Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 1.djvu/93

 9 th S.I. JAN. 29, '98.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

85

ables ; and there is also the indirect evidence ,f Horace and Lucian. It has been said, I )elieve, that the fables which we suppose to lave been written by yEsop were originally Oriental, and that some versions of them have oeen found in the south of Asia. Perhaps
 * hey may have been found there, though all

the Oriental fables which I have read are dif- ferent both in manner and matter from those familiar to me under the name of ^Esop. But Msop himself was Asiatic, and as he lived 600 years B.C., his fables may have travelled to the East as well as to the West, and become a part of ancient Eastern literature. Some- body in the last century tried to prove that the '^Eneid' of Virgil and the 'Odes' of Horace were written by monks of the Middle Ages. E. YAKDLEY.

THE STRANGERS' COLD, ST.* KILDA. This has formed the subject of various communi- cations to ' N. & Q.' I have just come across the following passage in Kichter's 'Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces ' :

" All the people in St. Hilda cough on the landing of a stranger ; and coughing, if not itself speaking, may at least be considered as the preliminary creak- ing of the wheels of the speaking machine." Chap. x., a translation by Edw. H. Noel, Leipzig, 1871, vol. ii. p. 20.

If there be a " St. Hilda " where people are afflicted as in St. Kilda, the fact is curious ; but probably either author or translator has made a slip. WILLIAM GEORGE BLACK.

"ARTISTRY": "ENERGETICNESS." The fol- lowing is taken from the Sunday Times of 26 December, 1897 :

" Nellie Oldene has an artistry of. method, tech- nique, and utterance of song. Flo Hastings well, one finds robustness of vocalization and energeticness of expression that clamatory sort which the Salvation Army make their staple attraction."

Certain it is that language is employed to givs expression to ideas, and it may be that in this overwrought age ideas are so multiplied that new language, fresh words, have to be coined to give utterance to them. I have always been led to regard the English language as the richest and most expressive but we daily see some new word manufactured either through ignorance or pedantry, and to the limbo of one or other of these I am inclined to consign these two, to me, new candidates for public favour. Energeticnesi I can partly understand, but wonder th writer did not make it energeticivity while h was about it. Surely the good English wore energy would have been equally expressive But the meaning of "artistry of method technique, and utterance," I fail to compre

lend. Is there any precedent for the use >f either word ? I cannot find them in any iictionary to which I have access. Mean- ime, their existence may be chronicled.

TENEBR^E. [For "Artistry" see 'H. E. D.']

OLD TYPOGRAPHICAL BLUNDER. The note 8 th S. xii. 425) on 'Blunders in Catalogues' nust have brought many similar instances to ./he minds of your readers. After seeing that note, I was one day looking over the booka on the shelves of a second-hand dealer, when '. came upon the following curious error. It occurs in the ninth line of Philips's ' The Splendid Shilling,' where, instead of " Chloe, or Phillis," one reads "Chloe, or Philips." The edition is that of 1772. The particular copy under notice, since rebound in leather, had for its .owner " Rawlins | ex Aula B: M: Virg: | Oxon." The place is, of course,' St. Mary's Hall, founded in 1333. Rawlins, to iudge from the marginal notes he made in the volume, was a man of sound scholarship and of a studious frame of mind ; but beyona this one wonders who he was, and if he attained to any measure of fame. The ' D. N. B.' gives him no record. ARTHUR MAYALL.

'CROSS" VICE "KRls." The Rev. Robert Fellowes, whose 'History of Ceylon,' pub- lished in 1817 under the pseudonym of " Philalethes," consists to a great extent of a translation of portions of the section on Ceylon in Valentyn's monumental 'Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indien,' has in one or two places curiously misunderstood the original Dutch. One of the most remarkable instances occurs at the end of chap. v. of his work, where we are told that (the Portuguese having secretly resolved to get rid of the man whom they themselves had helped to usurp the throne of Kandy)

"the opportunity selected for this purpose was an interview between Janiere* and Don Pedro. In the course of conversation, the Portuguese com- mander requested permission to see the cross which Janiere wore, that he might give orders to have one made like it, and set with precious stones. Janiere, suspecting no evil, complied without any hesitation with Don Pedro's request, who, professing to be particularly struck with the splendour and beauty of the cross, solicited the favour of retaining it for some time, till he could procure one to be made of a similar form. Janiere nad no sooner assented to this request than, on a signal being given by Don Pedro, a poniard was plunged into his breast, and he was treacherously assassinated, along with several of his suite."

' Ceylon ' (1672), and is a misreading for " Jayiere "= Jaya Vira. Valentyn gives as an alternative form "Xavier"!
 * This erroneous form occurs first in Baldseus's