Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 1.djvu/241

12 s. i. MAR. is, 1916. j NOTES AND Q (JERIES.

235 thawing out and the restoration of the circulation will be effected by rubbing with snow. This restoration is a painful process, accompanied by much smarting. Serious freezing always induces intense drowsiness, with an overmastering desire to sleep; and this constitutes the greatest danger, as sleep, in an exposed situation, would result in more freezing and certain death. I remember a case of a young fellow of the North-West Police in the Rocky Mountains in 1885. He and a companion started on a long tramp in very cold weather—30°, or something like that. For some reason he was wearing boots that were tight, instead of moccasins. His feet began to freeze, and then the drowsiness came on, and his companion was unable, with all his exertion, to make him go on. He would lie down, and nothing could prevent him. So his companion wrapped him in both their overcoats, as well as he could, and left him to go for help. But it was some hours before he could get a dog-sled on which to convey him. He was brought in to the camp where I was, and the "thawing-out" undertaken by a French Canadian cook, who was an expert at his job. The thawing was done slowly in very cold water. The lower part of his legs and his hands and arms were deeply frozen, which, but with care, were thoroughly restored to a soft condition again. But the back of his neck and head were frozen, and I fancy the freezing had penetrated to the brain. This could not be thawed properly. He lay breathing stertorously, as men do under violent concussion of the brain, and in a few hours died, without ever recovering consciousness. The death must have been easy, for to him it meant merely falling sound asleep.

(12 S. i. 66, 154).—I think there can be no doubt that the rabbit is, as Prof. Thorold Rogers says, a Norman introduction into our country. It was once indigenous here, its remains having been discovered in strata of the Neolithic period; and it must seem strange that an animal of reproductive powers so amazing should ever have been expelled from a territory it once occupied. Nevertheless it certainly was so, for there is no Anglo-Saxon and no Celtic name for it. Indeed, its introduction into Scotland and Ireland dates from the nineteenth century. We must, however, remember that, although so prolific, the rabbit cannot endure prolonged and severe cold, and cannot live where it cannot burrow, and that neither its strength nor its habits fit it for adventurous migration.

The subject is referred to in one of the collected essays of Thomas Wright 'On the History of the English Language,' 1846. He says:—

"It is somewhat remarkable that the Anglo-Saxon dictionaries give us no word for a rabbit, but from the thirteenth century the common English name for this animal was a conig or cony. …But this word cony, for some cause or other, was in the last [i.e. the eighteenth] century entirely superseded by that of 'rabbit,' which must no doubt have been an Anglo-Saxon word, because it is found in another Low German dialect, the Dutch, under the forms robbe and robbekin."

Mr. Wright was a most acute and careful antiquary, and I only quote this passage to show how great is our debt to the compilers of the 'New English Dictionary.' With this at hand it is easy for us to see how differently Mr. Wright would have written had he possessed our advantages. He does, indeed, quote from the 'Promptorium Parvulorum' of the fifteenth century, "Rabet, yonge conye"; but the change has nothing whatever to do with the conflict between Anglo-Saxon and Norman which he is illustrating. From the beginning the two names existed side by side, not as representing two dialects, but simply two ages of the same animal, just as in the case of "lamb" and " sheep." Moreover, the distinction is still preserved in trade parlance.

As a local example of the use of the word, and of the plentifulness of the animal in the thirteenth century, I may say that in the domain of the Priory of St. Thomas the Apostle, founded in Birmingham in 1285, there were two conyngres and a road called Prior's Conyngre Lane. The name still remains in the perverted form of Congreve Street.

THE CULTUS OF KING HENRY VI. (12 S. i. 161). To MR. MONTAGUE SUMMERS'S im- portant contribution the following note may well be added. It is from 'An Account, Description, and History of the Cathedral and Metropolitical Church of St. Peter, York' (third edition, 1790). We are told that

"the Service - Choir, or that part of the Church which only serves for Divine Worship at present, is separated from the rest of the Church by a thick Partition-Wall, the Front whereof is adorned with various Mouldings of curious Workmanship in Stone ; amongst which is a Bow of the Effigies of our Kings from the Con- quest to Henry VI. The Image of this last Monarch was certainly taken down in Compli-