Page:Notes and Queries - Series 7 - Volume 5.djvu/17

7 S. V. 7, ’88.]  “John Heydon, Minister of the Gospel,” in a prefatory address (not paged) to the “Courteous Reader,” says, “The worke of Redemption is fully and freely wrought by Christ, it is done already, not a doing, it was finish’d 1634 years ago and above to the view of Angels and Men,” &c. This book was licensed in October, 1647, and there is no doubt that the passage was written in the same year. Here the same formula as before, 1647−1634=13, makes 13 again the year of the Redemption or Resurrection. The words “and above”—referring evidently to some odd months, weeks, or days—seem to denote precision in the calculation. I shall be glad to be favoured with an explanation of what is to me a chronological puzzle.

—In the late Dr. Neale’s metrical English version of the poem by Bernard the Cluniac, of which ‘Jerusalem the Golden’ is the best-known excerpt, the words “moenia clara pyropo” are translated, “thy streets with emeralds blaze” (‘The Rhythm of Bernard de Morlaix,’ London, J. T. Hayes, 1866, pp. 26, 43). Pyropus in Latin, and its derivative piropo in Italian, mean a carbuncle. Cf. Graglia’s ‘Dictionary.’ Of course the word is originally Greek, and means “flame-coloured,” which destroys the emerald theory. Rastall, in his ‘Chronicles,’ quotes some mediæval Latin hexameters by Christopher Okland, which allude to the pyropus flashing in the famous collar of SS worn by the Knights of the Garter. His words are, “flammis interlucente pyropo.” The whole passage, which is very beautiful, is evidently derived from the ‘Nuptials of Honorius and Maria,’ which is either by the great Claudian or by his Christian Græco-Egyptian namesake, wrongly, according to Dr. Ludwig Jeep, of Leipzig, confounded with the great Latin poet of the Silver Age. How did this confusion between the pyropus, or carbuncle, and the emerald, or smaragdus, arise? Possibly because in an interesting passage in one of the dialogues of Erasmus (Er., ‘Dial. Ciceron.,’ Lugd., Bat., 1643, p. 120) he couples them, but only to distinguish one from the other: “Quid dissimilius quam smaragdus et pyropus?”

—I have lately purchased from the curious collection of Mr. Henry Gray, 47, Leicester Square, an octavo pamphlet of 44 pp., “A Voyage to the Moon, with an Account of the Religion, Laws, Customs, and Manner of Government among the Lunars or Moon-men. Stamford, 1718.” Can any of your readers tell me by whom this pamphlet was written? It is not noticed in Watts.

—Did the receivers of the Excise duties in the North of England, in the last century and the seventeenth century, have an official residence? Chester’s ‘Chronicles of the Customs’ does not give particulars.

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rejoinder is weaker than his plea. I suppose that it is the weakness of his case that has induced him to occupy himself with the discussion of the imaginary charge that I have accused him of deriving English local names from Celtic sources. Otherwise I cannot understand why he should revert to a charge that I not only never preferred against him, but actually excepted him from, and whose application to him I have already explicitly disclaimed.

I must protest against the manner in which accuses me of making reckless charges. I asserted, and I repeat, that certain etymologies put forward by and  implied ignorance of the Anglo-Saxon declensions. The proof of this accusation, which brands as absurd, is that these etymologies are founded on the assumption that a gen. pl. in s existed in Anglo-Saxon, and it is an elementary fact of A.-S. grammar that there was no such gen. pl. form. To disprove this charge imports the name Hun-ton into the discussion, erroneously assumes that it represents an A.-S. *Húna-tún, and alleges that I have “in effect” stated that to explain such a form as meaning “town of Huns” implies an ignorance of A.-S. grammar. Of course I never made any such absurd charge. It is a charge that no man in his senses would make. careful study of his A.-S. grammar renders his adherence to these etymologies involving a gen.