Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 5.djvu/95

 us. V.JAN. 27, i9i2.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

LATTER LAMMAS (11 S. iv. 469 ; v. 18). It is hardly fair to doubt the etymology of Lammas from the A.-S. form of " loaf-mass " when it is so easy of access. The ' N.E.D.' and my own ' Etymological Dictionary ' give the history of the word with sufficient clearness.

We are told that " if it were proved that in early English days it was a custom to offer a loaf in church .... the scale would incline the other way." Surely the obvious course is to consult Bosworth and Toller's ' A.-S. Dictionary,' which gives a reference to Cockayne's 'A.-S. Leechdoms,' and quotes the passage (vol. iii. p. 290) : " Nim of tham gehalgedan hlafe the man halige on hlaf- mfesse daeg " ; i.e., " take from the hallowed loaf which is hallowed on Lammas-day." From MS. Cotton Vitellius, E. 17, i. 16.

I do not believe that the phrase " last math " is any older than 1912 (or possibly 1911), in spite of the announcement that we have " good authority " for it. If there is any authority for it at all, where are the quotations ? Mere guess is of no authority whatever. Besides, last math will only give lammath, with final th, not s.

Note that another name for Lammas was '' hlaf-senung," lit. "loaf-blessing." See hldf-senung in the dictionary.

WALTER W. SKEAT.

JANE AUSTEN'S 'PERSUASION' (11 S. iv. 288, 339, 412, 538).!. Jane Austen's use of the active for the passive present participle may be illustrated by the following quota- tion from a letter by Cromwell (Carlyle's collection, No. 188, 23 April, 1653) :

" I hear some unruly persons have lately com- mitted great outrages in Cambridgeshire, about S waff ham and Botsham, in throwing down the works making by the Adventurers, and menacing those they employ thereabout."

W. R. B. PRIDEAUX.

WHITTINGTON AND HIS CAT : EASTERN VARIANTS (11 S. iv. 503, 522). In his very interesting note on this subject MR. KUMA- ousu MINAKATA refers (p. 523) to two stories of aid given by rats, who bit through the bow-strings of an invading host. He might have referred to an interesting parallel in Herodotus, book ii. cap. 141. When Sen- nacherib invaded Egypt, the warrior class refused to fight against him. Sethds, the King of Egypt, is told in a dream to meet Sennacherib nevertheless (I quote from Rawlinson's translation) :

" Sethos, then, relying on the dream, collected such of the Egyptians as were willing to follow him. . . .As the two armies lay here [at Pelusium]

opposite one another, there came in the night a multitude of field-mice, which devoured all the quivers and bow-strings of the enemy, and ate the thongs by which they managed their shields. Next morning they commenced their flight, and great multitudes fell, as they had no arms with which to defend themselves. There stands to this day in the temple of Hephaestus a stone statue of Sethos, with a mouse in his hand, and an inscription to this effect ' Look on me, and learn to reverence the god.' "

This would seem to point to some cult of the mouse in Egypt. I do not know whether Egyptology confirms the inference, but it is in any case interesting to find the story so closely paralleled in China. Herodotus presumably got his story from an Egyptian source. H. I. B.

CORPORATION or LONDON AND THE MEDICAL, PROFESSION (11 S. iv. 425, 496; v. 13). PELLIPAR is quite correct in chal- lenging the accuracy of DR. CLIPPINGD ALE'S statement that the Lord Mayor of London is chosen from a restricted number of Livery Companies. At one time the Lord Mayor was invariably chosen from one of the twelve " greater Companies," and, if not already a member of one, was translated from his mother Company in anticipation of his election. Owing to special circumstances Alderman Willimott, when elected Lord Mayor in 1742, refused to leave his parent Company (the Coopers), and from that time there has been no such restriction as DR. CLIPPINGDALE imagines to exist. As a matter of fact the present Lord Mayor (a Turner) is not a member of one of the Greater Companies ; and of eighteen living ex-Lord Mayors, only seven, I think, possess that qualification.

My volume on ' The Aldermen of the City of London ' (published by the Corporation of London in 1908) contains an excursus on ' The Aldermen and the Livery Com- panies,' in which the point on which PELLIPAR and DR. CLIPPINGDALE are at issue is treated at length. With regard to the four Lord Mayors who were translated from the Barber-Surgeons' Company, DR. CLIPPING- DALE is probably aware that membership of the Company is not evidence that they were at any time practising or even qualified medical men : in regard to Frederick and Edwin, it may be taken as certain, I think, that they were not ; I am not quite sure as to Proby. I believe that Stewart was, in early life, in practice, but he had abandoned the profession before becoming an Alderman.

In his first communication (11 S. iv. 425) DR. CLIPPINGDALE assumes that only three