Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 12.djvu/33

 ii 8. xii. JCLY 10, 1915.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

A Further Impartial Account of the Actions of the

Jnniskilling-men, containing the reasons of their

first rising. By Capt. William MacCormick.

London, 1691. Reprinted Dungannon, 1896. | History of the Siege of Derry and Defence of

Ennlskillen in 1688-9. By Rev. John Graham,

M.A. Dublin, 1829. Derry and Enniskillen in the year 1689 : the story

of some famous Battle-fields in Ulster. By

Prof. Witherow. Belfast, 1873. Enniskillen Long Ago. By Rev. W. H. Bradshaw.

Dublin, 1878. Sligo and the Enniskilleners from 1688 to 1691.

By W. G. Wood-Martin. Dublin, 1882. History cf Fermanagh and Tyrone. By the Earl

of Belmore. Dublin, 1887. Contains historical

notes on Enniskillen and district. History ot the Cprry Family. By the Earl of

Belmore. Dublin, 1891. Contains historical

notes on Enniskillen and district. The Old Enniskillen Vestry Book. By the Earl

of Belmore. Dublin, 1903. Enniskillen, Parish and Town. By W. H. Dundas.

1913. History of the Irish Presbyterian Church. By Rev.

Thomas Hamilton, D.D. Edinburgh. Contains

chapter on Defence of Enniskillen. Story of the Sieges of Crom Castle during the

Revolution of 1689. Compiled from Harris,

]\Jacaulay, and Hamilton. Privately printed. Ennlskillen and the Northern Lake District of

Ireland. London, n.d.

EBRIS.

Erris in the Irish Highlands?, and the Atlantic Rail- way. By P. Knight. Dublin, 1836.

Sketches in Erris and Tyrawley. By Rev. Ca?sar Otway. Dublin, 1841.

WILLIAM MACARTHUB. 79, Talbot Street, Dublin.

(To be continued.)

UNE CHASSE AU MARINGOUIN.

THROUGHOUT the French -speaking districts of Canada the word most commonly used as equivalent to mosquito is, and has been for many generations, maringoin or ma- ringouin, of which Littre declares the etymology ^unknown. To the earliest ex- plorers of New France it seems not to have been familiar. In the narrative of Jacques Cartier's voyages (1535, &c.) the activi- ] ties of the busy insect are not dwelt upon. ' Champlain's 'Voyage aux Indes Occi- ! dentales ' (1599) reveals the presence of the pest, but the word there made use

of is "mousquittes comme chesons ou

cousins " ; while a further reference may be cited in ' Second Voyage au Canada ' (chap, ii.), "mousquites" (1610). In the ' Histoire de la Nouvelle France ' of Marc Lescarbot (1608), Champlain's contemporary and editor, the word occurs as marigoin, in the tenth chapter (iii. 684), on the ' Mceurs et Fa$on de Vivre ' of the natives, a whole

paragraph being devoted to the insects, which are correctly said to infest the country from June to September. Not having access to the original manuscript, I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the spelling in the first, and every subsequent, reading in printed form. It we turn to the ' Jesuit Relations,' maringoin appears well estab- lished in 1632, through the statement of Father Paul Le Jeune (v. 36) : " Je pensai etre mange des maringoins.. ce sont petitea mouches importunes au possible " ; and after this in the collection complaints are really " frequent and free." Similarly in Baron de La Hontan, ' Nouv. Voyage dans 1'Amerique Septentr.,' La Have, 1705 (I. Lettre, p. 7), who speaks of " 1'incommo- d,ite des maringouins, que nous appelons en France des Cousins." It may be noted that Regnard, the playwright, who travelled in Lapland at about the same time (1681), employs the term moucherons. In later French writings, much the best - known instance of the use of maringouin is in the classic utterance of Figaro (' Le Barbier de Seville,' I. ii.) : " tous les insectes, les mous- tiques, les cousins, les critiques, les marin- gouins, les envieux," &c. ; while Chateau- briand naturally introduced it in ' Voyage en Amerique' ('Les Onondagas ') without figurative implication. At the present day the word is apparently so little known in France that a recent application of it to a nagging official by a stranger brought about its prompt adoption as a nickname, which would not have resulted from describing him as a moustique.

It is interesting to discover that the exotic term became acclimatized in other French possessions on the American con- tinent. In Louisiana, for instance, it would appear to have been in ordinary use, for the R.P. Louis Hennepin, Recollet, writes in his ' Description de la Louisiane,' Paris, 1688 (p. 134), to the effect that maringouins are not very troublesome in that region. How general its use may have been there at a later time I have failed to ascertain. A most obliging and courteous communication from M. Solon Menos, Minister of the Haytian Legation at Washington, informs me that to-day " le mot maringouin^ est connu et meme generalement employe en Haiti " (22 April, 1915). French Guiana, too, offers testimony to the distribution of the venomous diptera and the local name. This is proved through the ' Voyage & Cayenne, dans les Deux Ameriques et chez les Anthropophages,' of Louis-Ange Pitou (1805), the royalist chansonnier, who was