Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 1.djvu/363

 9 th S. I. APRIL 30, '98.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

355

i sually attributed to the London apprentice, coulci i ot have found his way so short a distance over the 1 elds. She runs away and bolts down the ' high i Dad,' and being tired sits down on a green bank, so i mst have been very easily fatigued (having come i o less than three quarters of a mile) if she meets 1 er lover half way. He, on the other hand, when le meets her, is riding 'horse saddle and bridle also,' a somewhat unnecessary expense for a mile- and-a-half journey. The relative size of the two Islingtons ' has nothing to do with the case,' though, as a fact, when Domesday was compiled the Nor- folk was worth more than the Middlesex village, and it was by no means a small place, having seven manors and a much finer church .than its cockney namesake. No doubt, when the ballad became justly popular in London, the dwellers in Cockaigne who had never heard of the existence of the other village naturally claimed it, iust as they claimed ' The Lass of Richmond Hill for Surrey, whereas all the evidence is in favour of the latter ballad having been written anent the Yorkshire Rich- i mond.

WALTER EYE. Frognal House, Hampstead.

\ERBS ENDING IN "-ISH " (9 fch S. i. 86, 136,

315). I cannot go into this question at length ; it is really nothing so very new.

Your correspondent confuses language in motion, i. e., in use, with language at rest, i. e., as found in grammars. There are many examples of words derived from forms that occur only once in a conjugation. Thus ignoramus is from the first person plural
 * indicative ; plaudit (originally plaudite) from

i the second person plural imperative ; deben- ture from the third person plural indicative, which your correspondent regards as being practically powerless.

The argument that the subjunctive forms are /our, as against the indicative form, which is but one, has to be tested by practice. Being i from home, I have no books to refer to ; j but my impression is that, if we were to examine ten pieces, each of 500 lines, written Jin Anglo-French, we should probably find j that the third person plural of the present j tense (of verbs in general) occurs with much greater frequency than all the present sub- junctive forms put together. ^ Any one who las the time and leisure (which I have not) can test this matter for himself. It is not a question for speculation at all ; we only require tabulation of facts.

WALTER W. SKEAT.

GREAT EVENTS FROM LITTLE CAUSES (9 th S. . 209). Feminine Spite. While staying at presented Madame de Pompadour's com- pliments to the king, who scornfully replied, 'Je ne la cpnnais pas." Out of vengeance or so much insult, as she deemed it, Madame uduced the weak-minded Louis XV. to con-
 * he Court of Frederick II. of Prussia, Voltaire

vert his country's long-standing hostility against Austria into friendship. A Franco- Austrian army then took the field against Prussia ; and as it was an easy matter for Madame to enlist the practical sympathy of Elizabeth of Russia, who had been the subject of Frederick's indiscreet remarks also, half a million lives were lost.

A Missing Etcetera. A Polish nobleman fled to Sweden in 1654, and his extradition was demanded. In the King of Poland's dispatch to the King of Sweden only two etceteras were placed after the addressee's name and titles, though the addresser's were followed by three. In consequence, Sweden declared a war against Poland that lasted for nearly six years.

An act of politeness (or was it policy ?) and "a plashy place" made the Sir Walter Raleigh of History.

All Through a Joke. Lords Norris and Grey were the tellers. Norris was inattentive, and Grey, seeing a very fat lord coming in, counted him as two. What was merely in- tended as a joke was allowed to remain undetected, and thus it was declared by a majority of one that "the Ayes have it." The Bill was for a more stringent execution of the Habeas Corpus, and was passed in 1680.

A flight of birds altered Columbus's voyage from a direction westward of the Canaries to a south-westerly direction towards Hispa- niola. In yielding to the advice of Pinzon, one of his pilots, who wished to follow some birds flying towards the south, the fate of the New World was ordained.

C. E. CLARK.

Setting aside such well-known events as the saving of the Roman Capitol, the death of William II., and the deaths of Wat Tyler and the tax-gatherer, together with, in literary and scientific history, the exclusion of Goldsmith from the Church, and the dis- coveries of the law of gravitation and the existence of magnetism, one has, in religious history, the fact that the missionaries of the London Missionary Society were allowed to preach in Madagascar in consequence of one of their number being able to impart the secret of making soap ; and in French history the fact that Algeria was conquered, in 1830, in consequence of the French ambassador re- ceiving a box on the ear from an Algerian official. Again, had not Postmaster Drouet detected Louis XVI. in his flight, the course of French history might have been much altered (see Carlyle's 'French Revolution,' ii. 147). The idea is a common one. Carlyle says, " Mighty events turn on a straw ; the