Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 10.djvu/320

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. x. OCT. is, 1902.

the stationary skids the while being con- stantly reinforced by others. .Really rapid progress is thus made. For a block the weight quoted it takes half a dozen men all their time to shift the skids continuously. One carries along bar of very common yellow (sometimes blue) soap, and with this he liberally greases the skids, and they are in turn quickly picked up and handed over from rear to front; thus the sleigh runs along over the slippery skids and not on the ground. The wood used grows locally upon the mountain sides, and there are, to my personal knowledge, two small timber yards in Carrara where, seemingly, nothing but these aids to progress are roughly manu- factured from the trees. HARRY HEMS. Fair Park, Exeter.

"PETAR" OR "PETARD" (9 th S. x. 241). I think my dictionary might have been con- sulted. As it has not been, may I be allowed to quote a part of my article, printed nearly twenty years ago 1

" Petard, a war-engine, a case filled with ex- plosive materials. (F. L.) In 'Hamlet,' iii. 4. 207 ;

spelt petar in the quarto edd Cotgrave has both

petard and petarre.^-F. petart, petard, ' a petard or

petarre ; an engine wherewith strong gates are

burst open.' Formed, with suffix -art or -ard (of

Germanic origin, from G. hart, hard ), from the

verb peter, to break wind," &c.

The first edition of Cotgrave goes back to 1611. The double form arose from the fact that d was often dropped in the plural. Hence the pi. petar s (in 1580).

WALTER W. SKEAT.

Minsheu (second edition) has Petarrade, with a definition which need not be given here. It seems to explain how the word came to supply a name to an engine of war

C. C. B.'

I would venture to remark that two distinct meanings are given to the words " petar" and "petard" in the 'Twentieth Century Dic- tionary ' of Messrs. Chambers.

J. LORAINE HEELIS.

DUNWICH OR DUNMOW A BlSHOPS SEE

(9 th S. x. 44, 210). - MR. COPINGER justly observes that the discoveries of the day are alarming. There are many more to come, for we are only at the beginning of things. And it a long-established and a famous tradition has to be transferred from the annals of one town to those of another it is but one more sacrifice due to modern methods of inquiry Your worthy correspondent has taken some trouble in the effort to invalidate the claim ot any other place than Dunwich to repre sent the. East Anglian see. But there is a

flaw in his argument, which he will surely see if he reads my note again. He says : " Dunwich is in Saxon Dunmoc," &c. The purport of my note was to establish that Dunwich is in Saxon certainly not Dunmoc, nor Dommoc, nor Domoc, nor Domok ; for the reason that one or other of these was the name of the see at least until the fifteenth century, while Dunwich was Dunwic, or Donwyk, from Anglo - Norman times. My point was simply that the place spoken of in the older historians could not be Dunwich. The Saxon syllable wic occurs in D.B., and Dunwich has carried that syllable, or an alternative by mutation, ever since ; while -moc could by no known rules become -wic. It is unavailing to quote Bishop Gibson, or Morant, or any other modern antiquary, because they relied very much upon what was mere guesswork by Lambarde and Camden.

I might have been prepared to defend the possible extension of the East Anglian boundary as far south as Dunmow. It was doubtless very variable. But there is now no need for me to do so. MR. COPINGER gives a reference which is new to me (that of Bar- tholomew de Cotton) and which throws new light on the matter. The passage quoted is still adverse to the claims of Dunwich, and puts Dunmow absolutely out of court. Our monk of the thirteenth century plainly says, "in civitate Donmoc sedem habuit quse nunc Filchstowe vocatur super mare," &c. From the fragmentary history of Felixstowe that does exist we know that there was a church and monastery named after St. Felix in the eleventh century, and that a much larger town than the existing one has disappeared be- neath the encroaching waves. If Bartholomew is worth anything as an annalist, he estab- lishes the fact that the bishop's see was at Donmoc, a lost town near the estuary of the Stour, and not at Dunwich.

MR. COPINGER'S " Beconfield," p. 211, should be Bapchild ( = Baccancelde, Bachancilde, &c.).

EDWARD SMITH.

Walthamstow.

AMERICAN KNEE-BREECHES (9 th S. x. 169). ^-Before giving an opinion on this query it is of importance to know if with the knee- breeches was worn black frock dress i.e., ordinary evening dress coat or the Windsor coat, or the like. In the former case there can be no reason whatever to blame the ambassador, as the black frock dress with knee-breeches may be considered as full evening dress for gentlemen at high social functions even in republican society. In the latter case, on the contrary, the ambassador