Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 3.djvu/73

 i2S.nLjAN-27.i9i7.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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Bishop of Veszprem and diplomat. Several other members of the family were governors {bans) of Jajcza before this place with its district was occupied by the Turks in 1528.

L. L. K.

BARNACLE FOLK-LOBE. The story, com- mon to England, France, and other coun- tries, about the development of a crustacean barnacle into a goose has a parallel in the case of another kind of duck, Anas nigra, the French macreuse. Littre quotes Buff on' s refutation of this duck being developed in the same way as the barnacle goose. I have not searched out whether Buffon also refuted Maundeville's statement that " in oure con- tree weren trees that beren a fruyt that becomen briddes fleeinge .... and thei ben griht gode to marines mete " ; but I venture to surmise that the macreuse was the bird that developed from a fruit, and that the fruit was possibly the water-chestnut, Trapa bispinosa, FT. macre. This, the singhara nut of India, grows in the etangs of la Vendee, -as in the tanks of many parts of India, and, as in India, it bears crops of some importance. These fruits are sold in the markets of la Vendee under the name of chdtaignes d'eau or macres. Littre has macre, macle, with a synonym corniole, evi- dently derived from the two horns which give the fruit the form of a black bull's head. The Hindostani name singhara, prob- ably akin to that of the barasingha stag or of singham, the lion, is indicative of the animal appearance of the water-chestnut. Its taste is akin to that of our chestnut ; indeed, some plants that I introduced many years ago into the Ulsoor tank at Bangalore (a hundred-acre lake supplying the military part of the cantonment with water), with the 'view of clearing it from the persistent tur- bidity following the extirpation of its in- digenous vegetation, afforded me, the next Christmas, chestnuts sufficient to stuff a turkey, with excellent results. I have seen in a London drawing-room a long chaplet of these "black horned nuts, of uncanny -appearance, which came from Italy. The .animal appearance of the macres very prob- ably gave rise to the idea that the macreuses frequenting the lakes were developed form the nuts in the same way that another kind of water-fowl was believed to be developed from barnacles. I may mention that the connexion between the names of the nut and the bird arose in my mind from- a passage in a letter from a French lady corre- spondent who has always lived in la Vendee. In answer to an inquiry whether the water-

chestnut grew in her part of the district, she wrote to me, in English, that she had seen these chestnuts in other parts when she was a little girl, but " I never felt curious to know the taste of these fruits ; I mistook them for beasts, so that I was much afraid when seeing them." I quote this frank expression of my correspondent's feelings as a child at the uncanny appearance of the black horned nuts, suggestive of their being des betes rather than fruit, for it gave me the clue to macreuse being probably the name of the black water-fowl that might be supposed to have been developed from the black, animal-like water-fruit. Perhaps Trapa bispinosa might be the " tree " that bore the fruit which became Maundeville's birds.

The macreuse, the fouco of the south, is a common French water-fowl. Flocks of these birds frequent the great Etang de Berre, not far from Marseilles, and other lakes not far from the sea. And the foucado, the merry boating excursion for shooting these birds, is a southern institution. Those readers of ' N. & Q.' who, like St. Swithin, know La Sinso's ' Scenes de la Vie Pro- venyale ' may remember the amusing chap- ter relating the faucade in Toulon harbour, where catching the fish for the festive bouillabaisse takes the place of coot-shooting. Perhaps " coot " is the best equivalent of macreuse. I mention that the Dutch term is meerkoet only to say that the two words do not seem to have any etymological con- nexion, as is the case with meerzwijn and marsouin, the porpoise.

The facts I have given, mixing up ety- mology, folk-lore, ornithology, and botany with little precision, may be of service in researches on one or other of these branches of useful or interesting knowledge.

EDWARD NICHOLSON. 6 Avenue Gilly, Nice.

EDITORIALLY SOLICITED CONTRIBUTIONS. In a recent number of The Bookman the editor of The American Magazine wrote :

" Every editor knows that an editorial office is keen to get hold of new writers. The best read- ing matter is as frequently obtained from ab- solutely new writers as it is from famous writers. In fact, an editor is particularly anxious for an author's first work, because what it lacks in iraftsmanship it frequently makes up in fresh- ness."

This has been reproduced with some flourish, under the heading ' We Welcome Manuscripts from New Writers,' as if the idea were as novel as the twentieth century, thoxigh it certainly is as old as the seven- teenth, the time when English periodical