Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 6.djvu/570

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [ii s. vi. DEC. H, 1912.

to finish the Mass, is further coloured by his adding, " Within 500 years, when St. Mark sends a Pope to Rome, I will return." Now Dukas, writing on the spot, does not include such statements. When did they first appear ? F.L.S.

WILLIAM KELLY. Can any of your readers inform me what became of the genealogical manuscripts of Mr. William Kelly, F.S.A., F.R.H.S., who died at Lei- cester, 1894 ?

G. A. WOODROFFE PHILLIPS.

Leydens House, Edenbridge, Kent.

" NOTCH." (US. vi. 366, 427.)

THERE seems no doubt that this is the French oche, hoche, coche, derived from the Provenal osco, a notch. I find in the twelfth century oscat, oschat (Bertran de Born), notched. This word, still extant, passed into the northern dialects on two lines : (1) ousco, oucho, ochi; (2) coco, whence encocar, descocar (twelfth century), which passed into French as encochier, descochier .(modern decocher), to nock, to let fly, an arrow. Coche, encoche, are modern French for a notch or nick ; cocker is to nick ; cochon is a nicked or gelt pig. The O.F. oche is plainly from the ochi variant of osco ; it became hoche in the time, now returning, when the language had an aspirate ; and it probably changed to coche under the influ- ence of the Provencal verb cocar, now couca. Where does the n- come from ? asked PROF. SKEAT of whom with deep regret I have to speak in the past. His suggestion that it might have come from " an oche " is in accordance with the current explanation of the initial of " newt " and " nickname," of " napple " and " negg," of " nuncle " and " naunt," having been borrowed from " an " or from " mine." This explanation breaks down at once when we turn to the n- or t- prefixed to abbreviated familiar names, such as Ned, Ted, Noll, Nell, Nab, Nan ; especially when we observe the analogous changes in other languages. As a part of what has been called " some hidden law " of international phonology there is a custom of prefixing a con sonant, generally of the dental group to words with an awkward initial vowel

Thus O.F. ante became tante, and our ' ingot," from the Dutch ingoten (cast-metal ), on passing into French, became lingot.

Similarly, a vowel may be prefixed to words with an awkward initial consonant ; as in Spanish, Portuguese, Proven9al, and 3.F., where the impure s, easy to Italian, is repugnant to the tongue. Thus Dom Xavier de Fourvieres (Albert Rieus), whose recent death is lamented in Provence, Prior of the White Canons denizened at Storrington in Sussex, always dated his letters from Estourrintoun.

Initial consonants may also be dropped' or exchanged for others more convenient- Thus French and English " orange " have dropped the Persian initial of the Spanish naranja ; Portuguese has adopted laranja. Old ProvenQal and Catalan have livel, level ; French and Spanish have chosen to make it niveau, nivel.

Returning to " notch," the verb anoccer in PROF. SKEAT'S 1313 extract may be a verb formed from osco or ochi, perhaps through an O.F. word now lost ; this would account for the n- in "notch " ; but it may have been a law-French nonce-word made from an already existing " notch."

I will conclude by drawing attention to a curious denization of coche in our language. Druggists keep, or kept not many years ago, an aloetic pill-mass dignified by the name of Pil. Cochice, and asked for, mostly by old women, as " pill o' cosher." It is retailed in short, flat sticks like miniature sticks of chocolate, marked across by notches, and is made up at home into pills for family use. Its name will be found in the ' N.E.D.' under ' Cochee,' with a 1547 quotation, and is referred to pilules cochees that is, " notched pills." Here is a curious survival of a foreign medicine (like the Venetian Teriak Farook of India) still made up in the peculiar form whence it derived its name four centuries ago. EDWARD NICHOLSON.

Cros de Cagnes, near Nice.

FIELDING'S PARSON THWACKUM (11 S. vi. 348). In an obituary notice of my grand- father Sir Henry P. St. John Mildmay, who died in 1808 at Bath, aged 44, it is stated :

" He was the grandson of Sir Paulet St. John, who was created a Baronet in 1772, and died in 1780, at the age of 76 : A downright country squire, supposed to be the original from which Henry Fielding sketched the ' Squire Western ' of ' Tom Jones.' "

H. A. ST. J. M.