Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 11.djvu/45

 ii s. XL JAN. 9, 1915.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

35

"BORSTAL" (11 S. x. 488; xi. 13). The ''E.D.D.,' s.v. 'Borstal,' says the O.E. nam< was Borhsteall, and refers to Earle's * Charters < Glossary). The meaning is "a pathway up a steep hill." " Borstal, near Rochester owes its name evidently to its situation ai the foot of the * borstal ' leading up to the downs." The ' N.E.D.,' s.v. ' Borstall, states " ? from O.E. beorh, a hill -f O.E stigel. But the explanation * seat on the side or pitch of a hill,' given by Bishop Kennett (see Halliwell), suggests beorh-steall." The quotations give the word the same meaning as in the 'E.D.D.'

I have not succeeded in finding Bishop Kennett's explanation in his ' Parochia Antiquities of Ambrosden,' &c., but at vol. i p. 70 he gives the derivation as follows :

"It is to this prince [Edward the Confessor and to his diversion at this seat [Brill, co. Bucks_ that we must ascribe the traditional story of the family of Nigel, and the manor of Borstall on the edge of the said forest [of Bernwood]. Most part of the tradition is confirmed by good authority, and runs to this effect. The forest of Bernwood was much infested by a wild boar, which was at last slain by one Nigel a huntsman, who presented the boar's head to the King, and for a reward the King gave to him one hide of arable land called Derehyde, and a wood called Hule- wode, with the custody of the forest of Bernwood to hold to him and his heirs from the King, &c. &c. Upon this ground the said Nigel built a lodge or mansion house called Borestalle, in memory of the slain boar."

Unfortunately for this etymology, the O.E. word for boar was erf or, which still survives in the place-names of Eversley, Evercreech, Evershot, &c., and the local name "ever- fern," given to Polypodium vulgare and to Osmunda regalis.

The parish of Boarstall in N. Bucks lies at the foot of a steep hill, and so the deriva- tion given in ' E.D.D.' applies equally well to it as to Borstal, near Rochester.

C. W. FlREBRACE.

HUMAN FAT AS A MEDICINE (US. ix. 70, 115, 157, 195, 316; x. 176, 234). This is in, ' Supplement d' ^Esculape,' Paris, Novem- bre, 1911, I. xx:

" L'Opotherapie sous le Grand Roi. On em- ployait aussi la graisse humaine. L'apothicaire Pierre Ponet vante ses produits en ces termes :

" ' Nous vendons de 1'axonge humaine que nous faisons venir de divers endroits ; mais comme chacun sait qu'4 Paris le maftre des hautes- ceuvres en vend & ceux qui en ont besoin, c'est le sujet pour lequel les droguistes et apothicaires n en vendent que tres peu. Neanmoins, celle que nous pourrions yendre ayant e"te" pre"par6e avec des herbes aromatiques, serait, sans comparaison, meilleure que celle qui sort des mains de 1'exe- cuteur. . . . '

" Dans toutes ces applications, on retro uve toujours le meme principe g^n^ral r6sum par Daniel Becker (1662) :

" ' La belle et divine harmonie qui se trouve entre les parties, par laquelle un membre est propre a soulager le mSme membre et les memes parties, prouve combien il est Evident et certain qu'on peut tirer de tres grands remedes du corps humain, les choses semblables e"tant conserves par leurs semblables.' "

ROCKINGHAM.

Boston, Mass.

AUTHORS OF QUOTATIONS WANTED :

" OVER THE HILLS AND FAR AWAY " (U.S.

x. 468, 515; xi. 17). If my recollection of school-days sixty years ago is reliable, the last two lines of the verse quoted by C. C. B. at the second reference ran : And th' only tune that I could play Was " Nix my dolly, pals, fake away."

The mystic words were regarded with so much suspicion at home that, by parental emendation, " Over the hills and far away " was substituted. A. T. W.

"FORWHY" (11 S. x. 509), The REV J. B. McGovERN's memory must have played him false for a moment ; it can scarcely be the fact that this expression is " new " to him, since it occurs twice (with a note of interrogation) in the Prayer Book version of the Psalms (see Psalms xvi. and cv.), and is fairly common in old writers. He must, too, surely bo familiar with it in Kethe's version of the hundredth Psalm, "For why? the Lord our God is good." Frequently it does not require the note of in- terrogation, meaning simply " because " ; but the interrogative use seems, according to the ' N.E.D.,' to be earlier, and it is as an in- terrogative, direct or indirect, that I am most familiar with it in the dialects of the Midland Counties. There are several capital nstances of its use in Aldis Wright's ' Bible Word Book,' including one from Shake- speare. The one that first struck me, in print, some sixty years ago, occurred, if I remember rightly, in a specimen of "bouts rimes " in Chambers' s Journal :

I sits with my ;toes : in a brook, And if any one asks me for why,

I hits 'em a rap with my crook, And 'tis sentiment kills 'em, says I.

This must be fairly modern. I quote it rom memory, not having seen the original or more than half a century. C. C. B.

The expression can hardly be new to the . J. B. McGovERN, for it must very often mve been upon his lips in singing the fourth of the ' Old Hundredth.'