Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 2.djvu/320

314 Nov. 29, 1750; lieutenant-colonel thereof, Feb. 25, 1757, to Nov. 14, 1770; brevet colonel, Feb. 19, 1762. 1em. Cornet Francis Rainsford, 1727 (ante, p. 85), was the second son of Lieut-Col. Francis Rainsford of the 7th Regiment of Foot (Royal Fusiliers). He d. 1720, and was buried in the Tower Chapel, leaving an only son, viz.,

General Charles Rainsford, who was aide-de-camp to the King, 1761, and was colonel of the 44th Regiment of Foot for twenty-eight years. As a cornet of Horse he was at the Battle of Fontenoy, 1745. Died 1809, and was buried in the Tower Chapel beside his father, his uncle, and his first wife.

Lieut.-Gen. William Barrell (ante, p. 205), colonel of the 22nd Regiment of Foot, d. 1749, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, where a monument was erected by his only son and executor, Savage Barrell.

A portrait of this officer appears in Dalton's 'George the First's Army, 1714-1727.' His daughter was the wife of Charles Rainsford, the elder brother of the above Francis Rainsford.

1em

(12 S. ii. 228).— is a personage in ancient Greek folk-lore. She is described by the Scholiast on Plato, 'Gorgias,' 497 A, in Zenobius's collection of proverbs, in the 'Etymologicum Magnum,' and in Suidas's 'Lexicon,' as a mad woman (from Samos, according to the 'Et. Mag.') who used to talk to her own reflection in a mirror. From her name was said to be derived the verb, meaning to affect ignorance or indifference, to dissemble one's desire, to be coy; and the noun or. In Plutarch, 'De Stoicorum repugnantiis,' cap. 15, 1040 B, Acco is a bugbear with whose name little children are frightened. There is a very interesting article under 'Akko,' by Otto Crusius, in the Pauly-Wissowa 'Real-Encyclopädie.' From the abundant references there given to books and scientific journals, it will be seen that Acco has been the object of much investigation. The view held by Crusius reconciles her character as a bugbear with the story of the mirror by supposing her to be a kind of stupid dæmon. The lower dæmons, as he remarks, usually come off worst when opposed by human wit and art. He compares the story of the mirror with such stories as that in Ælian, 'De Natura Animalium,' xvii. 25, in which monkeys are dazed by a mirror and so caught by the Indians.

Jeremy Taylor introduced Acco in 'The Worthy Communicant,' chap. v. sect. 3:—

"The Greeks tell of a famous fool among them; her name was Acco; who when she saw herself in a glass, would discourse as wisely as she could to the other woman, and supposed her own shadow to be one of her neighbours, with whom sometimes she had great business, but always huge civilities; only she could never agree which of them should go away first, or take the upper hand."—Vol. viii. p. 162, in C. P. Eden's ed. of the 'Whole Works.'

Burton's mention is wanting in accuracy:—

"Acco, an old woman, seeing by chance her face in a true glass (for she used false flattering glasses belike at other times, as most Gentlewomen do) animi dolore in insaniam delapsa est (Cælius Rhodiginus, l. 17, c. 2) ran mad."—'Anat. of Melancholy,' 1, 2, 4, 7, ed. 6, p. 170.

Cælius Rhodiginus, in the chapter of his 'Lectiones Antiqueæ' to which Burton refers, gives the account of Acco from the 'Epitome parœmiarum Tarræi ac Didymi,' that is, from Zenobius; the version or inference of Burton and the Latin words which he quotes are not found there.

"Accismus" has found a place in the 'Stanford Dictionary,' and in the 'N.E.D.,' where the meaning is defined as "a feigned refusal of what is earnestly desired." An example is quoted from the Supplement to Chambers's 'Cyclopædia' (1753), and another from a translation of Jean Paul Richter's 'Levana.'

In the 'Adagia' of Erasmus and others, in the locus entitled 'Simulatio, Dissimulatio ' (1599 edition, col. 1669), is a short dissertation headed 'Accissare,' in which Erasmus says that, i.e., Accissare, is said (from a Greek proverb) of those who, while they greatly desire something, feign to refuse it, and that it is said that Acco was a foolish woman who was in the habit of talking to her reflection in a mirror, as if to some other woman. Hence those who act foolishly are said accissare. Erasmus gives references for and. For the Latin words accissare, accismus, see dictionaries which give Greek-Latin, Barbarous, &c., words, e.g., Josephi Laurentii 'Amalthea Onomastica,' 1640.

Nicolas Lloyd in his 'Dictionarium Historicum,' &c., begun by Charles Stephens, editio novissima, 1686, gives Acco, saying that she was a decrepit woman who lapsed into madness when she saw in a mirror her face deformed by old age. He refers to Cœlius Rhodiginus, xvi. 2. Lloyd adds that