Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 11.djvu/55

 9 tk S. XI. JAN 17,1903.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

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the Gentleman's Magazine that Farquhar's masterly characterization of Foigard was drawn from some actual personage, and now I have by accident stumbled upon what appears to be a somewhat curious confirma- tion of that idea. Pepys, under date 6 February, 1663/4, writes :

"Home, whither came one Father Fogourdy, an Irish priest, of my wife's and mother's acquaintance in France a sober and discreet person, but one that I would not have converse with my wife for fear of meddling with her religion. He confirms to me the news that for certain there is peace between the Pope and King of France." A few days later Fogourdy calls again on Mrs. Pepys, to beg her go hear a French sermon, and again the diarist has his mis- givings.

Although 'The Beaux' Stratagem' was written almost forty years later, I make no doubt that we have here the prototype of Foigard. It would be interesting to learn further details of this Father Fogourdy, with the view of determining Farquhar's reason for pillorying him in his famous comedy.

W. J. LAWRENCE.

" EJULATE." The ' N.E D.' gives the s. emulation in the sense of "wailing, lamenta- tion," but not the v. ejulate, as in the following quotation :

1660. "They ejulate, weep, and lament with exotick gestures, and tortions, and in these postures having walked round the town, they return to the corps with numbers of people, and when the body is borne to the Temple, then they raise yet lowder cries and emulations." ' The World Surveyed ; or, the Famous Voyages and Travailes of Vincent le Blanc,' trans. by~F. B[rooke], Gent. (London, 1660).

EMERITUS.

RUSSIAN SUPERSTITIONS. In Kussia it, is said that you should laugh when you pass the salt, otherwise you will make bad friends. If children find a dead toad, they are told to leave it lying on its back, other- wise something but I am not sure what will happen to the sun. Pouchkine, in 'Eugene Oneguine,' also mentions four superstitions that apparently may influence the minds of people who are socially well placed. Thus the heroine Tattiana con- cludes that there will be visitors if the cat strokes its face with one paw and purrs ; she shudders and grows pale if she suddenly notices the crescent of the new moon on her left ; if she sees a meteor cross the sky she makes haste to wish for something before it has vanished ; and if a hare crosses her path, she anticipates certain misfortune. I may perhaps be permitted to add, though it is not a superstition, that in some families in Little Russia the people put hay under the table

loth on Christmas Day, in commemoration I the fact that the Nativity took place in a table. T. P. ARMSTRONG.

"ROLLICK." This is a form that seems to lave intermittent vitality, and probably attention has previously been drawn to it "n these columns. Those who use it may 'eel that it is a reasonable substantive from the stern that gives " rollicking " (v. rollick), ust as "frolic" and "frolicking" are con- nected. An example of the noun occurs in the Edinburgh Review for October, 1902, p. 439, where a writer on ' Poetry in the Nineteenth Jentury ' is at the trouble to deny to Crabbe " the rollick and burliness of Dryden." Perhaps the word may yet take its place as a useful abstract term, but at present it seems to lack literary recognition.

THOMAS BAYNE.

"DUTCH COURAGE." This quality, which N E.D.' defines as the colloquial phrase for "bravery induced by drinking," has only two illustrative quotations in that work : one from Scott, in * Woodstock,' dated 1826, and the other from Mr. Herbert Spencer, in ' Studies in Sociology,' dated 1878. But there should urely be earlier examples ; for the precise idea, though not the phrase, is to be traced to the Anglo-Dutch wars of the time of Charles II. Waller, in his 'Instructions to a Painter, for the Drawing of the Posture and Progress of His Majesty's Forces at Sea, under the Command of His Highness-Royal ; together with the Battle and Victory ob- tained over the Dutch, June 3, 1665,' wrote : The Dutch their wine, and all their brandy lose, Disarmed of that from which their courage grows.

And again :

But Bacchus now, which led the Belgians on,

So fierce at first, to favour us begun ;

Brandy and wine (their wonted friends) at length

Render them useless, and betray their strength.

It is to that period, therefore, that one should look for the earliest use of the phrase, though the ' Century Dictionary,' it is to be noted, gives its one illustrative quotation from Charles Kingsley's 'Westward Ho': "Pull away at the usquebaugh, man, and swallow Dutch courage, since thine English is oozed away." But there appears no proof that the phrase was of Elizabethan use.

ALFRED F. ROBBINS. [See 2 d S. vii. 277.]

'RECORDS OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE.' I have to correct an error in foot-note at 9 th S. x. 513. The above-named serial is in the British Museum, though not, as 1 think, adequately indexed. See 'Academies' index, 'Archi-