Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 6.djvu/519

 us. vi. NOV. 30, 1912.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

427

4. I found th' Infernal Cunning-man, And th' Under-witch his Caliban.

' Hudibras : the Third and Last Part,' 1678, Canto I. 11. 281-2.

5. ' The Rape of Lucrece, committed by Tarquin the sixth, and the remarkable judge- ments that befell him for it, by that incomparable master of our English Poetry Will. Shakespear,' 8vo. In a list of "Books Printed for and sould by Peter Parker at the Leg and Star, right Against the Royal Exchange in CornhiU," at the end of ' Hudibras : the Third and Last Part,' 1678.

G. THORN-DRURY

PROF. SKEAT ON " NOTCH." (See ante. p. 366.) MR. MAYHEW'S note has a special and melancholy interest for me. PROF. SKEAT'S communication to him is dated, I see, 16 September. On the 22nd of the same month he wrote a letter of some length to me containing a somewhat fuller note on the word " notch," which I venture to send to you. After adverting to the comparatively recent examples of the word given in ' N.E.D.,' he went on :

" Yet here we have noche already in Anglo- French in 1313. And it must have been then in use in English also (of course, in connexion with vthe tally), because the n is English ; for a noche was due to an oche ; the real O.F. word being oche. Indeed, the ' N.E.D.' does record oche in the fifteenth century as a verb ; and the sb. from which the verb was derived must already have been known. The whole problem is most inter- esting to the English etymologist. You even have, at p. 35,* the verb anoccer, which is prob- ably a substitution for enoccer, seeing that the Anglo-French not infrequently substitutes initial an- for French en-, Latin in-. It is difficult to say whether a-noccer was derived from the sb. noche ; or whether (which is quite possible) it means an-occer, answering to a Latin in-occare, an instance of which, meaning ' to harrow in,' is given in Lewis and Short's ' Latin Dictionary.' Inoccare might easily have been taken to mean 'to score (land) with a harrow.' I daresay that \ve may get further some day. Anyhow, the A.F. noche is an undoubted fact."

I should like, if I may, especially in view of what has been written elsewhere, to take this opportunity of expressing my own deep sense of the great loss which all who are in- terested in philology have sustained in the death of PROF. SKEAT. That loss is not the loss only of the scholar and author whose published writings have taught us so much, but it is the more intimate loss also of one who was always ready to give most generously of his time and his learning. No one can give more cogent testimony of

Society).
 * I.e., of vol. ii. of ' The Eyre of Kent ' (Selden

that than myself. When I first asked PROF. SKEAT for his assistance in clearing up certain difficulties in some work upon which I was then engaged he had not, I suppose, ever heard my name ; yet he wrote me a long and helpful letter, which I subsequently learnt from himself embodied the results of four hours' work specially undertaken that he might write that letter to one quite unknown to him ; and from that time he never failed to respond most generously to every appeal I made to him for his help. He was the most accessible of scholars. I speak of that which I know.

W. C. BOIiAND.

Common Koom, Lincoln's Inn.

THE SURNAME TORN. There is a solitary family in the parish of Foveran, Aberdeen- shire, bearing this curious surname. I am\ told that it is a corruption of Turing, a family long connected with the district, whose baronetcy, created about 1642, was recently revived. The maternal grand- mother of Mr. James McBey, the young etcher whose work is being shown at Gutekunst's, is a Torn. J. M. BULLOCH.

123, Pall Mall, S.W.

WE must request corresp9ndents desiring in- formation on family matters of only private interest to affix their names and addresses to their queries, in order that answers may be sent to them direct.

' BlNGEN ON THE RHINE ' : ' THE SlEGE OF

WEINSBERG.' I am looking for two poems in English bearing respectively these titles. I do not know the names of the authors, and repeated searching in the British Museum has been without success. Can any reader help me to obtain copies of them, or of John Riley Robinson's poem 'The Women of Weinsberg,' mentioned by MR. W. McMuRHAY at 11 S. ii. 518 ? The German poems by Uhland and Burger are not what I seek.

JAMES E. GOODWIN. 12, Marshall Place, Cheetham, Manchester.

(1) IRISH FAMILIES. Who represent the familes of Taylor of Bally liaise, Gibson of Dublin, Martin (see arms in the office of Ulster King-at-Arms), Reilly of Dublin ?

(2) WALTER. Wanted, the pedigree of Sir William Walter of Wimbledon (seven- teenth century).

J. HAUTENVILLE COPE. Finchampstead, Berks.