Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 8.djvu/107

 10 s. VIIL AUG. 3, 1907.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

85

FIRST OXFORD RUSSIAN GRAMMAR.

A MONUMENT of interest to Slavonic scholars is the ' Grammatica Russica ' of Henry William Ludolf, published at the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford, in 1696, with a dedication to Prince Boris Galitzin, Privy Councillor to the Tsar. Prof. Morfill thinks that its publication was due to the furore caused by the visit of Peter the Great to this country. The orthography is a speci- men of Russian as printed before the eccle- siastical and civil alphabets were separated, which marks the modern period of Russian literature. In the author's own words, " apud illos dicitur, loquendum est Russice & scribendum est Slavonice." The author is fully aware of the distinction between Russian proper and Slavonic, and justly observes : " qui peritiorem linguae hujus scientiam desiderabunt, eo minori labore postea Grammaticam Slavonicam consulere poterunt." In the chapter ' De Literis ' Ludolf includes some unfamiliar letters, but the relation of the numerals to the letters is enigmatical, as the numbers are not in sequence and the highest is 900. His rendering of a year in Slavonic letters is curious, thus :

" Annus prsesens [names (Russian) of letters] az cheer tscherf zelo, 1696 ; Russis est a condito mundo zemla slovo dobro, 7204, qui mense Septembri prseteriti anni incepit."

The page of calligraphy facing p. 9 is artistic, but bewildering, and may have been derived from monastic writings, as the forms of letters are scarcely intelligible to a modern student. The list of abbrevia- tions following would be helpful to decipherers of the contracted inscriptions on ikons, e.g., of Bogoroditsa (Deipara), Gosudar (dominus).

Following the grammatical portion of the work are over twenty pages of phrases, Russian and Latin side by side, with render- ings in contemporary German at foot, " in gratiam eorum qui linguam Latinam ignor- ant " ; but a German innocent of Latin would derive little advantage from these without previous knowledge of Russian grammar. Here are a few examples :

"Etaia derevnia za Svitskim korolem. Pagus hie in ditione Regis Suecise est. Dieses dorff gehoret dem Konige in Schweden."

" Kak tebia Bog mileiet ? Quomodo vales ? Wie geht es euch ? "

" Votku ne uzhivaiou. Aqua aromatica* non utor. Ich trincke kein gebrantes wasser."

more exact rendering would be aqmila, little water, and Wtisserchen in German.
 * As vodka is the diminutive of voda, water, a

Here is a touch of humour :

"Skazhut shto prigozhie zhenshtshini yo Frant- suskoi zemlie. Dicunt pulchras fceminas in Gallia esse. Man sagt dass schon frauen zimmer in Franckreich sey."

"Ya ne vodilsa snimi, krasnie ne gliadili na menia, i ne zhelal p_oznatsa s durnimi. Non con- versatus sum cum illis, pulchrse non aspexerunt me, & non concupivi notitiam contrahere cum deformibus. Ich bin nicht mit ihnen umbgangen r die schonen haben mich nicht angesehen, und mit den hesslichen habe ich nicht verlangt bekand zu werden."

Chap. vi. contains sentences (Russian and Latin only) ' De Cultu Divino,' from which it may be inferred that the author was a man of broad piety, zealous for God, and through his wide experience sympathetic towards other forms of Christianity than his own.

After a list of cardinal numbers there is a short vocabulary in three languages :

Ccelum. Nebo. Der Himmel. Mare. More. Dass meer.

Ludolf's volume concludes with an inter- esting account of natural history, geography r and trade. Here is an extract with regard to the Tartars :

"Isti Tartar iliberorum non minus, quam equorunv suorum mercaturam faciunt, frequenterque filios-

suos Russis vendunt interrogabam quomodo

Deum sua lingua vocaret, at ille : Bog u nas niet, h.e. Deum non habemus. Habent tameii suam, qualiscunnue est, religionem, summusque ipsorum sacerdos Kutufta vocatur."

The type with which this work was printed is, I understand, still preserved at Oxford. FBANCIS P. MARCHANT.

Streatham Common.

A " GUDE-WILLIE WATJGHT." As ' Auld

Lang Syne ' is the social hymn of humanity,, it is a pity that any one who reads or sings it should have even a momentary doubt regarding the meaning of a single word or phrase which it contains. Now, in spite of all that editors and commentators have done, there are still those who take their impressions on trust, and such casual adventurers frequently turn to one and ask,. " What precisely is a ' willie-waught ' ? " Even Angus and John Macpherson, who- prepared for a Glasgow publisher one of the- best single-volume editions of Burns in existence, seem to have been unable to cope with the expression, and they ask their readers to accept " a right guid willie- waught " as the form in which the poet suggested the quaffing of a bumper. " Waught," of course, means draught as. in the passage wherein Allan Ramsay's. Halbert demands " a waught of ale " and