Page:Notes and Queries - Series 1 - Volume 1.djvu/379

6. 1850.] account of the family of Calverley, of Calverley, in Yorkshire, an autograph of Ralph Thoresby in the year 1717, in which occurs the following passage : " Roger, so named from the Archbishop " (of York), " was a person of renowned hospitality, since, at this day, the obsolete known tune of Roger a Caloerley is referred to him, who, according to the custom of those times, kept his minstrells, from that their office named harpers, which became a family and possessed lands till late years in and about Calverley, called to this day Harpersroids and Harper's Spring He was a knight, and lived in the time of K. Richard 1st. His seal, appended to one of his charters, is large, with a chevalier on horseback." W. CALVERLEY TREVELYAN. DERIVATION OP " NEWS. It is not declared with what motive " Mr. GUTCH" (No. 17. p. 270.) has laid before the readers of " NOTES AND QUERIES" the alleged derivation of N. E. W. S. It must therefore be supposed, that his object was to have its justness and probability commented upon ; and it is quite time that they should be so, since the derivation in question has of late be- come quite a favourite authoritative dictum with etymology compilers. Thus it may be found, in the very words and form adopted by your corre- spondent, in Haydn's Dictionary of Dates, and in other authorities of equal weight. This sort of initial-letter derivation was pro- bably brought into fashion in England by the alleged origin of " Cabal," or, perhaps, by the many guesses at the much disputed word ** JEra." I shall take the liberty of quoting a few sentences with reference to such etymologies, as a class, which I find in an unpublished manuscript upon a kindred subject. " Besides, such a splitting up of a word of significant and perfect meaning in itself is always a bad and sus- picious mode of derivation. " It is generally an after-thought, suggested by some fortuitous or fancied coincidence, the appropriateness of which is by no means a sufficient proof of proba- bility. " Of this there can scarcely be a better example than the English word ' news,' which, notwithstanding the felicity of its supposed derivation from the four car- dinal points, must, nevertheless, so long as the corre- sponding words 'nova,' ' nouvelles,' &c. exist, be con- signed to its more sober and common-place origin in the adjective ' new.' " To this it must be added that the ancient or- thography of the word newes, completely upsets the derivation Mr. Gutch has brought before your readers. Hone quotes from " one Burton, printed in 1614 : 'if any one read now-a-days, it is a play- book, or a pamphlet of newest " I had been in two minds whether or not to send this communication, when the scale is completely turned by the apropos occurrence of a corrobora- tion of this latter objection in " NOTES AND QUERIES " of this day. Mr. Rimbault mentions (at p. 277.), " a rare black letter volume entitled Newesfrom Scotland, 1591." Here is one more proof of the usefulness of your publication, that. I am thus enabled to strengthen the illustration of a totally different subject by the incidental authority of a fellow correspondent. A.E.B. Leeds, March, 1850. REPLIES TO MINOR QUERIES. Swot is, as the querist supposes, a military cant term, and a sufficiently vulgar one too. It originated at that great slang-manufactory for the army, the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. You may depend upon the following account of it, which I had many years ago from the late Thomas Leybourne, F.R.S, Senior Professor of Mathe- matics in that college. One of the Professors, Dr. William Wallace, in addition to his being a Scotchman, had a bald head, and an exceedingly "broad Scotch" accent, besides a not very delicate discrimination in the choice of his English terms relating to social life. It happened on one hot summer's day, nearly half a century ago, that he had been teaching a class, and had worked himself into a considerable effu- sion from the skin. He took out his handkerchief, rubbed his head and forehead violently, and ex- claimed in his Perthshire dialect, " It maks one swot" This was a God- send to the " gentlemen cadets," wishing to achieve a notoriety as wits and slangsters ; and mathematics generally ever after became swot, and mathematicians swots. I have often heard it said : "I never could do sicot well. Sir ;" and " these dull fellows, the swots, can talk of nothing but triangles and equations." I should have thought that the sheer disgusting- ness of the idea would have shut the word out of the vocabularies of English gentlemen. It remains nevertheless a standard term in the vocabulary of an English soldier. It is well, at all events, that future ages should know its etymology. T. S D. Pokership, (ante, pp. 185. 218. 269. 282. 323, 324.) I am sorry to see that no progress has yet been made towards a satisfactory explanation of this office. I was in hopes that something better than mere conjecture would have been sup- plied from the peculiar facilities of " T. R. F. " " W. H. C." (p. 323.) has done little more than refer to the same instruments as had been already adverted to by me in p. 269., with the new read-