Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 5.djvu/326

 266

NOTES AND QUERIES. [ii s. v. ATOL e, 1012.

ducted 30 March, 1680, and died 1706. A Laud Cade, LL.B., was Vicar of Sellindge 5 June, 1705, died June, 1731, possibly son -of William and Eliza Cade aforesaid.

R. J. FYNMOBE.

ANCIENT TERMS. These three notes may be useful to students of ancient documents : Bynefecem= maltster. Previgno or Pri- vigno = stepson. Haimaldavit = wintered. Each of these three terms puzzled me for a considerable time ; the last is related to hiems, but is spelt in quite a number of ways. W. CLEMENT KENDALL.

ENGLISH BAUDS AND THE SCOTTISH LAN- GUAGE. Some years ago, during a visit I made to London from Edinburgh, I was surprised and amused to learn from a gentle- man sojourning at the same hotel that the inclement weather of that season was " due to an iceberg off the coast of Scotland." But I then came a little nearer to under- standing the aloofness of a number of Eng- lishmen from Scottish matters. Had it occurred to me to inform my fellow-traveller of my nationality, he would possibly, I fancy, have wondered why my garb was not that of old Gaul.

The peculiar dullness of some English- men with regard to the Scottish language is distinctly noticeable. And its inveteracy is singular. Two examples that seem to me to call for particular remark have lately come under my observation. The first is the case of " Monk " Lewis, whose aberra- tions on the subject, strangely enough, took place in the company of Sir Walter Scott. The ballad of ' Clerk Colvin ' and other components of the ' Tales of Terror and Wonder ' are accompanied by certain foot- notes which can only be described as of scarce qualified absurdity. The first stanza of ' Clerk Colvin ' runs as follows :

Clerk Colvin and his lady gay,

They walked in yonder garden sheen :

The girdle round her middle jimp

Had cost Clerk Colvin crowns fifteen.

Here " jimp," slender, is wildly annotated " stays." The word " dowie " in the line,

And dowie, dowie on he rides, is rendered " swiftly " instead of " dull " ; " eiry," a misspelling of " eerie," seems to be interpreted as a noun; while " windlestrae " and " gare " receive less than Jeddart justice.

A century of civilization has evidently not brought a more generous fortune to the Scottish language from a class of Southern

students and writers. A recent example of its maltreatment is to be met with in the otherwise agreeable ' Later Poems from Punch.' Though here, of course, the reins of mere travesty may be thrown on the neck of Pegasus, such a conclusion is not obvious. In the ' Ballad of Edinboro' Toon ' of this volume the author tramples rough-shod on the laws of Scottish literary form and euphony alike. The riming of the first and third lines of the stanza now quoted is of an excruciating quality :

For I had donned ma coat o' cheiks That cost me guineas twa an' three,

But and ma pair o' ditto breeks That luiked sae pleasantlie.

Again, he would be a phenomenal Scots- man indeed who preferred to articulate " Geordie Street " for " George Street." Nor would any Scotsman, however miserably equipped as regards vocabulary, imagine, even in his cups and beneath a village pump, that he had a garniture of " caller claes." Scotsmen will probably admit Dr. Johnson's sincerity when he said that he had seen in Scotland the savage men and savage man- ners that he expected ; but they can also urge that masters in diction like Burns and Fergusson are of them, and that they can. at least, reasonably claim for their national language an adequate recognition.

W. B.

THE NATIONAL ANTHEM. I have not seen the following curious origin of the National Anthem suggested anywhere else.

In the ' Memoirs of Madame de Crequy ' it is stated that the following " cantique ' ' was always sung by the " demoiselles de St. Cyr : ' when Louis XIV. entered their chapel to hear the morning prayer. The words were by M. de Brinon, and the music by the famous Lully :

Grand Dieu, sauve le Roi ! Grand Dieu, venge le Roi !

Vive le Roi !

Que tou jours glorieux, Louis victorieux ! Voye ses ennemis

Toujours soumis !

Grand Dieu, sauve le Roi ! Grand Dieu, venge le Roi ! Vive le Roi !

Raikes says the English Anthem is almost a literal translation of the French, and that it was translated and adapted to the House of Hanover by Handel, the German com- poser (' Journal of Thomas Raikes,' 1858. vol. i. pp, 174-5). L. M. R.