Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 5.djvu/382

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NOTES AND QUERIES. tii s. v. APRIL 20, 1912.

through the bow-strings of an invading enemy, I shall notejthat such an incident is recorded in the Japanese ' Adzuma Kagami,' or the ' Annals of the Kamakura Government,' finished about 1266. Under 25 Aug., 1180, therein, we read :

" Last evening the united bands of Matano and Tachibana, with the intention of assaulting the Minamoto clan of the province of Kai, stationed themselves at the northern foot of Mount Fuji. During the night rats entered their camp and bit off all the strings of more than a hundred bows of Matano's soldiers, which made them unable to fight, when the enemy attacked and routed them -completely."

This simple, matter-of-fact registry pre- oludes every idea of the disaster being .associated with a supernatural intervention.

KlTMAGUSU MlNAKATA. Tanabe, Kii, Japan.

LONDRES : LONDINIUM (11 S. v. 129, 191). Auguste Brachet derived " Londres " from an imaginary word Londinum (I. i. 2). .Subsequent writers have corrected this inaccuracy, but they have retained the erroneous result. We may be quite certain that Brachet would not have affiliated " Londres " to Londlnium. Latin -ni- regu- larly becomes -gn- in French when followed by a vowel : e.g., Dinia, Alvernia, Bononia, {Jolonia (Agrippina), became Digne, Au- vergne, Boulogne, Cologne. Some of these instances are given by Brachet (u.s.). To them may be added a great number of place- names in -Iniacum : e.g., from Alblnus, Martinus, Sabinus, were formed Albiniacum, Martiniacum, Sabiniacum. These names .are now represented by Aubigny, Martigny, Savigny. Consequently, if " Londlnium " had been passed on by the Gallo-Romans to the Franks, it would now be *Londigne.

On the other hand, if the Franks of the seventh century had taken over the eccle- siastical Latin form " Lundonia," the French for London would be *Londogne.

The Latin name Londinium was neces- sarily adopted by those Vandals, Burgun- <iians, and Alamans who were settled in the Britannias by the Emperors Probus and Oonstantius Chlorus in the third and fourth centuries. By the time Ammianus Mar- cellinus was writing (c. 375) the correct form was contaminated by folk-speech, and had become " Lundinium " on occasion. This substitution of u for Latin o is regular in O.E. borrowings from Latin : cf. " munt," " punt," " pund " ; montem, pontem, pondo. We might expect to find that u had become y by ^'-infection ; but the I of Londlnium had, no doubt, lost the accent, had become

short, and been weakened to e long before umlaut became regular.

Forms of place-names in -Inium are very rare. " Corini-um " was reduced through (ceaster). Similarly, as to its ending, Lon- dinium postulates an O.E. *Lunden6. Now " Londene " actually occurs in one MS. of the ' Historia Brittonum,' wherein, in the Welsh List of the Cities of Britain, it was purposely substituted for the Old- Welsh " Cair Londein." This particular MS. (Paris, No. 11,108, scr. xii. sazc.) belongs to a family which dates from " annus quintus Ead- mundi regis Anglorum," i.e., A.D. 945.
 * Curini-, *Cyrini-, and *Cyren8- to Cyrn-

The O.E. ending -ene in Latin loan-words has three ancestors, namely, -ina, -ini-, and -6m-. " Lindum Colonia " became Lind- colene-ceaster in King Alfred's version of Bede ; and " Bononia" appears as " Bunnan ' ' (ace.) in the Winchester ' Saxon Chronicle.' The hypothetical form intermediate between Bononia and Bunne is *Bun6n8. It does not occur, but I believe that it is to a know- ledge of it that we are indebted for the ecclesiastical Latin Lundonia. St. Augustine probably heard talk about " Bunene " and " Lundene." He soon came to know that " Bunene " meant that port the Latin name of which was Bononia, and he may well have been actuated by that to latinize " Lundene " as Lundonia, when writing to Pope Gregory the Great. In any case " Lundonia " appears first in Gregory's letter to Augustine, written on 22 June, 601 ; v. Bede, ' H.E.,' I. xxix. p. 64. ALFRED ANSCOMBE.

FAMILIES : DURATION IN MALE LINE (11 S. v. 27, 92, 132, 174, 213). In a recent review of ' Folk - Rhymes of Devon,' by William Crossing, The Guardian stated that, " of the murderers of Thomas Becket, Sir William de Tracey was a Devonshire owner of large estates. ' All the Traceys have the wind in their faces ' runs the folk-rhyme, signifying that they had never any luck after that act of violence. Tradition will have it that Sir William died, tearing his flesh off his bones with his teeth and nails, on his way to the Holy Land. As a matter of fact, within four years of the murder De Tracy was justiciary in Normandy and was present at Falaise in 1174, when William, King of Scotland, did homage to Henry II. The present Lord Wemyss and Lord Sudeley are his lineal descendants, as Dean Stanley has pointed out. The pedigree, contrary to all received opinions on the subject of judgments on sacrilege, exhibits the very singular instance of an estate descending for upwards of seven hundred years in the male line of the same family."

I should be glad to learn where Dean Stanley made the statements here alluded to. Was not the present Lord Sudeley's