Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 8.djvu/597

 10 s. VIIL DEC. 21, 1907.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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form on the musical instruments they have chosen :

'' Oh, the noble Duke of York,

He had ten thousand men ;

He marched them up a very high hill,

And he marched them down again.

And when they were up, they were up ;

And when they were down, they were down ;

And when they were half- way up the hill,

They were neither up nor down.

Oh, the noble Duke of York, &c." The director every now and again ceases to pretend playing the piano, and takes Tip with some one of the instruments selected by the players. Should such player not immediately adapt the piano, he is caught, and the company breaks into ' Rule, Britannia.' The director and the person caught then change places and instruments, and the game proceeds as before.

JOHN T. PAGE. Long Itchington, Warwickshire.

' CHILDE HAROLD ' (10 S. viii. 430). The idea is that while Ocean remains unchanged, great empires on or near her shores have had their day and lost their supremacy. These owed not a little to what the ocean did for them, for while they were free she " washed them power " or added to their possibilities for distinction. On the other hand, as they gradually lost pre-eminence the ocean, like a sinister fate, contributed towards their decadence, sending them many a tyrant. THOMAS BAYNE.

Surely DR. KRTJEGER has fallen into error by misquoting what Byron wrote. My copy of ' Childe Harold's Pilgrimage ' does not read, Thy waters washed them power while they were

free,

but has

Thy "waters wasted them while they were free. If the construction lacks clearness, the sense surely is obvious, especially when taken in connexion with the lines that precede and follow the passage quoted. The passage which commences at stanza clxxviii. and ends at stanza clxxxiv. is an apostrophe to the ocean. Byron observes that man's power to change, and spoil and mar God's creation, is only over the land surface of the globe :

Man marks the earth with ruin his control Stops with the shore.

F. A. RUSSELL. 4, Nelgarde Road, Catford, S.E.

What a pity there should be such a mis- print in the Oxford ' Byron ' as that notified by DR. KRUEGER !

In the copy of ' Childe Harold ' I possess, being vol. i. of the Works of Lord Byron,' in 6 vols., published by John Murray in 1831, the words in Canto IV. stanza clxxxii. are : Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they ? Thy waters wasted them while they were free, And many a tyrant since.

R, C. BOSTOCK.

The meaning seems clear "Thy waters bore power to them while they were free, and have since borne them many a tyrant."

C. C. B.

Surely the meaning is : Thy (Ocean's) waters washed them (brought to them in their wash, i.e., as they washed on the shores brought to the shores) power when they (the shores) were free, and (brought them) many a tyrant since (they were free). In other words, both the power these shores once had and the slavery with which they have since been afflicted came to them from the sea. JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT.

The reading given is that of the Oxford edition of Byron's poems, " reprinted from the original texts," 1890 : Thy waters washed them power while they were

free,

And many a tyrant since.

Perhaps a tolerable sense may be made of this by taking " washed " as equivalent to " wafted." The waves conveyed to the shores in the early times of freedom power by means of imports, immigrants, &c., and later one invading tyrant after another. But this explanation is not to me satisfac- tory, and I should be glad of a better.

In Murray's edition, 1855, there is a dif- ferent reading the only one, in fact, with which till now I have been familiar :

Thy waters wanted them while they were free,

And many a tyrant since.

This seems to me more intelligible, the verb " wasted " having, I suppose, a double sense first that of natural erosion, and secondly that of warlike devastation. But perhaps even here a better sense may be elicited.

The two ideas of changelessness and free- dom from man's ravage or control, so finely expressed in this stanza and in stanzas clxxix., clxxx., find a very close parallel in a passage of Madame de Stael's ' Corinne, published, I believe, about 1807. Accord- ing to Murray (p. viii), the Fourth Canto of' 'Childe Harold' was begun in 1817. This parallel was given in some ' Byronian* ' of mine inserted in ' N. & 0..' for 20 Jan.,