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

 9 th S. XI. JA^. 3, 1903.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

1

LONDON, SATURDAY, JANUARY 3, 1903.

CONTENTS. -No. 262.

NOTES : Scotch Words and English Commentators, 1 Bibliography of Dibdin, 2 Tennyson's 'Lord of Bur leigh,' 4 "Fortune, Infortune, Fort-Une " Ambros Rookwood, 5' Old English Songs and Dances ' Sir T Bodley, 6' N. & Q.' Anagram Burial Custom at Ardoch Lodona Dagger Money, 7.

QUERIES : Walton and Cotton Club Annie of Tharau Rubens Pictures, 7 Forman Tennyson and Kingsley Burke Kieff, Kiev, Kiew Rev. S. Fisher Arms Wanted Village Library Heraldic Shields Princess Charlotte 8 "Interview" Japanese Monkeys Lady Mary Prince Tintagel Church Rookwood and his Ride" Motor" Smuggling Inscription at Wintringham, 9.

REPLIES : Descendants of Elizabethan Worthies, 10 Armigerous Families Bruce and Burns, 11 Roubiliac's Bust of Pope Esquires Sir Thomas Browne Brooch of Lorn, 12 The Golden Horn Latin Conversa tion Misquotations Elizabethan Poem King's Weigh House, 13 Pausanias Monarch in a Wheelbarrow Latin Quotation Index : How not to Make Purcell Family Branstill Castle, 14 " Eparchy " Mourning Sunday "Transcendant," 15 Atlas Wanted B. R. Haydon Frankliniana "The" as Part of Title " Warth "- Kipling's ' City of Dreadful Night,' 16" Lupo-mannaro ' Pendugum : Carlyng, 17 Cadaver Castle Carewe, 18.

NOTES ON BOOKS : New Volumes of ' The Encyclo- paedia Britannica * Hassall's Stubbs's ' Historical Intro- ductions to the Rolls Series ' Burke's ' Peerage and Baronetage ' ' Englishwoman's Year-Book ' American Library Journal.'

Notices to Correspondents.

grits.

SCOTCH WORDS AND ENGLISH

COMMENTATORS. IN 1887 the late Prof. Henry Morley added M. G. Lewis's 'Tales of Terror and Wonder' to the useful series which he published under the title of the " Universal Library." He seems to have restricted his editorial duties to the writing of a concise and helpful introduction and, perhaps, the superintendence of the text. Lewis's notes he has left to themselves : he has not supple- mented them where additions were wanted, and he has not corrected mistakes. There is need, for instance, to qualify Lewis's ex- planation of "wraiths" as "water-spirits," given as a note on a line in ' Bothwell's Bonny Jane'; and what is said of St. Bothan, Hallowe'en, and the Brownie at further stages of the same ballad could be materially im- proved by expert comment. " Bellane- tree " and " bathy " in the notes to Scott's 'Glenfinlas' are misprints for beltane-tree and bothy; and the definition of "windle- strae," which occurs in Leyden's 'Elfin-King,' is not sufficiently exhaustive, even if it does happen to have been the explanation given by Leyden himself. These, however, are

comparatively small matters, which may safely be left to the judicious reader.

When we come to the ballad ' Clerk Colvin ' we find a different state of things. The opening stanza of this narrative states that the "girdle round the middle jimp "of Colvin's lady cost her lord no less a sum than crowns fifteen. To this Lewis or his repre- sentative appends the startling note, " Jimps, stays " ! This deliverance may have been due not so much to hopeless ignorance as misguided ingenuity, for the annotator may have been thinking of another ballad, where a lady exclaims :

And wha will lace my middle jimp Wi' a lang linen band ?

The natural inference of a mere man from such an appeal would be that what needed lacing was a portion of wearing apparel, and not an epithet indicative of exquisite grace. It is probably similar lyrical bewilderment that presently makes Clerk Colvin exclaim, " Ohan ! and alas ! " in the text, and explains "row," meaning wrap or roll, as rap, which is surely too deliberate for a typical error. Towards the end of the ballad the Clerk is credibly informed that things with him " will ever be wae," and the annotator carefully glosses this as " be painful," thereby showing commendable courage and some promise of improvement. But immediately afterwards he lapses wofully. Clerk Colvin, conscious after what has befallen him that he must now dree his weird, rides crestfallen to get final solace from his mother :

He has mounted on his berry-brown steed,

And dowie, dowie on he rides, Till he has reached Dunallan's towers,

And there his mother dear resides.

"Dowie" is the word here that naturally proves the mettle of the glossarist, and it is ippalling to find him, with all the English language to draw upon, deliberately choosing swiftly as an appropriate equivalent ! Surely VIonk Lewis, if indeed he were his own ex- ponent, must have known the verb "dow," signifying to fade or wither, and common n Scottish poetry from the 'Book of the loulate ' onwards. Then ' The Dowie Dens ' Yarrow ' had worn the grave and sweet dignity of old romance for generations >efore the compilation of ' Tales of Terror and Wonder.' The modern reader who wishes to see " dowie " properly applied may )e referred to the works of Hew Ainslie, a x>et who has written genuine Scottish verse n these latter days, when the higher criticism las said that such verse is impossible. Ainslie hus opens a touching elegiac poem :