Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 1.djvu/381

 9 th S. I. MAY 7, '98.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

373

interesting forms asfieid, JReade, and the like. And it is now short, like the e in bed. Neither long nor short sound resembles the a in ration, or the o in rotten. If \yould-be etymo- logists would only test their vowel-sounds, thousands of ridiculous fancies would soon be swept into limbo. WALTER W. SKEAT.

"ESPRIT D'ESCALIER" (9 th S. i. 267). Do Frenchmen make use of this and the other phrase mentioned in the query 1 " Esprit de I'antichambre " is a proverbial expression in frequent use in France. It would be difficult, I fear, to discover its first appearance in the language. THORNFIELD.

TYRAWLEY =WEWITZER (9 th S. i. 168, 252). It will complete the sketch of Lord Tyrawley, " who is reported to have been a man of notoriously licentious habits, and to have returned from one of his embassies with three wives and fourteen children," if I add Pope's lines referring to him. I suppose that they were not quoted in the query :

Go dine with Chartres, in each vice undo K 1's lewd cargo, or Tyrawley's crew ; From Latian syrens, French Circaean feasts, Return well-travelled, and transformed to beasts. ' Imitations of Horace.'

E. YARDLEY.

Sir Jonah Barrington, in his 'Personal Sketches of his own Times,' chapter entitled " Wedded Life," gives a long and very strange account of James Cuffe, created Baron Tyrawley, and of Miss Wewitzer, and says

a were married after the death of the first / Tyrawley. But I do not know if Bar- rington is a good authority. M. K G.

COLD HARBOUR (8 th S. xii.482; 9 th S. i. 17, 73). Caldarium was, of course, a mere guess. It was that of a friend, and not my own ; but I am ready to maintain it was a good guess. If it is a fact that nearly all Cold Harbours are to be found on old Eomaii roads, the inference is permissible, if not necessary, that the name, so generally applied, has its origin in something inseparably connected with those roads in the Roman period. Were any one of most of the derivations quoted in KILLIGREW'S list of guesses (including Kalten- Herberg) correct, should we not find Cold Harbours all over the country in situations other than on Roman roads?

The caldarium, the warm-bath room, would be that part of the rest-house to reach which the weary traveller would look forward with longing, and it would not be unnatural, there- fore, that, in common parlance, it should give its name to the whole. To few rest-houses would such bathing establishments be at-

tached. Those which were furnished with such rooms would be well -known halting-

E laces on the road, and would be named As an Anglo-Indian I am well acquainted with the dak bungalows alluded to by MR. HALL. These bungalows were originally, and still are in many parts of India (as their name implies), posting-houses exactly corre- sponding to those supposed by MR. HALL to have been provided by the Romans, and any point on the road where such a rest-house is placed is often known among the natives of the district as " the bungalow."
 * om their special accommodation.

At Fyzabad, a large city in Oudh, one of the Oudh sovereigns built a country seat. Throughout the adjacent rural districts Fyzabad henceforth became known as " the bungalow" again a part for the whole.

H. S. BOYS.

CHRISTENING NEW VESSELS (9 th S. i. 269, 317). Breaking a bottle of wine on the bow of a new vessel is a survival of a sanguinary custom of our savage ancestors, paralleled by the practice, at an officer's funeral, of leading his charger to symbolical sacrifice at his grave. When a ship was launched by the Vikings it was the custom for victims to be bound to the rollers over which the war- galley was run down to the sea, so that " the stem was sprinkled with blood," for which in a modern launch red wine is substituted. This was called the hlunn-rod or "roller reddening." Cook found the same practice in vogue in the South Seas. See 'Arrow Ord's Saga,' 14 ; and a note in Vigfusson and ell's 'Corpus Poeticum Boreale,' vol. i.

Powell's p. 410.

ISAAC TAYLOR.

CANALETTO IN LONDON (8 th S. xii. 324, 411). I am obliged to COL. PRIDEAUX for his sug- gestion, which does not, however, remove my doubt as to Peter Cunningham's accuracy.

The following extract from 'Les Artistes Celebres,' in connexion with the subject of Canaletto's residences, may be of interest :

" The numerous paintings by Canaletto, as well as their degree of finish, attest the laborious uni- formity of his life. In the midst of a generation wholly capricious and eager for novelty, he appears methodical even to excess, reproducing, without disquietude as well as without weariness, the different aspects of Venice. His constant application explains the brevity of historians of art with regard to him. However, if biographical details have escaped the most minute investigations, and if the man himself remains unknown, few artists are so universally represented in picture galleries and private collec- tions. At Paris as well as at St. Petersburg, in England as well as in Germany, one may form without much trouble an impression of his style from examples which are as important as they are