Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 1.djvu/439

 9 th S. I. MAY 28, '98.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

431

nee, the inheritor of the Roman speech of d. Their word sel (salt) is clearly from the atin sal. Vowels, authorities have told us, ecome broader in sound, in course of time, ither than narrower, and yet sel is sounded, y the French to-day, as we to-day pronounce and our " salt-ce^ar " remains a travelled )ssil out of the same mine the Latin. This lakes it seem somewhat strange that we lould be told that the Roman sound of sal was " sail " (not to speak of soil, as in " salt," modern English). W. H N B Y.

The following lines from ' Hudibras,' pub- lished in 1663, will prove an illustration of the pronunciation of the name Ralph : A squire he had, whose name was Ralph, That in th' adventure went his half ; Tho' writers, for more stately tone, Do call him Ralpho, 'tis all one ; And when we can, with metre safe, We '11 call him so, if not plain Ralph.

Part i. canto i. vv. 457-62. JOHN PICKFORD, M.A. Newbourne Rectory, Woodbridge.

CITY NAMES IN THE FIKST EDITION OF STOW'S ' SURVEY ' (8 th S. xii. 161, 201, 255, 276, 309, 391 ; 9 th S. i. 48, 333). Aldersgate. PROF. SKEAT'S remarks on the manner in which Old English words are often explained are, of course, very much to the point, but his note may possibly lead to the conclusion that the Mid. English word alder, the Mercian aldor, and the A.-S. ealdor may have had something to do with the naming of Aldersgate. Historical evidence, however, shows that the gate was named after a certain Ealdred. A passage in my note on ' The Gates of London,' p. 2, ante, having been unrevised, I should be glad to be allowed this opportunity of quoting it correctly :

"It is in connexion with this custom of watch and ward that we meet with the earliest mention of any of the London gates. In the ' Instituta Lundoniae ' of King Ethelred it is stated that 1 Ealdredesgate et Cripelesgate, i.e., pqrtas illas, observabant custodes. Thorpe, 'Ancient Laws and Institutes of England,' p. 127.

It may perhaps be interesting to mention that one of the posterns in the walls of Shrewsbury was formerly named Crepulgate. It was connected with the Severn by a narrow passage or lode (A.-S. lad) called Crepul-lode. W. F. PRIDEAUX.

45, Pall Mall, S.W.

PUNCH (9 th S. i. 346). MR. E. MARSHALL (whose note is not quite intelligible) will find the history of "punch" dealt with pretty fully in Yule and Burnell's 'Hobson-Jobson. DONALD FERGUSON.

Croydon.

WINDWARD AND LEEWARD ISLANDS (9 th S. i. 349). I do not know when or by whom the Lesser Antilles were thus divided, but on Samuel Dunn's map of the West Indies (London, Robert Saver, 1774) is the following note about the dividing line :

"The distinction between the Leeward and Windward Islands, which is not commonly under- stood, arose from the following circumstance : it was a custom in going to the West Indies to make the island Desirade (near Guadaloupe) ; the wind between the tropics blowing always from the east, all the islands to the north and west of Desirade lay to the leeward, and all islands to the east and south lay to the windward of such ships."

M. N. G.

As these terms in English now apply, they are divided by the parallel of Martinique. The largest and southernmost of the Wind- ward Isles is Trinidad, then Tobago, Grenada, the Grenadines, St. Vincent, Barbadoes, and St. Lucia. Antigua is the capital of the Lee- ward group, which includes Nevis, Montserrat, St. Kitts, Dominica, Barbuda, Tortola, An- guilla, Anegada, Virgin - Gorda, and about fifty of the small Virgin islets. All of both groups the Spaniards called Windward, and every isle west of them, including the four Greater Antilles, they called Leeward. In Jamaica the constancy of the trade-wind makes the term equivalent to east and west, so that every place has a windward road and a leeward road. E. L. GARBETT.

In Bell's 'System of Geography' (1844) we are told that the English, the French, and the Spaniards have affixed different meanings to the terms Windward and Leeward Islands.

C. C. B.

"THE HEMPSHERES" (9 th S. i. 327). To guess, valiantly or meekly, is a crime which brings swift retribution. Let us " reason by analogy "; this is more euphemistic and may mollify the wrath of Prof. Skeat. If "The Hernpsheres " occupied the site of " The Black Lion," a tavern presumably, it is possible that the latter sign supplanted the former, for we know that inns did change their signs on the slightest provocation. That " if " being established, what was the meaning of " The Hempsheres " ? " The Globe " is a not uncommon public-house sign; why bestowed is not now the question. In my travels I have seen several representations of it, both celestial and terrestrial. In the Old Kent Road, close to the Bricklayers' Arms Station, is a house with the sign " The World turned Upside Down," and on the front was a large hemisphere on which the American continent was outlined, and there was the figure of a man diving through, as it were, his head and