Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 3.djvu/212

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [ii s. in. MAR. is, iwi.

Ordinary quarter days will not be interfered with, and special provisions, as in the Calendar Act, 1750, will preserve days of payment, delivery of goods, expiration of leases, &c., and coining of age.

To preserve the symmetry of the new system, February will be docked of its extra day in leap years, and another new Bank Holiday, to be known as Leap Year Day, will be inserted between the last day of June and the first day of July. It also will not count as a day of the week, month, or quarter.

NO MOVEABLE FEASTS.

Beginning in 1912, Easter Sunday and all the moveable fasts, feasts, and dates dependent upon it will be fixed so as to fall in every year on the same day of the same month, as well as on the same day of the week. The proposed dates are as follows :

Ash Wednesday. Feb. 29.

Good Friday. . . April 12.

Easter Sunday. April 14.

Easter Monday. April 15.

WhitSunday. June 3.

Whit Monday. . . . June 4.

Christmas Day, Dec. 25, will always be on a Monday.

Under the new system, March, June, Sep- tember, and December will consist of thirty-one days, and each of the other eight months of thirty. It is proposed that the reformed calendar shall a Pply n t only to the United Kingdom, but to all his Majesty's Dominions.

The bill is backed by Sir William Bull, Mr. R. Harcourt, Sir J. H. Dalziel, and Sir Albert Spicer.

BABRULE.

FLOOD SUPERSTITIONS. An odd belief still lingers among the Warwickshire peasantry that a flood follows when swans wander along the highway. A brood of nearly full-grown cygnets recently acquired the habit of leaving the upper part of the Avon and walking down the Warwick Road, here to join the river at a lower point. This act is said to have caused a high flood a few months ago. Another local theory is that the death of the sovereign brings on a flood, as witness the highest flood recorded in 1901, and the last serious one in 1910.

WM. JAGGABD.

"I FEGS." Translating 'Pegasus in Harness,' in his version of Schiller's ' Poems and Ballads,' Lord Lytton makes Hodge on the mountain top express himself thus : " I fegs," the farmer cries, " what next ? This helter-skelter sport will never do, But break him in yet I '11 endeavour to." Such is the reading of the " Knebworth Edition," 1875, and of the reprint issued in " The Universal Library " of 1887 under the editorship of Prof. Henry Morley.

" I fegs " as thus given has all the appear- ance of being an assertion made in the first

person, whereas it is an asseveration equi- valent to " In faith," and should take the form " I' fegs." In the ' Archaic Diction- ary ' Halliwell duly enters " Fegs. In faith ! South " ; and Jamieson includes the word, with definition and illustrations, in the ' Scottish Dictionary.' Jamieson likewise gives the variants " faik," " faiks," and " faikins," and writes :

" I' fake (provinc. E.) is evidently the same ; thus expl. by Thoresby, ' Faith (an oath) ' ; Bay's Lett., p. 327. A . Bor. ' i' /a/cins, in faith ; an asseveration ' ; Grose."

It may be added that, if the pronunciation of the phrase now current in parts of the Scottish Lowlands were phonetically tran- scribed, the expression would take the form used by Lord Lytton' s Hodge.

THOMAS BAYNE.

WHITE MEATS : WIGS : AFTEBNOONING. These words occur in the Rev. J. Gother's sermon for Quinquagesima Sunday (ed. 1718):

" In this Nation it is not permitted, at Collation to eat any kind of Fish or Whit-meats ; that is, Eggs, Cheese, Milk or Butter : Cakes and Wigs are customary, tho' not made without some Butter.... As for the Quantity....! think the most general Rule may be, of eating as much as comes to -the Quantity of an Afternooning at other times of the Year [than Lent]."

J. B.

IN BLACK AND WHITE. The ' N.E.D.' furnishes no early instance of this exact phrase, though "under white and black" is cited from 'Much Ado,' V. i. 314 (1599). It is, therefore, probable that Ben Jonson first uses the expression in 1598 :

" Cob. O, he has basted me rarely, sumptu- ously ! but I have it here in black and white, [pulls out the ivarrant] for his black and blue, shall pay him." ' Every Man in his Humour,' iv. 3 (Gifford's Edition, p. 20).

RICHABD H. THORNTON.

36, Upper Bedford Place, W.C.

CADIE == CADDIE. The ' N.E.D.' gives cawdy in 1730 for what is now called a caddie, and a quotation of about 1774 for the equivalent cadie. An earlier instance than the latter is to be found in The London Morning Penny Post of 22-24 July, 1751, which recorded, under the heading * Scot- land,' that

" Last week one Duncan Grant, a discharged soldier, who has passed here sometime as a Street Cadie, was sentenced by the Magistrates (for imposing on a Gentleman who sent him to Market to buy Half a Dozen Herrings, who cost Sixpence, but he averred they cost a Shilling, which he caused the Gentleman to pay) to be