Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 1.djvu/202

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NOTES AND QUERIES.

[9 th S. I. MAR. 5, '98.

revision of 'The Seasons,' the subject does not admit of continued dispute. All I hold distinctly is, that if evidence is to go for anything, the claim of Pope to the second recension is null. MR. TOVEY, by his last remarks in * N. & Q.,' has not given me the slightest cause to recede from my view. Conjecture may certainly do its best, and the possibility that an amanuensis wrote the doubtful entries seems plausible enough. The drift of the argument advanced by MR. TOVEY, which appears to make the revision by the second writer to be Pope's and yet not Pope's, is a phenomenon just about as extra- ordinary as the position of the fabled coffin of the Prophet.

MR. TOVEY talks somewhat bitterly regard- ing my citation of the name of Mr. Churton Collins in relation to the matter. Why I did so in the first instance was simply from the fact that Mr. Churton Collins is a critic of the very highest authority, and therefore gave the question paramount interest from his consideration of it. I had no wish to detract in the very least from the credit of MR. TOVEY in his work of elucidation. As to the plaint of " suum cuique," surely the editor of Thomson does not desire to infringe the right of fair public discussion.

" Corrected to text of Pope " in my note is an obvious misprint for " corrected to text by Pope." W. B.

Edinburgh.

LADY ELIZABETH FOSTER (9 th S. i. 25, 88, 156). I notice in F. G. S.'s reply on p. 156 that he states it was a portrait of the Duchess Georgiana which " mysteriously dis- appeared a few years ago." This is, in my opinion, an error ; it was the Duchess Eliza- beth who was represented in the stolen Gainsborough. I went into the subject very fully in an article that appeared in the Daily Telegraph on 29 May, 1876. It would occupy too much space to repeat so much of that article as would be necessary to prove the fact. Shortly after the picture was stolen we borrowed every known portrait of Lady Betty Foster, and these, together with the likeness of her in Ram berg's ' Royal Academy Exhibition ' of 1788, conclusively proved that the portrait in question was not Georgiana. Gainsborough exhibited portraits of Georgiana in 1778 and 1783, and the portrait of Lady Betty Foster was left unfinished in 1788.

ALGERNON GRAVES.

SWANSEA (9 th S. i. 43, 98, 148). I beg leave to traverse the extraordinary suggestion at the last reference, made in these words : "The name of Swansea as used by the

Normans in 1215 was Kweyne-he, a fair imita- tion of Sein Henyd." It is not " a fair imita- tion " at all, but an impossible travesty. To begin with, no Norman turns s into sw. No example of initial sw occurs in Norman, except in the A.F. swatume, put for O.F. souatume (Godef roy). For practical purposes, the sound sw was unknown in Norman, and can only occur where it represents an A.-S, (or Norse) sw.

Next, we are asked to believe that a Norman, in trying to write down Sein Ifenyd, would drop the final nyd. There is no reason for this. If there were, we should expect to find the form Be instead of Henet, which is absurd.

Lastly, we have to regard the accent. In the Welsh form the accent is, I suppose, on the If en. Now, in all travesties or corruptions, the thing that is best preserved is the accent. The accent in Sweyne-he is certainly on the ey.

So we are asked to regard as "a fair imitation " a form that alters the beginning, suppresses the end, and neglects the accent. If this be "fair," we ask in astonishment, What is unfair?

The Norman Sweyne-he is perfectly con- sistent with a derivation from Swain (or Siveyn), and e for Norse ey, an island. Sweyn (Swain) was a common name and a common substantive. We have it still. The use of for e is a perfectly common thing in Norman. I have collected and published examples of it.

If a Norman or Saxon had to write down

'in Henyd he could do it easily enough. The Norman would be Sein Henyd, and the A.-S. Segn Henid. Why not 1

WALTER W. SKEAT.

THE LITTLE MAN OF KENT (9 th S. i. 146). On 26 October, 1737, was buried at St. Paul's, Canterbury, " David Fearne, the short man, born in the shire of Ross in the parish or Feme, aged 27 years, was but 30 inches from head to foot, and 36 inches about." The above is from my 'Registers of St. Paul's.' Can this be the Little Man of Kent ?

J. M. COWPER.

Canterbury.

THE MAUTHE DOOG (8 th S. ix. 125 ; 9 th S. i. 96). All that really need be said to explain these words has already appeared at the former reference. The Manx for dog is moddey, where the dd is pronounced like a soft tL The Manx for black is doo. The adjective follows the noun, so that black dog is moddey doo. Waldron first used the impossible name Mautke dooy, and seems to have spelt the former word more or less phonetically ; and perhaps assuming that the