Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 4.djvu/112

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [ii s. iv. AUG. 5, 1911.

CELTIC LEGEND OF THE CRUCIFIXION.

'The following extract from Mr. George

Henderson's recently published ' Survivals

in Belief among the Celts ' seems worth a

corner in * N. & Q.' :

"It is not right for a worn an to try and kindle the fire by fanning it with the skirt of her dress. The reason is that when our Lord was going to be nailed to the Cross, and the nails were being got ready, the smith's bellows refused to work, and the smith's daughter fanned the fire with her skirt."

HERBERT B. CLAYTON. -39, Renfrew Road, Lower Kennington Lane.

CHARLES GOUNOD AND ALPHONSE KARR AT SAINT RAPHAEL. Outside the little town of Saint Raphael (Var), on the road near the sea going eastwards, is a picturesque villa called " Oustalet dou Capelan." On the dexter gatepost is a marble tablet with the following inscription in capital letters (no accents) :

L'illustre maitre Ch. Gounod

composa Romeo et Juliette

a 1'Oustalet dou Capelan

an prin temps de 1866

Underneath, written in black pencil or char- coal on the plaster, one reads :

JTic Divum Romeo Scripsit Gounod meus anno 1866 Ingenio haud amicitia impar

C. J. Barbier

These written lines have been carefully covered with a piece of glass.

On the other gatepost is the following in -capital letters, with most or all of the accents:

Le pere Lebonnard repre"sente a la Comedie Fran^aise

le 4 Aout 1904 lu chez Alphonse Karr a Maison-close

le 26 Avril 1886 fut ecrit en 1885 a 1'Oustalet

This is, I think, engraved on white marble, Tvhere also appears the name of the house engraved in writing letters.

The house called Maison-close, where Alphonse Karr lived, is a few yards further east, on the other the land side of the road. On the same road, but in or on the edge of the town, is his monument, a big bronze head or bust on a tall rough- hewn stone pedestal.

ROBERT PIERPOINT.

" TERRAPIN " : A PROPOSED ETYMOLOGY. Writing of the derivation of this word at 10 S. vi. 185, the late JAMES PLATT observed : " The real difficulty is to account for the modern form of the word with final -in." ' The Cent. Diet.' cites terapin, terrapene, and turpin as former variants ; ^nd these are generally supposed by American

philologists to have produced the modern word from the Algonquin forms turebe, tulpe, and the like, by some hitherto un- explained philological process.

What happened I believe was this : the Spanish conquerors of the New World, hearing the American species of coast and land turtle denominated turube and torope, and noting the creature's panoplied appear- ance when in a quiescent state, likened that slow-moving, but sagacious reptile, whose flesh they soon learned to appreciate, to the new military construction or fortified mound known as terre-plein (Lat. terra -f planus), which according to Littre was first adopted in the sixteenth century, and proceeded to mould or model the barbaric root into the Spanish terraplen, which through familiar usage soon discarded the letter I. Compare the origin of the name " canvasback duck." Otherwise it seems hardly conceivable that from such barren sources as those the Algonquin language supplies, a word of such finished and ex- quisite development as terrapin could have actually been fashioned. N. W. HILL.

New York.

EARLY PRINTED BOOK IN SUFFOLK. Recently I came across in a will a paragraph which seems to deserve a corner in ' N. & Q.,' and forms a suitable addition to the note on ' Books in Wills ' at 11 S. i. 383.

John Apsley of Thackham, Suffolk, by will dated 14 May, 1507, leaves to the parish church of Thackham " a mass book emprin- ted the which they have, and a fayre grayle the which my fader did make. [30 Adeane]." It would be presumptuous for me to indulge in a history of printing, but this seems an early specimen. I have consulted Arbuth- not, ' Mysteries of Chronology,' p. 34, also Putnam, ' Books and their Makers in the Middle Ages,' vol. i. pp. 369, 373, 380, 389, which enable me to make a few con- jectures ; but beyond conjecture I cannot go. However, whether the Missal was printed abroad or in England, it was an early example. A. RHODES.

" WATCHING HOW THE CAT JUMPS." (See 7 S. xi. 448 ; xii. 51, 154.) Compare with this a line in ' The Tale of the Basyn,' Hazlitt's ' Early Popular Poetry,' iii. 45 :

Eche tau3t hym euer among, how the katte did snese.

RICHARD H. THORNTON. 36, Upper Bedford Place, W.C.