours.

THOS. RATCLIFFE.

Worksop.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &o.

Some Curios from a Word-Collector'* Cabinet. By the Rev. A. Smythe Palmer, D.D. (Routledge & Sons.)

DR. SMYTHE PALMER is one of our ablest and most interesting writers on English philology. All of his odds-and-ends are interesting, and will, we hope, send many readers on the hunt for word- meanings. It is a pursuit possible to all indeed, suggested by ordinary discourse. One of the saddest things of the day to a lover of English is the ignorance many good writers show of the meanings of the words they use ; while the average man (who thinks he can write by divine chance, and does it more frequently than formerly) makes the most hideous mistakes. Philology, or that part of it now known by the name of " semantics," is a fascinating subject in reality, and perhaps it is partly the fault of the philologists that it appears dull. Dr. Smythe Palmer has a happy knack of being learned and lively at the same time. He gives here some Greek and Latin, as he is bound to do, but not enough to appal the common man. He ives, further, good examples of words from Eng- prose and verse ; for he knows the relative

give lish

merits of, say, Tennyson and the average news- paper or novel as wells of English undetiled. Some words discussed here have been also treated in our own columns, but the intelligent reader has no need to pick and choose, for everywhere he will find both instruction and entertainment. There is a curious section on ' Words which feign Relationship,' but are really not connected, such as " scullion " and " scullery," " mat " and "mattress," "scar" and "scarify," "pen" and " pencil." It appears that there are two words of different meanings now spelt " tight." The Greek words quoted are also printed in English letters with the quantities marked, which is a good idea.

MR. ELLIOT STOCK has sent us the second and third quarterly parts of Book -Prices Current for 1907. The work is issued in sections for the benefit of those subscribers who wish for early information about book-prices. We notice in the earlier section many important items, such as a finely written and illuminated English Psalter (purchased by Mr Quaritch for 3251.) ; Caxton, 'The Royal Book/ 470/. (bought on behalf of the British Museum) ; Spenser's ' The Shepheardes Calender,' 1581 (B. F .); and 'Hamlet,' 1637, 4to, 107^. The

Stevens,,.

entries in the later section run from No. 2605 to No. 4118.

The Fortnightly Review maintains its position as on the whole the most interesting ot monthly magazines. Apart from political articles, which do not interest us here, we get a glimpse, in ' Some Letters of Giosu6 Carducci ' of an admirable scholar and humanist. Mr. Lewis Melville is entertaining, but not particularly critical, on ' The Centenary of Samuel Warren,' whose conceit is better remembered than his ability. Dr. A. S. Rappoport has no difficulty in making an interest- ing article on * Pobiedonostzev, the Apostle of Absolutism and Orthodoxy,' and Mrs. St. Clair Stobart has a well-argued paper on 'Sex and Suffrage,' which is laudably free from sentiment- ality. Mrs. H. W. Nevinson shows the suitability of Juvenal's tirades to-day. This is, perhaps, the most interesting article, as being the most novel, for it is seldom that the despised classics of Greece or Rome are allowed a hearing nowadays. How apt they often are only scholars know; and not long since, in a review of an edition of Petronius,, we pointed out some unconscious plagiarisms fronii his vulgar folks by " up-to-date " people. The lines of Kipling mentioned at the end of the article have already been translated into Latin.

IN The Nineteenth Century the first five articles are occupied with problems of empire and soldier- ing. Dr. Smythe Palmer follows with a learned' and interesting paper on 'The Angelic Council,' which seems to be implied in Genesis i. 26. He points out traces of the idea that there was " a consultative Sanhedrim of angels" which assisted in the work of man's creation. ' Religion and the Child,' by Mr. Havelock Ellis, is one of the many signs that the child-mind is being at last intelli- gently investigated, instead of being thwarted or misunderstood by those who have no real recollec- tion of their own childhood. Capt. Vernon Harris. deals with the characteristics of the female prisoner, which include mawkish sentimentality. Men, he- says, when they start out to commit suicide, gene- rally succeed in their attempt (we know two cases to the contrary), whereas women do not carry it.