Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 5.djvu/307

 12 S. V. Nov., 1919.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

301

MB. FOSTER PALMER alludes to an. attempt to turn the nursery rhyme ' Hey, Diddle- Diddle ' into Latin, and is puzzled to find an equivalent for "dish." He suggests the uncommon word mazonomus. Apparently he is not aware that the lines in question have been cleverly translated in the ' Arun- dines Cami,' by the Rev. H. Drury.who has employed the word lanx, lands (akin to the Greek 7rAa) for a broad or flat dish. As an amusing specimen of ingenuity his lines are worth quoting :

Hei didulum atque iterum didulum ! Felisque Fidesque !

Vacca super Lnnre cornua proMluit. Kescio qua catulus risit dulcedine ludi ;

Abstulit et turpi lanx cochleare fu a.

Has the word mazonomus any connexion with "mazer," or " maser," a bowl ? or is the resemblance merely accidental ? There is an instructive note on this word in the 4 Promptorium Parvulorum ' (p. 328), but too long for quotation here.

J. E. HARTING.

DISCOVERIES IN COINS (12 S. iii. 449 ; v. 195). The Manchester Evening News, Monday, July 7, 1919, contains the following discovery, under the heading ' Facts and Comments ' :

" 1 ,800-YEARS OLD COIN.

<: A workman who was employed making exca- vations in Corporation Roar), Grimsby, dug up an old coin, which he exchanged for a pint of beer at a public-house.

"The manager of the latter sent the coin to the British Museum for classification. A report re- ceived on Saturday from the curator describes the coin as a brass Sestertius, of the Roman Emperor Vespasian, period A.D. 69-79. The coin is in a good state of preservation, and of considerable interest and value to collectors."

The same paper of Friday, Aug. 29, contains the following under ' Ancient Irish Coins Found ' :

" An interesting discovery was made yesterday by some drainage workers outside Mul linear, where a subterranean passage was unearthed. In it some ancient Irish gold coins and cooking utensils, dating back to pagan times, were found."

FRED L. TAVARE.

GEORGE DYER: PORTRAIT (12 S. v. 237, 275). There is an excellent picture of "Amicus redivivus " in the Fitzwilliam Museum, with his dog; but not " Tobit," the dog called by Lamb " Nobit," from the uncertainty of Dyer's feedings.

A photograph was made for one of the Charles Lamb dinners, and, no doubt, a copy could be easily obtained from the Museum. GEORGE WHERRY.

The Union Sc ciety, Cambridge.

PIANO LEGS IN TROUSERS (12 S. v. 261). In my boyhood at Castle ji'Acre in Norfolk I was taken by my aunts ^to tea with two maiden ladies, anci was very astonished to find the piano legs draped in muslin, and also to see small skirts of tissue paper pasted on nude figures in some oil paintings - of classical scenes. I well remember being told this was done because "naked legs were indecent." J. HARVEY BLOOM.

The "limbs" of pianos were sometimes- entrousered during the sixties of last cen- tury. The garments were of muslin, and I think they were gathered in at the ankles by bands of ribbon. In this country it was probably an idea of decoration, rather than of delicacy that produced the atrocity. Soon came a time when everything had to- be draped or trimmed. German house-- wives had frills along their pantry shelves.

ST. S WITHIN.

ELEPHANT: OLIPHANT (12 S. v. 238). Bardsley's 'Dictionary of English and Welsh Surnames ' gives Oliphant as being a nickname for " the elephant," no doubt, a- complimentary allusion to the big, burly physique of the bearer.

Lower, in ' Patronymica Britannica,' quotes several authorities on the derivation of the name Oliphant, as follows :

" Kelham and Halliwell give Olifaunt, Anglo- Norman, an elephant. Chaucer in his rime of- ' Sir Thopas,' says :

There came a gret geaunt, His name was sire Oliphaunt, A perilous man of dede.

Tyrwhitt considers the word to mean elephant',- which he thinks a suitable name for a giant- It is remarkable, however, that in Anglo-Saxon olfend signifies a camel, and therefore that useful animal may, equally with the more pon- derous brute, assert its claim to the honour of haying surnamed this family. Some of the Oliphants bear an elephant's head as their crest,, but this may be a mere blunder."

ARCHIBALD SPARKE.

Whether or not the Hebrew aleph, the first letter of the Jewish alphabet, which, signifies an " ox," or " leader," gave rise through a Phoenician or Punic tongue to the Greek eAe^as and its Latin translation, it eventually produced Eng. " elephant " ;, but the Old French, Mid. Eng. and Dutch forms of the word are olifant and olifaunt.

In Anglo-Saxon elpend (sometimes elp and yip), an elephant, is very apt to be mistaken for olfend, a camel ; so it is quite on the- cards that some Oliphant families owe their surname to the latter source.

N. W.