Page:Notes and Queries - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/304

 296

NOTES AND QUERIES.

[2nd s. NO 15., APRIL 12. '56.

Bryan Edwards's Colonies in the West Indies, 5 vols. 8vo., 1819. Consult also R. Montgomery Martin's History of the British Colonies, vol. ii. pp. 385393.]

THE WATERMILL AND THE WINDMILL ; OB THE DISCREPANCY OP NEIGHBOURING DIALECTS.

(1 st S. xii. 264. 354.)

One of your correspondents, who has travelled through space as well as through books, has set us all right. Quoting volume and page, he has proved that the dialogue respecting the merits of wind and water was composed and printed in one of the numerous dialects of the Flemings " qui non teutonisant," that of Liege. Informed by a glance at your journal that the document came from Poitiers, I copied the lines, and inferred, from dim reminiscences of Count Wilhelin's Poitevin song in 1094, and the Catholic lampoon against Protestant Rochelle in 1627, that the verses might have originated in so distant a quarter. My audacious interpretation looks, therefore, very like a hoax, though simply the result of, I should hope, pardonable inadvertence.

Every scholar worthy of the name is bound to the acquirement of some familiarity with French and English of every date. There are, moreover, spoken jargons that deserve the regard of philo- logical students. None are in higher request, at present, for instance, than the Norman, the Picard, and the Walachian. So considei-able, neverthe- less, is the discrepancy between the popular dia- lects of localities of the same province, that, a moment after I had committed my letter to the post, I detected my mistake in adapting, conjec- turally, known words of the same sound to the vocables of an imperfectly understood pati-pata, or talkee-talkee. There was, at that very time, on my table a little book printed at Lille in 1848. It was a present from the celebrated singer Ro- dolphe Arnold, who favoured me with an unex- pected visit seven years ago. This Itecueil de Chansons et Pasquilles Lilloires I had often pe- rused, and mentally translated in my own dialect, with scarcely an effort or difficulty ; but it is a fact, tiiat to comprehend the dialogue concerning the respective advantages of grinding corn by means of wind or water, I should need a dic- tionary.

This mishap reminds one of the amusing blun- ders of Samuel Petit, a Parisian doctor of divinity, who tried his skill in Hebrew on the touchstone of Hanno's famous Punic soliloquy in Plautus. Still more dismal were the flounderings of General Vallancey, Harry O'Brien, and Anacreontic little Tom Moore ; who, with a long list of fashionable adherents, gravely maintained that the Phoenicians

spoke excellent Irish. Samuel Bochart, of Caen, 1647, and Wilhelm Gesenius, of Halle, 1837, have nevertheless accounted for every word in the passage with scarcely a shade of dissent ; so that no doubt remains as to the almost identity of Hebrew and Carthaginian, except among the few dreamers in literature's backwoods, who fancy that Hannibal made speeches in the brogxxe of Kilkenny and Bilboa.

Thus have I offered an apology due to the learned" pilgrim whose interesting account of the perplexing jargon of the environs of Liege has induced me to address you again.

He will probably like to compare the following intelligible shred from a dialect of the same family. It purports to be the imitation of a Languedocian original, entitled Los Poutos, or the Kisses ; it will presently appear, however, that this was an- other quite as diverting hallucination. While M. Millin, the celebrated antiquary, was wander- ing in the south of France in search of monu- ments of ancient art, he picked up those lines, fancying that they were a specimen of unborrowed Occitanian lyrics. Though I have mislaid them, permit me to insert the very idiomatic translation by a literary peasant of this once Norman baili- wick :

" Goulo Baisl

" Tu 1'as coumis, tu 1'as coumis, ma belle, Via qu'est para'i, 1'doux pe'che, je n'sai c'ment ; Tantot voulant, tantot r'fusant, cruelle, Tu 1'as voulu, 1'as voulu, tout-a-bonan !

"Et, dis-me done, pour qu'est' q'tu fais la vie? Qu'est' q'tu craignais? quai'l affront t'a nou fait? Sus ten goulo la rose est repanie D'un ptit salut meurt-nou coum un touffet?

" Sans brouiller 1'iane, au russe d' la chapelle, L'melot a bu; n'l'o-tu pas? qui'l est fier! I dit que 1' mieil cuilli sus flieur nouvelle N' la flietrit brin ; allon, torche te-s iers ! "

Rimes Guernesiaises, p. 118.

I might have felt some high caste scruples at troubling you with this specimen of the rustical muse of Unellian French Neustria, were it not obvious that every educated Englishman will com- prehend it. The only peculiar expressions are goulo, petite bouche ; para'i, fini ; faire la vie, that is, la vee, to anathematise, to scold ; touffet, nose- gay ; nou, on ; iers, yeux.

It is true that M. Millin, the antiquarian tra- veller, had set down Los Poutos as a song of Occitanian growth. He might have ascertained the source of his blunder in a letter of the poetess, Madame du Boccage, who states that the English original words were sung at Lord Chesterfield's table in London, on May 24, 1750. Perhaps some of your readers may remember the air, of which this lady only gives us a rather common- place French copy, CEuvres, tome iii. p. 48., Lyon, 1770. The works of Madame du Boccage are noticed in the selection of French classics intended