Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 12.djvu/476

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NOTES AND QUERIES. ws.xii. DEC. 11,1915.

la prise d'habit : Tabbaye de Merton (Surrey) ou St. Thomas avail, je pense, ete el eve : " Arrive la, dit 1'auteur, il visite I'eglise de sa fiancee Marie la Vierge Souveraine [traduit dans la collection des chroniques par : the church of his Spouse, Queen Mary, ce qui parait rendre le texte moins clair] ; il depouille ses riches habits de soie et revet le vetement noir et le surplis blanc, attribute des chanoines reguliors de St. Augustin. II suivait ainsi I'exemple de ses grands pre- de"cesseurs : Augustin, Lanfranc, Anselnie, Theo- bald [et peut-etre aussi le conseil des moines de Canterbury, a qui aurait d6plu la presence au milieu d'eux d'xm eveque seculierj. Plus tard, ajoute 1'auteur, peut-etre un Augustin lui-meme, il re"ussit merveilleusement a suivre la regie qu'il s'e"tait trace"e de veiller a ce que, dans sa tenue, le costume du inoine et le vetement de 1' eveque fusseht tellement manages qu'iLs n'eussent pas a ceder le pas 1'un a 1'autre." ' Thomas Saga Erkibiskups,' xvii.

P. TURPIN. The Bayle, Folkestone.

"RUMBELOW" (11 S. i. 224, 276, 475

ii. 38). At the first reference a song is given as quoted by Christopher Marlowe in his ' Edward II.' It is to be found in Robert Fabyan's ' New Chronicles of England and France.' reprinted from Pynson's edition of 1516, edited by Henry Ellis, 1811, p. 420 : "Than the Scottis enflamyd with pryde," i derysyon of Englysshe men, made this ryme as followeth :

Maydens of Englonde, sore maye ye morne, For your lemmans ye hauve loste at Bannockis- borne,

With heue a lowe.

What wenyth the kynge of Englonde, So soone to have wonne Scotlande

With rumbylowe.

This songe was after many dayes sungyn, in daunces, in carolis of y 6 maydens & mynstrellys of Scotlande, to the reproof e and dysdayne of Englysshe men, w* dyuerse other whiche I ouer passe."

John Rastell (1529) in his ' Pastime of People, or Chronicles of Divers Realms ' (edited by T. F. Dibdin), 1811, p. 204, gives a slightly different version :

" Wherfore the Scottes were [so inflamed with suche pryde, that they made this ryme : Ye maydens of Englande nowe may ye morne, For ye hauve lost your lemans at Bannokes borne,

With heue a lowe,

What weanes the kynge of Englande, So sone to wonne Scotlande,

With rumbelowe."

ROBERT PIERPOINT.

CAT QUERIES (11 S. xii. 183, 244, 286 330, 369, 389, 428). When I gave up my home in the country and came to live in a small house in London. I left my dog with a neighbour, where I knew he would be appreciated, thinking it kinder to do so

than to bring him to a place in which he could not indulge his sporting instincts. I was told, when it was too late, that he refused all food, and pined away and died. Was this " merely the inherited instinct cf strict obedience " ? I cannot think so.

The cat of a friend who left her in Lincoln when he removed to London actually followed him alone (I know not by what instinct), and found him too. C. C. B.

THE SPLIT INFINITIVE (11 S. xii. 198, 251,. 310, 350, 385, 427). Surely it is a mistake to argue about the infinitive as if it were " on all fours " with a tense formed by the use of auxiliary verbs. Our use of the syllable " to " is merely a device to mark the infini- tive ; it belongs, in effect, to the same cate- gory as the ereoi La-tin, ihe-crdai, tv (civ), arid -vcu of Greek infinitives, and the suffixes with which gerunds, &c., are formed. There is not any more sense in separating it from the verb proper than there would be in thrusting an adverb between erra- and -ere in errare.

If it is objected that the same comparison might be made between the past and future tenses formed with auxiliaries, and that because we cannot insert an adverb between the parts of erravi, we should equally refrain from doing so between the parts of " I have erred," the answer surely is that the genius of our language favours in a peculiar degree the independence of auxiliary verbs. The ancient languages tend rather to repeat English, I think, above all modern languages tends to omit the substantival part of a sentence. This gives to auxiliary words a special force, counteracting the tendency to weld them as it were into a solid expression with the substantival word. One may take as an example our mode of answering ques" tions : " Did you write that letter ? " " ,\ did." "Has he started?" "He has.,. " Will he get there in time ? " " He will. I believe I am right in sa\ 7 ing that no othe r language allows so fully as ours does the adequacy of the auxiliary to represent the whole idea. Even in German it would be reinforced, as " Das hat er," "Das wird er," or something of the kind.

Words still felt as so independent can naturally be separated. But I defy any one to make a sentence in which the syllable " to," as part of a verbal expression, can stand alone. It is, indeed, merely a prefix.

MR. SMITH in deriving the split infinitive from a French idiom, and connecting it with the French custom of putting " a tonic force upon an adjective or adverb," seems to me