Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 9.djvu/296

 292

NOTES AND QUERIES. [ii s. ix. APRIL n, ww.

been " threatened with a pikestaff by one John Milsoppe, junior," and that " he would see his hart-bloode." A little later he " complayned of abuses done to him as he was goinge home from his school by divers idle boys." All of them were ordered to be whipped, "some in the Free Schoole, and some of them by their fathers in theire own houses. ' '

Now this younger William Page is seen from ' The Diary of the Reading Corporation ' (supra) to have been of St. John's College, and as far as I can discover he is the only William Page who was Fellow there in the seventeenth century. As I view all the evidence to hand, it seems proven that William Page who died Vicar of Lockinge, Berks, 24 Feb., 1663, and who was born at Harrow in 1590, was a master at Reading School ; and it seems equally certain that a William Page, Fellow of St. John's College, was also a master. If it can be shown that William Page, Vicar of Lockinge, was a Fellow of St. John's College, Oxford, much of the mystery disappears ; but I find no evidence to hand that he was a Fellow of that College. It is certain that William Page of St. John's College was a master of Reading School, and that he got the appoint- ment in December, 1636.

William Page, Vicar of East Lockinge, was a considerable author. The titles of his books are given by Watt and in the ' D.N.B.,' but by far the best account of him as an author is found in Falconer Madan's ' Oxford Books,' 1912. In this excellent work each entry bears a number, and those relating to William Page are 630, 692, 708, 727, 1287.

The Buckeridge family were in Berkshire at Pangbourne, Basildon, Kingsclere, Chieve- ley, and Earley. Their pedigree appears in Berry's ' Berkshire Pedigrees,' and Sir Thomas Phillipps printed one of his single- sheet pedigrees about this family.

The archives of All Souls College contain a large number of early deeds relating to the Page family of Middlesex ; vide * Catalogue of the Archives in the Muniment Room of All Souls,' prepared by Charles Trice Martin, F.S.A., London, 1877, pp. 71-2 and passim.

r ^ A. L. HUMPHREYS.

187, Piccadilly, W.

'THE FRAY o' HAUTWESSELL ' (US. ix. 229). I believe this ballad was one of several written by the historian Surtees, and passed off as a genuine old ballad on Sir Walter Scott. It certainly has the true ring. R. B R.

" RUCKSACK " OR " RUCKSACK "(US. viii. 447, 497, 517 ; ix. 53, 117, 196, 256). The derivation of Rucksack from rucken (to jerk) or Ruck (a push or pull) has been much appreciated as a joke whenever I have men- tioned it to countrymen of mine. Prof. Skeat, the great English scholar, has often (sometimes with some well-founded impa- tience) tried to inculcate that etymology is a science not wild guesswork, as some inge- nious people persist in believing. I wonder what he would have said to any one who refused to believe that " childermass " is a, compound of " mass " and " children," on the ground that the modern plural was " children," and not " childer." As neither Ruck nor Ruck exists any longer in German, it is high time that we should reform our language and change Ruckgrat into Riicken- grat ; and if some unenlightened people were to smile at such a form, so much the worse for them.

All the etymological dictionaries of the German language that I have been able to consult > down to the latest Weigand,in its revision of 1909 derive Rucksack from Rucken, which is proof of their backward- ness. Nobody has as yet regarded Muret- Sanders as an authority on etymology ; on the contrary, it is the weakest point of the work ; but even this gives (p. 1681) " Rucksack (sud- deutsch Riickensack)," &c., in the edition accessible to the public. Your correspon- dent must have a special one. Or does he know so little German that he takes Rucken, the substantival equivalent of " back," for the verb meaning " to jerk " ? Then, of course, further discussion were unnecessary. Rucksack is a ghost -form, and should vanish into the limbo of misshapen words.

Berlin.

G. KRUEGER.

BOTANY (11 S. vi. 368; vii. 72, 231; viii. 137 ; ix. 238). The belief in an anti- pathy between the vine and the cabbage is very old, was at one time widely spread, and is mentioned by many authors. Burton in the Introduction to his ' Anatomy of Melancholy,' in describing how not men only, but " vegetall & sensible creatures," are the victims of this passion, says :

"Remove a plant, it will pine away, which is especially perceived in Date trees, as you may read at large in Constantino's husbandry, that Antipathy betwixt the Vine and the Cabbage, Vine and Oyle, &c."

By " Constantino's husbandry " is meant the Greek compilation in twenty books known as the ' Geoponica,' formerly attributed to the Emperor Constantino