Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 5.djvu/237

 12 s. v. SEPT., i9i9.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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 * ey in^pocket, and he is forced, to pace

!helsea " embankment " till the small tours of the morning. A letter written by Jeorge Berkeley to Sir John Percival affords,

suggest, an indication of what was passing H Swift's mind as he penned the entry of Lpril 6. Dating May 7, 1713, Berkeley 'b serves :

" Mr. Addison's play has taken wonderfully, hey have acted it now almost a month, and vould, I believe, act it a month longer were it not hat Mrs. Oldfleld cannot hold out any longer, laving had for several nights past, as I am nformed, a midwife behind the scenes, which is laughter."
 * urely very unbecoming the character of Cato's

L quote this passage from Benjamin Rand's Correspondence of George Berkeley, after- yards Bishop of Cloyne, and Sir John Percival, afterwards Earl of Egmont,' 1914 at p. 115). I quote it because it "may iccount indifferently well," to use an ex- aression from ' Tom Jones,' for Swift's contemptuous utterance. But I do not }uote it for the purpose of throwing mud it Mrs. Oldfield ; on the contrary, the situation, as recently disclosed, serves to show how great was her personal courage. J. PAUL DE CASTRO.

il Essex Court, Temple.

DtJRER : WlLIBALD PlRKHEIMER. I want

to call the attention of your readers to what, I believe, is a little joke of Albert Diirer's about his friend Wilibald Pirkheimer. About twenty-five years ago I was browsing among old books on astrology at the British Museum Library, a subject in which the late Dr. Richard Garnett, then head librarian, was not merely a student, but a firm believer, and the writer of a valuable essay on ' The Soul and the Stars.' Among other horo- scopes of famous men, I copied out one of Pirkheimer. I regret that in this case I did not make a note of the book from which I copied it, but perhaps another reader can supply this.

Pirkheimer was born at Nuremberg on Tuesday, Dec. 4, 1470, at 1.30 A.M., when the eleventh degree of Libra or the Balance was rising on the eastern horizon or Ascen- dant. Now, on one day looking at a repro- duction of Diirer's woodcut of the Four Riders of the Apocalypse, I was at once struck by the strong resemblance of the rider with the Balance to Diirer's well- known engraved portrait of his friend. The only difference is that the man in the woodcut of 1498 is an older man than Pirkheimer then was, but otherwise the face Is identical, a square massive one of an

unusual type. Any one by comparing reproductions can see this for himself. The whole of Diirer's engraved works is accessible in various publications, of which the cheapest are the admirable " Klassiker der Kunst Series," ' Deutsche Vertags-Anstalt,' Stuttgart, 1906, and Hachette's " Les Classiques de 1'Art." Diirer also designed a book-plate for Pirkheimer, and did some astrologic drawings for a book which his friend contemplated but did not publish. Pirkheimer was a learned man, and also, if we are to believe certain jests in Diirer's letters to him from Venice, rather a Don Juan. He wrote the epitaph of his friend, and is the origin of the legend that the great artist's wife was a shrew.

HAMILTON MINCHIN.

GUNNERSBURY i RUISLIP. Johnston's ' Place-Names of England and Wales ' states that the name " Gunnersbury " denotes the town or dwelling of Gunner, the English form of Norwegian Gunnair, and that its earliest occurrence dates from the fifteenth century ; while the modern " Ruislip," repre- sented by an archaic Ryselippe, is explained as the leap of Ruga, a hypothetical indivi- dual of whose actual name earlier forms are desired. Both these conjectures can now be dismissed as erroneous.

In a letter of great historical value to The Times Literary Supplement MR. J. HARVEY BLOOM, after an examination of certain unpublished records at Compton Verney belonging to Lord Willoughby de Broke, gives minute details concerning the estates owned in 1380 by Alice Ferrers, the reputed mistress of Edward III., and her husband, Sir William de Wyndesor, situated in fifteen different counties, among which are men- tioned " the manors of Rischlep and Gunnoldsbury " in the county of Middlesex. Hence it follows that Gunnersbury derives its name from an early settler in the Baling district called Gunnold or Gunnild, synony- mous with the Norwegian Gunhild, or Gunhilda, which, like the Wagnerian Brynhild or Brunhilda is a woman's name ; and that the word Ruislip is compounded of A.-S. ruse, M.E. risce, a rush -j- hlyp, a leap, also an enclosure, as in Rishangles, Rishton, Rissington, Hindlip, Islip, &c.

This discovery well illustrates the import- ance of research among the earliest available records for all disputed place-names, and the too common fallacy of attributing the majority of such names to an eponymous or tribal Teutonic source. N. W. HILL.

35 Highbury Place, N.