Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 1.djvu/369

 n s. i. MAY 7, 1910.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

361

LONDON, SATURDAY, MAT 7, 1910.

CONTENTS.-No. 19.

NOTES : "Trash," 361 The Prince of Monaco's Examina- tion, 362 Provincial Booksellers, 363 Leibniz on the Penny Post "Jew's Cake" Swedenborg's Patronymic Slavonic Linden Folk-lore Peripatetic Scientific Society, 365 Mr. J. T. Tweed President Adams's X.Y.Z. Mission " Gin "=" Geneva," 366.

QUERIES: The Lily-white Boys, 366 -Mark Twain Soame Jenyns Prodigal Nabob Abb^ Coyer to Pan- sophe "Die Wahrheit ruht in Gott" The Buckland Shag Best Company consists of Five Persons Buffoon's Admirers Galloping Hogan English Decorator and Tintoretto Ralegh and the Widow Hervye, 367 Ralegh and Cornish Miners Drake's Golden Hind Authors Wanted Winchester College Chantry Veal Money- Modern German Poets Civil War in Fiction Arundel Collection, 368" Mesopotamia " Losack Family Truch- sessian Gallery " Cattle-drive" "All sorts of people to make a world" Leo XIII. 's Latin Verses 'How Happy could I be with Either ! 'Richard Blacow Richard Canning James Chelsum Ansgar, Master of the Horse, 369.

REPLIES : Gargoyles, 369 R. H. A. Bennet, 370 Foster's 'Alumni Cantabrigienses ' Sir Philip Perceval, 372 "In dieses Grabes Dunkeln" John II. of France ' Cornwall : its Mines and Scenery 'Herb-woman to the King " Trabalhos de Jesus," 373 -'Critical Review of Publick Buildings '" Gerizim "" Wiogora Ceaster," 374 "Ljfis" "Svabach" "Year" "Mother of Free Parliaments" Cart Family Arms, 375 -Guildhall Statues Shakespeare and the Mountjoys Easter twice in One Year Heine in London Neil Gow, Race-horse "Rosa- monda's lake," 376 Johnson in the Hebrides Scheffelde Fly on a Shield Portland Cement, 377 Elections under the Ballot " Jirga "Ague-Ring, 378.

i NOTES ON BOOKS: 'The Electress .Sophia '" English Literature for Schools "Reviews and Magazines.

i Booksellers' Catalogues. Notices to Correspondents.

"TRASH."

THE Elizabethan use of the word trash has never been fully explained. There were two words of this form. One of them, meaning "anything worthless, 1 * appears to be of Scandinavian origin. It is the same word as the prov. E. trash, " cuttings from a hedge," as in ' E.D.D.* ; and I shall say no more about it, as it gives no trouble.

But the other trash, of French origin, is very difficult. The secret is that it is really a variant of the word trace, as I hope to show, though few seem to have suspected this. For the fact is that trace, as a sb., is sometimes a corrupt form, viz., whenever it stands for traits, as has repeatedly been explained. The parts of a cart in the ' Nominate,* 1. 883, have amongst them trays, which is both the Norman and the Middle English form. But the O.F. trays or trais is the plural of trait, a thing to pull

by. Modern English has actually turned the plural trace ( = trais = traits) into the double plural traces !

The Italian for trace (really plural) is tratti, from a sing, tratto. Torriano (1688) has : ' ' tratto, a tract, space .... also, a leash or slip for a gray-hound." And Cot- grave has : ' ' traict, a dart, arrow .... draught .... trick .... also a team-trace or trait .... also a lime [Ham] or line wherein a blood-hound is led, and staied in his pursute"- The last four words are most important. They show that the English word trace was equivalent to "a leash by which a dog could be led or could be held back. 31 But this is also the very sense of trash, as the Shakespeare commentators have long ago agreed upon ; and the ' E.D.D.* gives us the very sense : " Trash, a cord used in checking dogs." Hence came the verb to trash, meaning precisely ' ' to check a dog with a cord," but hardly with a clog round his neck, as some have superfluously guessed. There is no sense in importing clogs into this discussion.

This explains all the passages quite easily. In ' The Tempest, 1 I. ii. 81, to trash means simply "to hold back," as Wright's note sufficiently shows. In Fletcher's ' Bonduca,* I. i., "he trashed me" merely means "he held rne back" or "impeded me." John- son's Dictionary has trash in the same sense, as equivalent to overslow or foreslow. He quotes :

" Among other incumbrances and delays to heaven, there is no one that doth so clog and trash, so disadvantage and backward us."

Note the exactness of the language : an incumbrance clogs us and disadvantages us (so much for the clog) ; but a delay trashes us and backwards us (so much for the trash).

The whole trouble comes from the com- plete confusion between trace, as the plural of trait, and trace, sb. and vb., from the F. trace and tracer.

In the case of the sb. a trace had no right to be also called a trash ; in the latter case there was no reason at all against it. For we are then concerned no longer with the equivalent of the Ital. traccia, ' ' a trace, a track, a footing ; also the slote, the view, or footing of a deer or any other beast " (Torriano), but with tracciare, " to trace, to track." And Godefroy's 'O.F. Diet.' has : " Trader, trachier, tracher, trasser, to track, trace, follow, pursue " ; which accounts for the form trash at once. It is a correct variant of the verb to trace, but very incorrect as a variant of the plural of