Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 10.djvu/315

 9s.x.ocT.i8,i902.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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man at the Maid's birthplace at Domremy. Of the sentimental grievances that the French have against us, none makes a more powerful appeal to popular feeling than the erroneous belief that we burnt their great national heroine at Rouen ; and it certainly reflects credit upon their chivalrous instincts that they forgive us for Waterloo much more readily than for this. None the less the fact remains that Joan of Arc, though burnt during the English occupation, was condemned by a French Court over which a French bishop presided. The acceptance of the English gift has brought the admission of the fact even in popular newspapers, with the result that an unfortunate incident of the Middle Ages should henceforth cease to be a bar to the friendship of two peoples disposed on general principles to be friendly."

HERBERT B. CLAYTON. 39, Renfrew Road, Lower Kennington Lane.

" RUNNING AMUCK." Evidently, for the Poet Laureate at least, Sir H. Yule has written in vain, as appears from the following extra- ordinary excursion into etymology in his 4 Spring and Autumn in England,' 1900, p. 88 :

" ' There is a seal ! ' I exclaimed, but was quickly corrected by one of the rowers. ' No, that 's a muck-morrough,' a word that was new to me, but which meant a porpoise muck in Celtic signifying a pig. Thereupon one remembered that ' running amock' means charging like a wild boar, after a Hindostanee word for that animal ; and one pon- dered on the kinship of language in the two far- apart extremities of Britain's imposing Empire."

EMERITUS.

WE must request correspondents desiring infor- mation on family matters of only private interest to affix their names and addresses to their queries, in order that the answers may be addressed to them direct.

SNOWBALL. Several persons of this name are in Northumberland and York. Where did the family originate ? They have a coat of arms and crest. Who procured it and under what circumstances ? I should like to be put in communication with trustworthy persons who could give the genealogy of the family. J. B. SNOWBALL.

Chatham, Miramichi, Canada.

THE REV. THOMAS HODGSON, of University College, Cambridge [qy. Oxford ?], held a curacy in Lancashire which he resigned in 1821. He was then twenty-eight years old. What became of him 1 I want the informa- tion for a literary purpose.

HENRY FISHWICK.

The Heights, Rochdale.

" LEE OERS FOR MEDDLERS, AND CRUTCHES

FOR WILD DUCKS." This is an old Derbyshire saying, and is used in replying to inquisitive

persons ; or if a child asks an undesirable question, the answer is given, "Oh ! that's lee oers for meddlers, and crutches for wild ducks." Can any reader supply the origin or meaning of this saying ?

CHARLES DRURY.

LAMB ON THE Ass. In Lamb's paper on 'The Ass,' in Hone's 'Every-Day Book," is this passage :

" His jerkin is well fortified ; and therefore the costermongers, ' between the years 1790 and 1800,' did niore politicly than piously in lifting up a part of his upper garment. I well remember that beastly and bloody custom. I have often longed to see one of those refiners in discipline himself at the cart's tail, with just such a convenient spot laid bare to the tender mercies of the whipster.

Can any one tell me where I shall find more on this custom 1 E. V. LUCAS..

" COIN IS THE SINEWS OF WAR." At 5 th S.

ii. 239 it is stated that " coin is the sinews of war" (of course in French) occurs in Rabelais, book i. c. cxlyii. I cannot find any such chapter as,cxlvii. Is there not some mistake 1 I find Preference to a pont d'argent for a flying enemy (ch. xliii.), but that is another matter. EDWARD LATHAM.

61, Friends Road, East Croydon.

[We cannot trace the passage sought, which some other may be in a position to supply, but Rabelais says somewhere, " Pecunes sont les nerfs des ba- tailles." This is a mere translation from Tacitus, 'Hist.,' liv. ii. cap. xxiv., " Pecunise belli civilis nervi sunt." Cf. also

Quand argent fault Tout fault.

"Pecunia est alter sanguis." "Deficiente pecu, deficit omne, nia." "Ploratur lacrymis amissa pecunia veris." "Pecunia est vita hominis, et omnibus fidejussor in necessitatibus."]

BASK BOOKS BEFORE 1565. It has hitherto been believed that the earliest book on the Baskish language is that of Bernard Deche- pare, printed at Bordeaux in 1545 (of which the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris possesses the only known copy, and of which Mr. V. L. A. Stempf published, also in Bordeaux, a few years ago the first correct reprint); and that the second was the ' Doctrina Christiana en Castellano y Vazcuence,' by Sancius de Elso, published Pampilone, apud Adrianum de Ambers, 1561. It appears from Mr. J. Vinson's 'Bibliographie ' that this printer was in Estella also in that year, and that no copy of that ' Doctrina ' is known to exist. Don Carrnelo de Echegaray (=" house on the height"), chronicler of the Bask provinces, published in La Gaceta del Norte for 6 August, at Bilbao, a very interesting article about a book entitled ' Dialogos sobre el arte de