Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 8.djvu/277

 ii s. VIL APRILS, i9i3.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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" SHAKPSHIN " (11 S. vii. 206). The explanation I offer of the name of this coin is closely connected with that of the " pictareen," or " bit," of which it is, or was, a quarter. " Pictareen " or " pistareen " i.e., a small " piastra " was the name of a small silver coin current in the West Indies. A very similar name, " picayune," was given in Louisiana, accord- ing to the ' N.E.D.,' to " the Spanish half- real, value 6 cents or 3 pence, now to the U.S. 5-cent piece or other coin of small value." If I mistake not, there was a New Orleans newspaper called The Picayune. Now this word is distinctly Provenal, brought from Marseilles, where picaioun was, and is still, the usual name for small silver coin. This may be from L. pecunia, or it may be related to the piccolo coin of Northern Italy, but certainly throughout Provence it has the Scots sense of " siller." Mistral, in one of his poems, advises a young man courting :

le* vau mai li poutouno

Que li picaioun.

For him more are worth [do more] the kisses than the picayunes.

The copper coins of Provence were the dardeno, a half-sou or farthing, and the ardit, which was the liard or half-farthing. The latter coin is said to have got its name from having been first coined by Philippe le Hardi in the thirteenth century ; but this seems very doubtful. The dardeno was named after M. de Dardeno, who was en- trusted with its coinage about 1707. He was apparently the " Moussu de Dardeno " to whom F. T. Gros of Marseilles dedicated one of his poems, * L'Enroouma generau de 1'An 1730,' referring to the influenza epidemic of that year. Both coins have disappeared, to the great regret of the people, to whom the centime, practically only an inconvenient money of account, would, as a fifth of a sou, be useless. The people count in sous, and I have seen greengrocery ticketed in Hards. Victor Gelu, in one of his poems (1865), says to a gambler whom he knew as a boy :

Que de dardeno as manda a pielo o crous ? How many farthings have you tossed at heads or tails ("pile or cross")?

An avaricious man is a pito-dardeno.

Now this Word, pronounced dardene, Would probably have passed, along with 4.u~ picayune," to Louisiana and the

the

French West Indies as a name for small copper coins. And it Would readily become corrupted by the common change of d to /, then to s or sh. This change takes place in

many Provencal words ; thus Adelaide has become Azalais ; the L. spatha, It. espada, is espaso ; denti (to cut a tooth) is jenzi. It is probable that in Creole speech dardene Would become zarzene, and this would be hardened in English speech into " sharpshin."

EDWARD NICHOLSON. Cros de Cagnes, near Nice.

AUTHORS WANTED (US. vii. 208). I very much doubt whether any author can be found for the proverbial distich that DB, ROBERT F. ARNOLD quotes, beginning " Dat Galenus opes." In Burton's * Ana- tomy of Melancholy,' 1, 2, 3, 15, it appears in the form

Dat Galenus opes, dat Justiniamis Tionores, Sed genus cfc species cogitur ire pedes :

The rich Physitian, honor'd Lawyers ride,

Whil'st the poor Scholar foots it by their side.

The marginal reference " Buchanan, eleg. lib.," was first attached to these lines in ed. 4 (1632), and the error has been mechanic- ally repeated in modern reprints. The note was originally connected with the next quotation, " Calliope longum," &c., which is taken from 97, 98 of the first poem in Buchanan's ' Elegiarum Liber.'

In a widely different shape the saying may be seen in Franciscus Floridus Sabinus's ' Lectiones Subcisivse,' lib. i. cap. i. :

"Vix enim prima Latinitatis principia doctos aut lustiniano aut Galeno addicunt : ulos etiam Leoninos tarn barbare constructos quam vilissim sordidissimseque sententiae versiculos insulsissime canentes :

Dat Galenus opes, dat sanctio lustiniana, Ex ali is paleas, ex istis collige grana."

John Owen has made a fresh application of the familiar Words in

Medicus et I. C.

Dat Galenus opes, dat lustinianus honores, Dum ne sit Patiens iste, nee ille Cliens.

' Epigrammata,' lib. vi. 47.

Biichmann, in the 10th ed. of * Gefliigelte Worte,' quotes from Burkard Waldis's ' Esopus,' that appeared in 1548 :

Galenus uns reichlich nahrt,

Justin ianus hoch herfahrt.

This has been dropped in the latest editions of Biichmann's volume.

The form of the Latin proverb may very likely have been suggested by the words of Ovid :

Dat census honores, Census amicitias : pauper ubique iacet.

'Fasti,' i. 217. Cf. also f Amores,' III. viii. 55.

EDWARD BENSLY. Univ. Coll., Aberystwyth.