Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 1.djvu/272

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NOTES AND QUERIES. tn s. i. APR. 2, 1910.

enough to try my temper, and I am afraid if it had not been for the good example Teresa taught me my girdle would have burst, and if it had I had been undone, for Sir W. minds more temper than beauty. He therefore wishes Mr. Hayley would come that he might thank him for his sweet- tempered wife."

P. D. MUNDY.

'" YEAB. ? ' In a comparatively short time we trust to see the cardinal term "year" expounded, in its turn, by the editors of the ' Oxford Dictionary,' this magnum opus being now well on its way to completion. It may, therefore, be timely, and not out of place, to contribute a brief note on the history of this intsresting " culture word. n

Its original kinship to Gr. upa and Lat. hora (considered as a limited space of time, a season) is well known, and now generally admitted, although it had been at first doubted by Heyne in Grimm's ' Worterbuch ' (33 years ago). Comparing the cognate Old Slavonic term yar, taken in the sense of springtime, Weigand, and after him Kluge, suggest in their etymological dictionaries that our word in its origin had started from this sense of "springtime." According to Mik- losich, the meaning of the corresponding Old Slavonic word yar, denoting at first a germ, and then applied to corn-fruit as well as to animals produced in spring, is also extended and used of summer fruit in various Slavonic dialects of the present time. If we con- sider the two most common words used as equivalents of a year in Old and Modern Russian, Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian, Chekh, and Polish, viz., godina or god and leto, we meet with an analogous'change, and variation of meaning. Godina is explained by Mik- losich in his ' Lexicon Palseoslavenico- Grseco-Latinum * (Vindobonae, 1862-5) to mean: (1) w/aa, (2) r)p.epa, (3) ei/iavros. fro?, and god is rendered there by hora, annus, and tempus ; leto, on the other hand, signifies both in Old Russian and in the above-named modern Slavonic languages summer as well as the whole of a year.

H. KREBS.

" PRESIDENCY OF FORT WILLIAM. "- The ' N.E.D. 1 tells us, on the authority of a lengthy quotation from ' Whitaker's Almanack,'- 1872, that the word "presi- dency " (in the sense of * ' one of the three divisions of the East India Company's territory") is " Obs. in official use.' 1 The first schedule, however, to the Indian Councils Act, 1909 (9 Edw. VII. c. 4), giving the "maximum number of nominated

and elected members of legislative councils," prescribes fifty as the maximum for the ' ' Legislative Council of the Lieutenant- Governor of the Bengal Division of the Presidency of Fort William." The word " presidency n does not occur elsewhere in the Act. Q. V.

"HALF-STAFF" =; " HALF - MAST. "- Though this equivalent is noted in the ' H.E.D.* in a quotation from The London Gazette of 1708, "The Ships Flags, which were only half-staff high," there seems a com- mon impression that it is a modern Ameri- canism, illustrated in the same work from Bancroft's ' History of the United States,' " pennants hoisted at half -staff."' This may be accounted for by the fact that, while the older form "half-mast 2 '- is now alone used in this country, " half-staff " is employed as the equivalent in America, as is specially to be seen from the directions given in " The 1910 n (p. 85), published in New York, ' ' in order to show proper respect for the flag.'* The last three of these are as follow :
 * World * Almanac and Encyclopaedia for

" When the flag is flown at half staff as a sign of mourning it should be hoisted to full staff at the conclusion of the funeral.

" In placing the flag at half staff, it should first be hoisted to the top of the staff and then lowered to position, and preliminary to lowering from half staff, it should be first raised to the top.

" On Memorial Day, May 30, the flag should fly at half staff from sunrise to noon, and full staff from noon to sunset."

A. F. R.

' A SISTER OF PRINCE RUPERT.' Why are ladies who dabble in history and bio- graphy so careless about their references ? The latest offender is the author of this book, and as she has given me considerable trouble in finding the sources from which she quotes, may I publish the results of my labours to save the time and temper of other victims ?

P. 65. There is no such publication as the ' Heidelberger Historisches Taschenbuch.' She means the well-known ' Raumer's Historisches Taschenbuch,' but the corre- spondence of the children of the Winter King cannot be found there, but is in the 1908 volume of the ' Neue Heidelberger Jahr- biicher ' (vol. xv. ). It was published by Karl Hauck. The reference to Raumer's book is 6th Series, vol. vii., and the name of the author is Ed. Bodemann (not ' ' Boder- mann"). The memoirs of Sophie, Princess Palatine, were published by Dr. Adolf