Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 7.djvu/61

 10 s. VIL JAN. 19, 1907.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

Indies for manslaughter, when he was branded on the hand, and yet within two years- had a commission and was made captain of the Jersey.

Another point is that she says the date of the Duchess's death is not known. It is given, however, in Luttrell's ' Diary.'

W. BALL WRIGHT.

Osbaldwick Vicarage, York.

" THE MAHALLA." " The troops of the Mahalla, after pillaging the place [Raisuli's stronghold], set it on fire." So we are told in a telegram to the Matin from Tangier, copied into The Morning Post (8 Jan.). A telegram from Morocco to Le Figaro (6 Jan.) says, " La mahalla a attaque Zinat."

As the word mahalla is not to be found in French or English dictionaries, it may be of use to explain the meaning of this foreign technical term. It is an Arabic word mean- ing an army or a corps d'armee.

The word mahalla is cognate with hilla, " gens quae aliquo loco subsistit tentoria." Both these Moorish words lingered on in Spanish, as we may see in Dozy's ' Glossaire,' pp. 54, 172. A. L. MAYHEW.

COLERIDGE'S ' DEJECTION ' : A MISPUNC- TUATION. It is, I think, desirable that atten- tion should be drawn to a mispunctuation which has long disfigured a prominent passage in Coleridge's poem ' Dejection.' In the fifth stanza of the poem, which embodies its central thought, the question, What, and wherein it doth consist

This beautiful and beauty-making power? (the power, that is, in the soul, through which alone nature appears beautiful) is answered in the following lines :

Joy, virtuous Lady ! Joy, that ne'er was given, Save to the pure, and in their purest hour, Life, and Life's effluence, cloud at once and shower, Joy, Lady ! is the spirit and the power. Which wedding Nature to us gives in dower,

A new Earth and new Heaven. The mispunctuation consists in the insertion of a comma at the end of the last line but one.

The history of this comma is curious. ' Dejection ' was first published in The Morn- ing Post for 4 Oct., 1802 ; and in this version the last two lines of the above passage have no stop, except a note of exclamation at the end. This punctuation was adhered to in all versions of the poem which received the author's personal super- vision. In 1834, however, Coleridge, being too ill to attend to the new edition of his poems, entrusted it to his nephew H. N.

Coleridge ; and it is in this edition of 1834- that the comma first appears. Having been once adopted, it has continued to stand, I believe, in all subsequent editions, including that of 1905 by Mr. Dykes Camp- bell. So far as I know, the only modern version of the poem with the original punc- tuation occurs, not in an edition of Cole- ridge's poems, but in Ward's ' Selections from the English Poets.'

The fact that the inserted comma gives an impossible sense to these lines (while it renders its original adoption a mystery) may explain why it has been ignored by readers to whom the meaning of the whole poem was never a matter of doubt. But for the sake of less fortunate students of the poem it would perhaps be well, not merely that the comma should be deleted, but that the passage should be fully punc- tuated. There are two ways of punctuating it, either of which is consistent with the true sense of the passage ; but one of them has obvious advantages over the other. We may either read Which, wedding Nature, to us gives in dower

A new Earth and new Heaven, or Which, wedding Nature to us, gives in dower

A new Earth and new Heaven ; but of these two readings it is clearly the^ second which the rhythm and the metaphor alike demand. J. SHAWCROSS.

ANGLO-INDIAN 'LITTLE JACK HORNER.' The following linguistic curiosity seems worth preserving here. It is a macaronic version of ' Little Jack Horner,' partly in English, partly in Urdu, which has been found in use among ayahs and Anglo-Indian children. Folk-lorists may like to compare it with the Anglo-Chinese version in Leland's ' Pigeon English Sing-song,' 1876.

Chhota Jack Horner baitha in a corner

Khata his Christmas pie ;

Ungli pa daltFi, kishmish nikalta,

Bulwa, "Kaisa accha larka ham hai."

JAS. PLATT, Jun.

THE MERCHANT'S MAGAZINE, OR TRADES MAN'S TREASURY,' c. 1700. An apparently rather scarce book is " The Merchant's Magazine, or Trades Man's Treasury. Fifth Edition, corrected and improv'd by E, Hatton, Gent. London, 1707," small quarto, with a portrait of the author (by R. White), aged 32, dated 1696. The British Museum seems to have only the fourth edition, dated 1704.

There are some curious bits of information in the book; for instance, concerning the