Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 11.djvu/235

 9*8. XI. MARCH 21, 1903.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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1 Tales and Quicke Answeres,' " Of the olde man that put himselfe in his sonnes handes."

A. COLLINGWOOD LEE.

BETTY OR BETTEE. In the 'H.E.D.' very little is told us about the word betty, mean- ing a wine-flask, the only quotation for it being of the year 1725, while no measure for it is suggested, and we are asked if it was in use only in the United States. In ' A New Guide to the English Tongue,' by Thomas Dilworth, one finds at the beginning of Part II. ' A Table of Words, the same in Sound, but different in Spelling and Signification,' which includes " Bettee, a Pint Flask of Wine." Of this book the Bodleian Library possesses three editions: one without title-page, and otherwise undat- able, but seemingly the oldest of the three ; then "The Fifty-fourth Edition" (London, 1793); and thirdly "A new edition," published at London, without date, but apparently after 1793. In the two earlier of the editions the author's dedication bears date " Wapping School, June 14, 1740." We may presume, therefore, that bettee, as the name of a pint bottle, was familiar in England throughout the eighteenth century. The 'H.E.D. sug- gests that the name Eliza or Elizabeth may be considered to be the etymon of this word. But, as I believe that " By Jingo" came into English from Bask sailors and soldiers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, so I would suggest that here we have bottled another bit of Baskish. A Bask will say to his companion who is drinking with him 41 Bete ! " in t he sense of " Fill up (your glass) ! " For betJ or bethd (pronounced bet-hay) means JUL filled jull.

I am told by Dr. Hardin Craig, of Prince- ton University, that the people of the United States use the term " black betty " as the name of a certain kind of bottle, and associate it with the diminutive of Elizabeth. Ono may therefore regard the name as corre- lative to "black-jack," the old English name for a leathern beer-jug. E. S. DODGSON.

" MAIZE.' In his valuable and suggestive 'Notes on English Etymology,' 1901, Prof. Skeat sums up all that was known of the history of this term by saying that it is "from some one of the languages of Hayti.'" There can be no question of the truth of this and I have lately come upon evidence which enables me to state positively that the language is Arawak, and that the fullest form of the native name is that used by the Arawaks of the mainland, viz., marisi. My authority is Brinton's interesting, but little- known booklet, ' The Arawak Language o1 Guiana,' published in 1871. The letter r in

American dialects appears to have always Deen a very unstable sound. It interchanged with I and n, as in the variants Caliban, cannibal, Carib ; and in the particular case we are discussing it seems to have disap- peared altogether in the Arawak spoken in ihe islands of Hayti and Cuba. The index to the 1851 edition of Oviedo here gives us a valuable bit of confirmatory evidence, n recording that " los Indios de Cuba parecian pronunciar maisi 6 majisi." In }ther words, the marisi of Guiana becomes n Cuba maisi, whence the maizium of Eden and other old authors. JAS. PLATT, Jun.

tifcrtits,

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

RECUSANT WYKEHAMISTS. 1. The identifica- tion of the Thomas Butler, LL.D., who wrote the treatise on the Mass mentioned inStrype's with the Thomas Butler who took his B.A. at Cambridge in 1548 seems to be merely con- jectural. From Cooper's ' Ath. Cantab.' it has found its way into the ' D.N.B.,' viii. 79, and Gillow, i. 366. I venture to submit the real author was Thomas Butler, admitted to Winchester College in 1546, who took the degree of LL.D. at Oxford, and was expelled from his New College Fellowship for recusancy, as Wood records * Hist, and Ant.' (ed. Gutch) vol. ii. p. 144.
 * Parker,' 477, and Ames's 'Typ. Ant.,' iii. 1627,

2. Mr. Kirby, in his ' Winchester Scholars, says of William Wygge, Fellow of New Col- lege 1577 to 1585, that he was a Papist executed at Kingston on 1 October, 1588. The late Father Law in his Calendar recog- nizes a person of that name as suffering at that place and date, but if Mr. Foster's ' Alumni Oxonienses ' is correct, it cannot have been the Wykehamist, for that authority states him to have been rector of Faccombe, Hants, in 1595. Wood, in his * Fasti,' under date 1582 says: "One Will. Wygge, some- times called Way, was executed for being a seminary and denying the oath of supremacy at Kingston in Surrey on the first day of October, 1588. Whether the same with him who was M of A [i.e. the Wykehamist] I know not." Challoner says of William Way that he was born in Cornwall, educated at Rheims, sent on the mission in 1586, and executed at Kingston in 1588 "some say on the 1st of October, but the bishop of Chalcedon'a cat*-