Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 10.djvu/306

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 s. x. OCT. n, 190*

least protest ; I think, often in vain. So with the newly married : they go not to church for a Sunday or two after setting up at home if the day be wet, for instance- not until they show themselves with some formality; then they have "appeared out, and have allowed the provincial gossips to call. W. F. P. S.

I have always understood that this custom arose from the days when mourners attended, as a matter of course, Mass for the dead after a burial. The habit of sitting during the Psalm in the Burial Office I have noticed, and striven against, in Yorkshire, Lancashire, and county Durham. FRED. G. ACKERLEY.

British Vice-Consulate, Libau, Russia.

The custom referred to is prevalent in Jersey. If full information is desired I shall be glad to forward the address of a friend who will doubtless acquiesce with the request.

THALASSA.

" ODOUR OF SANCTITY " (9 th S. viii. 483 ; ix. 54). Dr. Brewer has a note under this heading in the ' Dictionary of Phrase and Fable' and also in 'The Reader's Handbook.' In the book last mentioned a passage con- taining the words is given from Sir T. Malory's 'History of Prince Arthur.'

CHRISTIAN LARKIN.

Liverpool.

BURIAL-PLACES OP PEERS (9 th S. x. 149). Henry Stawel Bilson Legge, Lord Stawel, my great-grandfather, was buried at Hinton Ampner, near Alresford, co. Hants, on 1 Sep- tember, 1820. SHERBORNE.

" WHIPPING THE CAT " (9 th S. x. 205). I well remember having two of these itinerant tailors father and son in our house in South Notts, sometimes for days together. The old man was a great Radical had, ] believe, been a Chartist and I owe my first introduction to politics to him. One phrase of his that must have referred to events happening before my time made a greal impression on my childish mind. He spoke of " Prince Polygon and the King of the Bellygans," and, fresh from 'The Pilgrim's Progress,' I was somewhat alarmed, unti my father explained that not Apollyon, bui Polignac was meant. C. C. B.

PRE-CELTIC BRITAIN (9 th S. x. 227). In the place-names of my native Galloway there i certainly (as SIR HERBERT MAXWELL ha. pointed out) a trace of the Iverian or pre Celtic inhabitants of the country. The grea authority of Prof. Rhys supports the theory

that this primeval people was akin to the ancient Aquitanians and the modern Basques; lence that certain Basque forms should be bund surviving in the topography of the country. The only example I can recall is Urr, in Kirkcudbrightshire, a parish named rom the river of the same name. " Ur," says i>kene, in his ' Celtic Scotland,' " is the Basque word for water, and analogy would lead us to recognize it in the rivers called Oure, Urr, Ure, Urie, Orrin, and Ore."

D. OSWALD HUNTER-BLAIR, O.S.B. Fort Augustus.

Canon Isaac Taylor, in 'Words and Places ' (1885), says :

"The philological evidence of the existence of this people [Silurians, Iberians, or Euskarians] in our own islands is but faint, being limited to some naif -dozen names such as Caithness, Hibernia, Britain, and Siluria." And on an earlier page (39) :

"The name Br-itan-ia contains, it would seem, the Euskarian suffix etan, the plural of an, the suf- fixed locative preposition, or sign of the locative case. We find this suffix, which is used to signify a district or country, in the names of most of the regions known to, or occupied by, the Iberic race. It occurs in Aqu-itan-ia or Aquitaine, in Lus-itan-ia, the ancient name of Portugal, in Maur-etan-ia, ' the country of the Moors,' as well as in the names of very many of the tribes of ancient Spain, such as the Cerr-etan-i, Aus-etan-i, &c."

A. R. BAYLEY.

It is an undoubted fact that earlier inhabi- tants than any Aryan race have left traces of their language in British and Irish place- names, and particularly in the names of rivers. A case in point is to be seen in those river-names which have for their root the prehistoric word Tarn. Such are Thames (Latin, Tamisia ; French, Tamise ; Italian, Tamigia), Tamar, Taff, Tavy, and, I suppose, also Towy, Dovey, Dove, &c. So far as one can judge from the character of those rivers "tarn" meant swift. MR. STABLEFORTH should consult Principal John Rhys's ' Celtic Britain ' and ' Welsh Philology.'

JOHN HOBSON MATTHEWS.

Town Hall, Cardiff.

See Skene, ' Celtic Scotland,' second edition, vol. i. p. 216, and Elton, ' Origins of English History,' second edition, 1890, pp. 158-62. Skene derives the river-names Oure, Urr, Urie, Orrin, and Ore from the Basque Ur=water ; but Elton (p. 150) says, " It still seems to be agreed that nothing can be made of the matter." Elton, quoting Prof. John Rhys, gives Mona, Monmouth, Mynwy, as name- relics of pre-Celtic tribes.

DAVID DA VIES.