Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 7.djvu/47

 10 s. VIL JA*. 12, 1907.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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^afterwards was lent, and was never returned. If I come across any further information relating to ' Death and the Sinner,' I shall certainly send it to ' N. & Q.' for the benefit of ST. SWITHIN or any other reader who may t>e interested in it :

" Sinner ! I come by Heaven's decree, JMy warrant is to summon thee ; And whether thou'rt prepared or no, 'This very night even thou must go."

"'Ah, ghastly Death ! but thou look'st pale, And opest a door to heaven or hell ; Then wilt thou not with me forbear, And spare me yet another year ?

O Death ! have mercy on my age, And spare me yet upon this stage ; For I am just a flower in bloom, And wilt thou cut me down so soon ? "

" Youth or age I ne'er have spared, But if you look in yon churchyard You '11 see them there in hundreds lie, Whom I have made my lawful prey."

" Death ! no mercy wilt thou show, But unto Jesus will I go, Who rose triumphant from the grave, A guilty wretch like me to save.

THOMAS MATHEWSON. 4, Greenfield Place, Lerwick, Shetland.

AUTHORS OF QUOTATIONS WANTED (10 S. vi. 489).

The maiden's delight, the chaperon's fear. 1 regret not being able to give the reference asked for by SIR AFFABLE, and perhaps the generally accepted authorship at the time George Whyte-Melville and I used to meet In the Vale of White Horse may be considered too sketchy to warrant my having given the name of my friend as the author.

HAROLD MALET, Col.

With respect to the question raised by SIR AFFABLE and the editorial note thereon, I may say that the lines appear as follows in chap. ii. of Whyte-Melville's novel ' Good for Nothing ' :

The damsel's delight and the chaperone's fear, He is voted a trump amongst men ;

His father allows him two hundred a year,

And he 'II lay you a thousand to ten. The novelist is moralizing on fast young men, and speaks of these lines as being " the modern satirist's description of a promising young man." Whyte-Melville would surely not refer to himself in this way, and I should consider it very improbable that he was their author.

JOHN T. PAGE.

As to the author of the lines on clouds ^tvith silver linings, I may say that the -quotation, though incorrectly given, comes irom ' Verses, Wise or Otherwise,' by Ellen

Thorneycroft Fowler, first published in 1 895, and reissued about a year ago by Messrs. Cassell & Co. The poem they are taken from is called The Wisdom of Folly.'

As my wife is constantly receiving letters about these lines, and as they are printed (without name or acknowledgment) in at least one collection of verse, I may perhaps be allowed to quote the stanza in full : Though outwardly a gloomy shroud, The inner half of every cloud

Is bright and shining : I therefore turn my clouds about, And always wear them inside out

To show the lining. ALFRED LAURENCE FELKIN.

There is a parallel to MR. PICKFORD'S quotation in a South Indian proverb, pro- bably also North Indian : " The pagoda cat does not fear the gods." R. S.

ST. EDITH (10 S. vi. 29, 70, 91, 116, 513). There need be no difficulty in consulting the metrical life of St. Edith. The legend has been reprinted since 1851. The title is " St. Editha, sive Chronicon Vilodunense, herausgegeben von C. Horstmann, Heil- bronn, 1883." The extracts quoted are obviously garbled and modernized.

Our Anglo-Saxon heroes and saints are only known by name as recorded in vile and misleading spellings, due to the in- genuity of Norman scribes. St. " Editha " would not have recognized her own name in such an absurd form ; for her name was " Eadgyth," with long ea and long y, both parts being intelligible. Here ead meant " prosperity," and gyth probably meant " war." The suffix -gyth is extremely com- mon in the latter part of a name ; but the Normans ignored the g in such a position. WALTER W. SKEAT.

ROOSEVELT: ITS PRONUNCIATION (10 S. vi. 368). President Roosevelt's name is pronounced in three syllables, accented on the first, where oo is like o long and the s has the sound of z, as in rose the e of the second syllable being very short and lightly touched, or nearly like the sound of u in but.

M. C. L.

New York.

The name of the Dutch family from which the twenty-sixth President of the United States is descended was originally Rosevelt, or rather Van Rosevelt, and was so borne by Mijnheer Claes Martenzoon van Rosevelt, who emigrated from Holland to New Amster- dam about 1650. Later, for some reason that I am unable to ascertain, the surname was changed to Roosevelt and the patro-