Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 9.djvu/184

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [n s. ix. FEB. 28, 1914.

written in 1596. In Fuller's ' Worthies/

' Essex ' :

'Plenty [of saffron] in this county, growing about Walden, a fair market town ; which saffron may seem to have coloured with the name thereof." Also Pepys, 27 Feb., 1660 : " Took horse and straight to Saffron Walden." This place, while being called Walden, was also popularly known as Walden Saffron or Saffron Walden. But as to when the latter became a fixed name it is not easy to ascertain, unless the town's charter can determine the date. TOM JONES.

FIRE AND NEW-BIRTH (11 S. viii. 325, 376, 418, 454; ix. 14, 113). Those inter- ested in this subject may well consult her following Bulletins of the Forest -Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture : Nos. 55, 79, 85, 93 ; Circular 163. No. 83, p. 23, enumerates various growths after a fire, and one of these, lodgepole pine, is the subject of No. 79, ' The Life - History of Lodgepole Burn Forests.' Of this the final paragraph contains :

" The lodgepole forest is the key to the silvi- cultural treatment of the forests of the Eastern Rocky Mountains, especially in Colorado and

Wyoming And it is by means of fire properly

developed into a silvicultural method that the forester will be able to extend or restrict lodgepole reproduction and lodgepole forests at will."

Sundry reasons for the value of fire are detailed at p. 55, but the matter does not seem of enough general interest to warrant taking more space here. ROCKINGHAM. Boston, Mass.

THE WORD " BILL " IN WORDSWORTH (US. ix. 129). It is clear that Wordsworth, when he wrote

when first the bittern's hollow bill Was heard,

had in his mind Milton's use of the word " bill " in his sonnet to the nightingale : Thy liquid notes that close the eye of day. First heard before the shallow cuckoo's bill.

Wordsworth was steeped in Milton, as every one knows ; and Milton probably meant by " bill " mouth or voice.

C. W. BRODRIBB.

According to Prof. Knight (< The Poetical Works of Wordsworth,' i. 3), extracts from ' The Evening Walk ' " were published in all the collective editions of the poems from 1815 onwards," while the sentence con- taining " the bittern's hollow bill " received its final form in the issue of 1820. It seems doubtful, to say the least, that in this phrase the poet uses " bill " in the sense of bell or

bellow. Probably he merely intended to associate the beak or efficient instrument with the peculiar " boom " that has attracted English poets from Chaucer downwards. In the other two quotations given at the above reference the poet manifestly uses " bill " in its ordinary sense. THOMAS BAYNE.

WALLACE OF ST. THOMAS (US. viii. 429). The editor of Lightbourrfs Mail Notes, St. Thomas, Danish West Indies, reprinted this query, and in response received the following :

" The undersigned, now an old lady of seventy, in early youth knew Mrs. Wright, who had been the widow Cunningham, and whose maiden name was Wallace. She often heard Mr. Wright speak of a sister of his who had married a Swiss gentle- man and who was then in Switzerland.

"The Wallaces were no doubt from English descent, and it is probable that Sir William Wallace was Governor of one of the neighbouring English islands, say Tortola, St. Kitts, or perhaps farther on ; if this was so, accounts of Sir William Wallace could surely be got at the Foreign Office.

" A descendant of Mrs. Wright's sister who lived in Switzerland is now married to a step-grand- daughter of Mrs. Wright. This gentleman, Herr Wetter, was in 1912 residing at 141, Leopold Strasse, Miinchen, Germany.

" N. G. SONDERBURG.

" St. Thomas, Danish West Indies."

D. L.

The Chronicle of iMnercosty 1272-1346. Trans- lated, with Notes, by the Right Hon. Sir Herbert Maxwell, Bart. (Glasgow, MacLehose & Sons. 11. Is. net.)

A WHOLE gulf of feeling separates the admirers of Latin from the lovers of mediaeval Latin, very insufficiently bridged by the fact that the words and accidence they use are the same for both tongues. The difference between them is funda- mental ; no one can feel towards mediaeval and classical Latin anything like the same affection you are born a romantic or a classicist, whatever turn your education may give you. The ten dency of modern education to exchange the study of the classics for a diversity of other subjects, which Sir Herbert Maxwell deplores, will do something to lessen the disparity in numbers between these two classes ; tutors and school- masters spend all their energies in trying to force their pupils into admiration for poets whose music never awakes more than an intellectual sensuousness, or orators whose boredom is only relieved by the contemplation of the intricate marquetry of their periods. But sooner or later the predestined mediaevalist strays away from the fold through the wicket gate of Silver Latinity to the language which folk argued or bargained or told stories in ; or mayhap, hearing that Latin lies at the root of the tongue he speaks, adven- tures on the search and finds there another lan- guage than the one he has learnt at so much cost,