Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 12.djvu/449

 ii s. xii. DEC. 4, i9i5.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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connected with the German word, the plural bebakae is much nearer, and it is by no means improbable that a plural form may have been taken in mistake for the singular.

This is, however, not the only possibility, for the Timne are certainly intruders into Sierra Leone, driven from the earlier home, perhaps, by their Mandingo migration a thousand years ago. The allied Baga tribe is still on the coast in French Guinea. Possibly the Timne word may have been adopted, therefore, while they were a coast tribe. But the Baga word, according to Koelle in 'Polyglotta Africana,' is akaro; hence it is more probable that the Timne adopted the name pampakei from a Sierra Leone tribe.

The Bullom occupied the coast of Sierra Leone till recent times ; but their word for parrot is apal ; this seems, however, an obvious adaptation from the English " polly," which is itself in common use among many tribes. If so, the Bullom may have had a word in common with the Limba and Loko, both of whom probably antedate the Man- dingo invasion, though Loko is now a Mandingo language. This is the more probable as parrots are not, so far as my observation goes, found either in Loko or Limba areas, and these tribes would, there- fore, have every reason to adopt a name from another tribe. That the name pampa- kei is adopted, at least by one of them, is clear from the fact that Limba and Loko are unrelated, save as members of the general Soudanese family of languages. However this may be, the parrot and its German name must have come from the West Coast. It is perhaps rather a wild conjecture, but there is at least a possibility that our word parrot is derived from the Baga akaro.

N. W. THOMAS.

Egwoba, Manorgate Road, Norbiton.

" LE BRA v ACHE iScossAis." Can any one give me information regarding the following lines, quoted with others in the November number of The Cornhill Magazine, p. 605 ?

Le mutin Anglois, et le bravache Ecossais,

Et le fol Frangais.

Mutin, meaning headstrong, stubborn, re- fractory, may still apply fairly to the Englishman.

But how does bravache apply to the Scot ? It means swaggering, blustering, boasting in relation to courage. But it would hardly occur to anyone to consider Sandy what the Germans term a " mouth hero." Quite the contrary. SOUTHUMBBIAN.

LADY O'TOOLE'S EPITAPH. I should be glad to know whether the following is the correct version of the epitaph on Lady O'Toole, and where it exists :

In Memory of Lady O'Toole.

She was niece of the great Burke, otherwise called the Sublime. She was mild, humane, generous, and deeply religious. She painted in water colours, and sent several pictures to the exhibition. She was first cousin to Lady Jones and of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.

LEONARD C. PRICE.

Essex Lodge, Ewell.

[Mr. E. R. Suffling includes this in his ' Epitaphia,' p. 287. He makes the subject of it Lady O'Looney. There are several verbal differences.]

EDWARD IV.'s WINDOW AT CANTERBURY. Dans le grand vitrail d'^douard IV., a la cathedrale de Cantorbery, un curieux pan- neau rapporte represente deux personnages ages, cuirasses et armes de I'epee. L'un est barbu, 1'autre, imberbe, et on les considere generalement comme representant ^douard III. et Philippa de Hainaut.

J'ai de nombreuses raisons et, naturelle- ment, je les crois bonnes de croire qu'il s'agit en fait des figures de Saint Maurice, patron de 1'un des ordres de chevalerie (voir Guillim), et du fondateur de cet ordre, Amedee de Savoie, qui fut un certain temps pape sous le nom de Felix V.

Cette question interesse-t-elle des lecteurs de ' N. & Q.' ? Je serais heureux de la voir discuter, pour verifier cette hypothese nouvelle. P. TURPIN.

29, The Bayle, Folkestone.

WHO WAS THE HISTORIAN ? Mr. George Hare Leonard says in a tract entitled * Love Came Down at Christmas,' pp. 13, 14 :

"I remember some words of one of our most distinguished historians, thrown out in the casual talk of a committee once, which sank very deeply into my mind. 'We have to make men under- stand,' he said, 'that what happened once in a little place called Judaea, that we talk about on Sundays, did have some influence on the history of the world. "

Can any one say who is the historian here referred to ? The remark sounds as if it might be Freeman's, and it is worthy of him or anybody. ST. SWITHIN.

HUNGARIAN TRAVELLER AND OYSTERS. James Howell in his * Instructions for For- reine Travell ' (1642) writes contemptuously about travellers who

"may be termed land-lopers, as the Dutchman

saith like him who came from the furthest parts

of Hungary to England to eat oysters As Jonas

in the Whales belly, [they] travelled much, but saw little."