Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 8.djvu/307

 ii s. vii. APRIL 19, i9i3.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

303

Streitberg's ' Notes ' on pp. 7 and 8 therein, I found them prejudiced and uncritical. They convey a mass of valuable but con- tradictory items of information, which the learned author has neither distributed nor assimilated. His primary contention is that the Latin word Gothus ought to have boon, written with t instead of th. No expla- nation is affoYded of the fact that, though Latin had no J>, 6, the digraph th appears in Gothus and all its derivatives.

What we do find, however, though at another place, is the statement that Latin authors, in their transliteration of Gothic \>, waver between th and t, and that th prevails in the older sources : "In den altern Quellen iiberwiegt th " (p. 59, 35, note 9).

This statement is antagonistic to Prof. Streitberg's main contention. Because, since Latin has no inter-dental spirant, on the one hand the use of t by classical Latin authors in place of 0, or th, is not improper, and could not furnish an argument against the presence of \> in a Gothic word ; and, on the other, the use of the digraph th in order to express simple t would be absurd.

Moreover, Flavins Vopiscus (c. 310), Ammianus Marcellinus (c. 370), Claudius Claudianus (c. 400), Hydatius Lemicensis (c. 450), and Apollinaris Sidonius (c. 480) all used the digraph th in Gothus. JEmilius Dracontius (c. 595) wrote " Gotthus." Prof. Streitberg would have us believe that all these authors are incorrect, and that they ought to have written Gotus (o).

When we turn to Greek authors of the fifth and sixth centuries we find that Zosimus (c. 450), Malchus (c. 480), and Procopius (c. 537) wrote TorQ-oi. Prof. Streitberg quotes all three writers, but he ignores the fact that they made use of rd to express the alleged simple Gothic t. The Latin th is bad enough, but Greek rd for Gothic t is ten times worse. Procopius should have received more attention, and the fact that he served under Narses in the Gothic war in Italy in 536-9 should have been appre- ciated. If the Ostrogoths were calling themselves *Out-ans, which is what Prof. Streitberg maintains, a writer and man of action like Procopius would have had no reason for calling them TorB-oi.

Older Greek writers are treated in Prof. Streitberg's ' Notes ' in an equally per- functory fashion. The Tovriovvs of Strabo (t c. A.D. 24) and the Fvflcoi/es of Ptolemy (/?. c. 160) are alleged to be the same. But four- of Strabo is O.N. Gai^t-, O.E. Geat-, O.S. Got-, Gothic Gaut-. Tv6- of Ptolemy is Goth- of Latin Writers. The two themes are

distinct, and they occur together in the- Gothic personal name " Gautigoth," i.e.. Gaut- + Guf> ; cf. ' N. & Q.,' 11 S. vi. 201.

Of older Latin writers, Pliny (f A.D. 79)" wrote " Gutones " in accord with Latin orthoepy and Gothic vocalization ; while Tacitus (fc. 118) wrote " Go tones " and " Gothones." The forms handed down in Pliny and Tacitus point to the TvOwvts of Ptolemy, and all these variants indicate a purely Gothic *GuJ>-. (It will be remem- bered, that there was no short o in native Gothic Words.)

These facts warrant one conclusion only, namely, the final consonant of the stem of the folk -name we are considering Was not the tenuis, as Prof. Streitberg maintains. It was a sharp, inter -dental spirant, and that is the reason why Greek and Latin authors from Strabo to ^Emilius Dracontius wrote rd, th and tth, and thereby indicated the true pronunciation.

The assertion that \> had no place in the native form of the Gothic folk-name is based upon a misconception. In a sixth- century Gothic calendar the form " Gut- >iuda" occurs. This word is broken up into Gut- and \>iuda, and the folk-name is said to be Gut-. But this reasoning is spurious. We cannot take a compound, split it up into its component parts, and then assert that each is a vocable. The personal names Gut-bert, Gutt-ulf, Gutt-ard, Got lac, do not point to a stem gut-, but to a theme _and vocable gu\>. Similarly the O.E. mitty and Idtteow do_not present the words "mit " (cum] and " ty " (quia), " lat " (via) and " teow " (servus). There are no such O.E. words. What these compounds really do represent are mid+^y and Idd+freow : cf. Dr. Wright's 'O.E. Gram- mar,' 1908.. 300, 305. Similarly " Gtit- Jnuda " represents Gu]> + \>iuda, and that form is reflected in the ' Edda Saemundar,' wherein we get " Go^iod " : cf. Wilhelm Grimm, ' Die Deutsche Heldensage,' 1829, p. 5. ALFRED ANSCOMBE.

INSCRIPTIONS IN THE CHURCHYARD OF ST. JAMES'S, PICCADILLY.

(See ante, pp. 185, 224.)

THE next inscriptions occur on slabs on ground on a higher level, planted with trees :

72. Samuel Lyster 17-1, a. 39. Ann, his

dau., d. April. . ..

73 Thomas Harvey, husband of the

above, d. at Brig, 14 Aug., 18 , a. 45. Up- wards of 30 years faithful servant of the Marquis of Bristol.