Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 8.djvu/228

 186

NOTES AND QUERIES, no s. vni. SEPT. 7, 1907.

"The Queen's Head,' Neddy Hall, the drummer was inside the drum with the piece of dish. It wa. exchanged with Mrs. Hodgson for a pint of ale The fragment is going to be on view in the window of Mr. Stabler, m the Market-place, at Driffield An entire service like the fragment would to-daj represent a modest fortune."

It is to be hoped that the enhanced valu of good china in the present day would stand in the way of the repetition of i similar extravagance on the occasion of th coming of age of a mere human being I wonder if the hero of sixty or seventy years ago ever earned for his family as much as it threw away for him on the day when h achieved his majority. To break the glass or other article which a celebrity has usec may be foolish ; but to smash a dinner service, only a part of which the honourec one can have touched, even with knife anc fork, is indeed most prodigal.

ST. SWITHIN.

" PITTANCE." Prof. Skeat thinks that -the French word pitance, Italian pietanza
 * Spanish pitanza, had no connexion with

pietas, pietd, pitie mercy, pity, except in the mistaken notion of the common people But I see no reason to object to such a connexion. In Old French pitance really meant pity ; compare

Diex, ne suefres que sa povrece Soit perdue, par vo pitance ; i.e., God, do not suffer, in Your mercy, him to perish in his misery (' Du Chevalier au Barisel,' d. by Schultz-Gora, 1. 783).

We see the same sense-development in charite, charity, from " helping love " to " alms." Of course, other words may have had a part in the growth of form and sense of pittance. G. KRTTEGER.

Berlin.

MOON AND CRABS. ' The Voyage of Francois Pyrard of Laval,' ed. Gray and Bell, Hakluyt Society, 1888, vol. ii. p. 11, says : "The Crabs and Crevishes are verie good and marvellous great [in India], that it is a wonder to tell, and that which is more wonderful, when the moone is in the full here with us it is a common saying that then Crabbes and Crevishes are at the best, but there it is cleane contrarie : for with the full moone they are emptie and out of season, and with a new moone good and full."

I do not know what opinion is held by

Europeans of to-day concerning the matter ;

but the Japanese even now entertain the

same view as the Indians here mentioned,

saying that crabs become much emaciated


 * as the full moon approaches, because they

are then excessively frightened by their own

shadows, and so avoid going out of holes

t;o take food. Contrariwise, the Chinese,

at least in old times, believed that " clams, crabs, pearl shells, and turtles, are fat or lean according to the corresponding phases of the moon " (Liu Ngan, ' Hwui-nan-tsze ' 2nd cent. B.C., sec. iv.).

KtrMAGTTSU MlNAKATA.

" WAEG-SWEORD " IN ' BEOWULF.' Since the reviewer, ante, p. 58, rather deprecates the rendering of the above word by " wavy- bladed," i.e., damascened, it is a matter of general interest to note that Mr. Huyshe shows that several damascened blades of indigenous manufacture, and belonging to the earlier Iron Age, have been unearthed in Sleswig and Denmark.

The same conception gives a more correct idea of the broden mcel, the heirloom sword hung for generations on the wall, as compared with the banal " drawn sword " of most glossaries. . H. P. L.

" TEAR 'EM." During the last twenty years of the life of the once-famous politician John Arthur Roebuck, he was familiar to " the man in the street " and the journalist alike as " Tear 'em," a nickname very unusual in such cases of his own choosing. As I desire to draw attention to a quaint anticipation of this nickname, other than that which was undoubtedly its original suggestion, I may recall the circumstances of its earliest employment. Roebuck, speak- ing at the Sheffield Cutlers' Feast on 2 Sept., 1858 (as reported in The Times of 4 Sept.), said :

" My hon. friend here [Monckton Milnes, after- wards Lord Houghton] and I went to Cherbourg, and then we floated in the waters of a despot. It may be said that those in my position ought not to say anything that excites national animosity, and I respond to that sentiment. (Hear, hear.) But, sir, the farmer who goes to sleep, having placed the watch-dog, ' Tear'em,' over his rickyard, hears that watch-dog bark. He, in the anger of a half-som- nolence, says, ' I wish Tear'em would be quiet,' and bawls out of the window, ' Down, Tear'em.' ' Tear- 'em ' does go down, the farmer goes to sleep, and he is awaked by the flashing in at his windows of the light of his ricks on fire. (Cheers.) I am ' Tear'em.' (Loud cheers and laughter.) "

This was an unmistakable, though strangely distorted reference to the descrip- tion, in chap, xlviii. of ' Guy Mannering,' of the attack on the Bridewill at Portan- r erry, in which Henry Bertram was confined. In this attack I/he gaoler's dog " Tearum " jlayed a leading part, declining to refrain 'rom giving loud warning when bidden by lis " brute master, as savage a bandog as tiimself," " Down, d n ye, down ! "

But it is decidedly singular to find that, ust over a century before Roebuck claimed