Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 1.djvu/363

 12 S. I. APRIL 29, 1916.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

357

MATERIA MEDICA IN THE TALMUDIC AGE : '' KIKOYOUN " (12 S. i. 102, 122, 257). Will you please permit me to thank your valued correspondent C. C. B. at last reference for his kindly observations, and also to en- deavour to clear up a very obscure passage in Biblical exegesis arising directly out of the excellent comments made by C. C. B. ?

The kikoyoun in Jonah iv. 6 to 10, rendered " gourd " in the R.V., is now recognized by the united confirmation and testimony of many eminent writers and travellers in ancient and modern times ( including such distinguished exegetes as Rabbi David Kimchi in loco, who quotes from the 'Talmud and from the Responsa of the Gaonim in favour of regarding the kikoyoun as an "illon" or tree; and Rashi, who con- siders it was a tall umbrageous kind of shrub, .as a particular variety of the Eicinus communis, or castor-oil plant. The authors of the Septuagint, in transcribing kikoyoun as KoXXoKvvOij, and those of the Vulgate in translating it into hedera or ivy, were betrayed by the initial difficulties of the text. They were confronted with the question of height and shade, but, with their limited knowledge of plant and tree life, they could scarcely do any better. Neither the ivy, which is a very slow-growing shrub, nor the Lagenaria vulgaris, or " bottle- gourd," a genus distinct from the Cucurbita, or "pumpkin" tribe (though it attains to a height of 7 ft.), comes within the essential limit of the problem, in not being liable to rapid denudation by parasitical insects. Now travellers in the East, like Niebuhr, Bochart, Michaelis,and Volney have remarked the beautiful climbing tree known as the Palma Christi, or castor-oil plant, a variety of the Eicinus communis, known to Hippocrates and Dioscorides, who refer to it as KLKL and Kporuv ; to Herodotus, who names it GTiXXiKinrpLov or the " Sillicyprian plant from which the oil called kiki is extracted " ; and to Avicenna, who quotes from Diosco- rides thus :

" Ricini autem nomen accepit a similitudine quse est illius semini cum ricino animali. Arbuscula est parvse ficus altitudine, foliis platani, truncis ramisque cavis in calami modum, semine in uvis asperis. Ex eo oleum kikinum exprimitur, cibis quidem ineptum ; sed alias et ad lucernas et emplastra utile."

'This description corresponds in certain particulars with the " wild sesame," and with the " croton," shrubs that do not attain lofty dimensions, the sesame never exceeding 4 ft., the croton rarely attain-

ing more than 15 ft. in height. More- over, the Eicinus, sometimes called the Pentadactylus, is infested by parasites that batten on its branches. Niebuhr mentions that there is a plant or tree known to the Arabs as Elcheroa, with very large leaves, that only lives about four months in the year. Michaelis tells us that this tree, identified also by Rumphius as the Eicinus or Palma Christi, is frequently despoiled by a species of black caterpillar, the toulangas of Jonah.

"These are produced," he states, "in great quantities in the summer-time, during a gentle rain. They eat up the leaves of the Palma Christi, and gnaw its branches to the pith, in a single night."

Now if we follow Fuerst, who derived the root of kiki and kikoyoun from the same old obsolete stem of kook, to purge, and venture likewise to suggest that the youn of kikoyoun is a terminal of magnitude, or extension (of which other examples abound in higgoyoun, rahyoun, appeeryoun, nissoyoun, riff youn, and in 2 Sam. xxi. 20, where ish modoun may be rendered " a man of mark," from modod, to measure; compare therewith ish novoun, a man of supreme judgment, avaddoun, kishroun, &c., in which oun is the intensive terminal), we are not very far then from the heart of the problem in selecting the tall and magnificent flowering shrub called Palma Christi as the tree under which Jonah sought shelter from the fierce rays of the sun, and which, owing to the rapacity of the toulangas, was destroyed in " a couple of nights " ; reading shaybein loyello (between the night), when it grew ; uvvein loyello (and between the night), when it disappeared, instead of the Massoretic shaybin and uvvin ; in which course we are somewhat confirmed by the French School, who wisely left kikoyoun untranslated, but rendered the beautiful passage, " shaybein loyello hoyo, uwein loyello ovod," by " ilest venu en une nuit, et en une nuit il a peri." M. L. R. BBESLAR.

Percy House, South Hackney, N.E.

" As DEAD AS QUEEN ANNE " (12 S. i. 289). This saying seems to have been in use very soon after the death of the Queen. ' A Ballad on the Duke of Marlborough's Funeral, August 9, 1722,' printed in Lady Pennyman's ' Miscellanies,' 1740, has the line :

He's as dead as Queen Anne the day after she dy'd.

See ' N. & Q.,' 7 S. xi. 444. It is curious that Swift, in the first of his dialogues of ' Polite