Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 1.djvu/180

 NOTES AND QUERIES.

.1 i'EB. 26, J 9&

2. A few instances of inexact writing drawn from standard authors will not allow us to use their names in justification, unless it could be proved that such a mode of ex- pression was their deliberate and uniform choice, W. C. B.

MR. ADAMS gives no examples of the con- struction "Scarcely than." There are

several in Prof. Hodgson's 'Errors in the Use of English,' from such authors as Bulwer Lytton, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Dr. Doran, and William Black. Examples are also given of other misuses of " than," as, e. g. :

" I know of no way to rid you of the importunity of your friends on my account than that of," &c. ' Sidney Biddulph,' vol. iv. p. 304.

"It is said that nothing was so teasing to Lord Erskine than being," &c. Sir H. L. Bulwer, ' His- torical Characters/ vol. ii. p. 186.

"Preferring to know the worst than to dream the best." 'Sowing the Wind,' vol. ii. p. 153. It must be through sheer carelessness that such authors as those quoted write in this manner; but instances of these errors and of others similar to them might be multiplied indefinitely. C. C. B.

For a concise and clear ruling see c Errors in the Use of English,' by W. B. Hodgson, Edinburgh, Douglas, 1882, third edition, pp. 112-114.

FRANCIS PIERREPONT BARNARD.

St. Mary's Abbey, Windermere.

JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN CHRONOLOGY (8 th S. xii. 508). This is a very complex subject, because there is no hope of any agreement on the principal items. The Jewish civil year commences with the month Tishri, New Year's Day varying between 4 September and 5 October, a nominal lunation. It follows that the correspondence is only partial, for the Jewish year 4919 A.M. will run into A.D. 1158-9, which years overlap. A.M. 4919 would be the seventeenth year of their 259th lunar cycle, New Year's Day then falling on a Monday, so 14 Tebeth would fall on a Thursday. Then comes the date of new moon, about which I am sceptical. A. H.

ANCIENT BRITISH (9 th S. i. 68). Without going into minute divisions of the subject, and avoiding philological refinements, it may be said that the language of the Britons was the language which is now called Welsh.

JOHN HOBSON MATTHEWS.

Town Hall, Cardiff.

LANCASHIRE CUSTOMS (8 th S. xi. 285, 398 ; xii. 516). At the beginning of this century Birkdale and Southport were small hamlets, now they form one large town of sixty

thousand inhabitants, and most ancient land- marks have been swept away. The village of Birkdale was distant two and a half miles from the old parish church of Southport or North Meols, and the route for funerals lay in a perfectly straight line through a narrow lane or bridle road, called " Church Gates." This lane was about two miles long. . It is a tradition that about half way in it, near the present cemetery, was what I assume to have been the base of a wayside or weeping cross. It was called " The Bree- ing or Ghost Stone." Here funerals are said to have stopped ; the coffin was placed on the ground, and water from a cavity in the stone was sprinkled on it.

At Aughton an old inhabitant remembers funerals stopping at the pedestals of ancient crosses in that parish, when the " Nunc Dimittis " was said.

At Crosby the Roman Catholics maintain a curious ancient custom, the neighbours of a deceased person meeting in the room where the corpse is laid out and one of the laity reading the ' Litany of the Dead,' and closing by asking the prayers of those assembled, in the following manner : " And now let us say one ' Our Father ' and one ' Hail Mary ' for the one who has to go next." Numerous crosses still exist in this and the neighbour- ing villages at which funerals stop. It is an old-world Roman Catholic district.

HENRY TAYLOR. Birklands, Southport.

" WHIFFING " (9 th S. i. 89). As a sea angler for some years past, I can vouch that "whiffing" is a term of common use on the coast of the whole of the south and west of England, and also I understand in Ireland (and probably Scotland also), as a mode of fishing (verb).

A. COLLINGWOOD LEE. Waltham Abbey, Essex.

This word is in common use in West Corn- wall at the present day. It is mentioned in Admiral Smyth's 'Sailor's Word-Book,' also in 'The Sea Fisherman,' by J. C. Wilcocks, in both of which books the same meaning is

flven as that expressed in Couch's ' British ishes.' W. N.

THOMAS PALMER (8 th S. viii. 243). As a slight addendum to a previous article on two manuscript emblem-books of Thomas Palmer in the British Museum, I may note the existence of a few scraps in the Bodleian (Ashmolean MS. 36-37, folio 210). The hand- writing is the same as that of the British Museum MSS. The contents are three sets of emblem verses ; verses to Sir Christopher