Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 6.djvu/451

 ii s. vi. NOV. 9, 1912.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

371

Saliare ' may be seen in Dr. W. W. Merry's ' Selected Fragments of Roman Poetry ' (Clarendon Press, 2nd ed., 1898). See also J.*| Wordsworth's ' Fragments and Specimens of Early Latin,' pp. 158 and 564. Other remains of a similar kind are given at the beginning of a very handy little book, Ernst Diehl's ' Poet-arum Romanorum Veterum Reliquiae,' Bonn, 1911. The refer- ence in ' Jana Novella ' is to the formula by which the priests on the first day of the month, the Kalends, announced whether the Nones would fall on the fifth or the seventh day. See Varro, ' De Lingua Latina,' vi. 27 :

" Kalendae, quod his diebus calantur eiys mensis Nonas a pontificibus, quintanae an septi- manse sint futurae, in Capitolio in curia Calabra sic dictae quinquies : ' calo luno Covella.' "

Cp. Wordsworth, p. 540, where Corella is a mis- print for Covella. There is a v.l. " Novella." " lana " is J. J. Scah'ger's suggestion. " The wild custom of leaping through heaps of blazing straw on a certain night in sum- mer " (' Marius the Epicurean,' ch. ii.) has nothing to do with the ritual of pro- claiming the date of the Nones. For the widely spread practice of Midsummer fires see Frazer's ' Golden Bough,' 1st ed., vol. ii. oh. iv. Cp. the description in Besant's ' Dorothy Forster.' A friend draws my attention to Sudermann's drama ' Jo- hannisfeuer.'

Widows. For examples of widows under the Empire who lived in retirement devoted to the memory of their husbands, see Fried- laender's ' Sittengeschichte,' pt. i. ch. v., with the references to Latin literature there given. There is an English translation of this work.

Emperor's Image. The locus dassicus for an emperor's image being reverenced like that of a god is, perhaps, Suetonius, ' Tiberius,' 58, where we learn that it was finally regarded as a capital offence in this reign to undress before Augustus's image or to enter certain places bearing a coin or ring stamped with the same. See also Tacitus, ' Annals,' i. 73, 74, and iii. 36 ; and Philostratus's ' Life of Apollonius,' i. 15, where it is said that the statues of Tiberius were more sacred than those of Olympian Zeus, and the story is told of the man who chastised a slave while the latter was holding a coin with the emperor's image.

Luna. See George Dennis, ' Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria,' ch. xxxv., with the author's numerous references.

EDWABD BENSLY,

University College, Aberystwyth.

' WlDSITH,' -L. 18, AXD " GAUTIGOTH "

(11 S. vi. 7, 201, 271). I beg leave to deal with the last communication in an alle- gorical vein.

The schoolmaster was seeking information, more suo, and having told the class that Bong Alfred had reported on the authority of Boethius (' Metra,' I. 1. i. p. 151, ed. Sedgefield) that the Goths invaded the Roman Empire from the east, from Scythia " eastan'of SciSSia" he asked whereabouts the Roman Empire lay with respect to Scythia. All the little boys said " To the westward," with pleasing unanimity.

The master retired to his study. He was very old, and had been trying to scrape acquaintance with a poet named Widsith ever since 1826, and his study was packed with books and articles written by many people with the same object. But, strange to say, not one of these writers trusted Widsith, although they ardently desired to know him. They all approached the study of his lay with erroneous preconceptions. The most harmful of these was their deter- mination to regard him as untruthful. For instance, Widsith tells us that he had visited the Ethel Gotena, the Homeland of the Gotas, and had seen and known its king. But very few people could be got to believe that. The old schoolmaster certainly did not, and he had searched for the EthelJZotena on the map of Europe for eighty years and more. Some writers said it was on the Vistula ; others on the Black Sea ; others on the Danube, and some in Fairyland. After spending more time in his fruitless search, the old schoolmaster returned to the schoolroom, and addressed the same class again. He told them that a certain traveller named Widsith had reported that he had passed into the Ethel Gotena from the east, from k Old Anglia " eastan of Ongle" and he asked where- abouts the Ethel Gotena lay with respect to Old Anglia. All the little boys said " To the westward."

But the old schoolmaster could not believe it, and he said that the Goths (sic) had never lived in those parts. But one little boy remarked that the Good Prince Albert came from there, and that he was sure he was a Goth. The schoolmaster corrected the boy as to the pronunciation of th, and as to the quantity of the o in Gotha. He knew all about quantity, of course. For instance, he knew that the Panegyrist of Narses, in Italy in 565, made the stem-vowel of Gothorum long ; also that Eugenius, Bishop of Toledo in 650, ended an alexandrine with the words