Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 10.djvu/48

 34 NOTES AND QUERIES. as.x. .TAX. u, 1022. What is meant by the inscription, by the letters round the head, and by the inter- lacing of the fingers? T. PERCY ARMSTRONG. The Authors' Club, Whitehall, S.W. PROVERB : ORIGIN WANTED. What are the date and origin of the words " East or West, name's best "? I possess a very fine old oak sideboard, which has the date 1646 inscribed upon it, and I am anxious to learn whether the above quotation, which also appears in carved letters on the furniture, ante- dates or the influences of masterful minds in the enemy's service. Born in Leeuwarden, the capital of the province of Friesland, intended to become a teacher, but married to and later divorced by an officer in the Dutch East Indian Army, then introduced to the gay world of Paris by an operatic star of international fame, she adopted for her performances of quasi-Oriental dances, some of them more or less modelled on the terpsi- chorean art of Java, the stage name of Mata Hari, Eye (of the) Day, equivalent of sun in the Malay language. Apart from the absolutely fantastic in the literature reference a contributor mentions that it is to be found in Bay's ' Collection of Proverbs' (1670), and expresses the opinion that it is one of those fuThor7hip f I^etnd Writer ^es^German 4 Ost und West, daheim das Best.' But is that form correct?] MATTHEW ARNOLD: REFERENCE SOUGHT. death, there is a book written or inspired by her father and published in Holland. The most dispassionately authentic data concerning her youth and subsequent career are > however, to be found, as far as the present writer's knowledge of the subject goes, in*an article which appeared on May 3, AUTHOR WANTED. I should be grateful if any reader could inform me where some stirring lines, entitled ' The Lay of the old Sikh Chief,' can be found. They were, I think, attributed to the late Sir Lepel Griffin, and began : " Here, in my fathers' castle, I sit from day to day." AUTHOR'S NAME WANTED. In 1883 Richard Bentley published ' Two Months in New Orleans Merchant - 0nfedCTate ^^ * 7 " An Engli8h I do not find the book mentioned in Halket and Laing's ' Dictionary of Anonymous Publi- cations.' What was the author's name? W. ABBATT. -MATA HARTS" (12S. ix.527.) NOTWITHSTANDING the wildly extravagant stories of journalists and novelists who found and still find their profit in catering to the morbid taste of a public eager for sensational stuff, the facts of the origin and youth of Mata Hari, the Dutch dancer, shot as a spy at Vincennes, Oct.. 15, 1917, ought to be well known by this time. There is nothing obscure or mysterious in the early life of this ''infamous woman," as PROFESSOR PITOLLET calls her, whose fate can be directly traced to a high-strung, hysterical temperament, unable to resist Scotland Yard and the courage she displayed i i n f ace of the firing squad, Sir Basil Thorn- j S 6S ' * M * imes > * ^ ' 14 ' fl* 1 ' i The " mysterious English novel " which i PROFESSOR C. PiTOLLET is anxious to discover j ig poss i bly < The L if e g t ory of Madame Zelle, the World's Most Beautiful Spy,' told by Henry de Halsalle, published by Messrs. Skeffington and Sons, Ltd., ! London, at Is. 9rf. (n.d.,? 1917). The i coloured wrapper in which this book was issued gives the author s name as Henry, Dubois. M a t a Hari is referred to on pp. 90-93 in Sidney Theodore Felstead's ' German Spies t Bay,' published by Messrs. Hutchinson an d Co., London, at 8s. 6d., 1920. 1 haVG CO P ie * ot both these books in my 44 Spy Library> " aud sha ]l be happy to lerd both, or either, to Professor Pitollet if he vill send me his addra s. HUGH S. GLADSTONE. Capenoch, Thornhill, Dumfriesshire, Scotland. PROFESSOR C. PITOLLET, in his interesting note regarding the famous spy, mentions that her name is said to be of Hindustani origin and to mean " morning bird." This is not Hindustani, neither is it Hindi nor i Urdu. The name appears to be Sanscritic, ! in which language " Hari " is one of the names of God. It may again be Cingalese, but I seem to remember having seen that
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