Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 12.djvu/104

 NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. xii. A, i, 1903.

In Mid. Eng. the A.-S. swogan, to make a rushing noise, gave " the swoghe of the see " ('Morte Art.,' 759), and "swounes the kynge for swoughe [noise] of his dyntes " (ibid., 1127) ; hence also the secondary meaning swoon e.g., swowe, 'William of Palerne,' 87, and sivogh, Chaucer, ' C.T.,' D. 799. To this group, of imitative affinity, may be added surf.

H. P. L.

Buff, meaning a drain, has been familiar to me for half a century. I was taught to spell it sough. I am a Lancashire man.

THOS. WHITE.

The quotation from the Star at the above reference merely means that a vixen was driven from a drain, probably by fox-terriers. Suffis a word well known in North Warwick- shire in the sense there given to it. My early years were spent in that part of the country, and, although I have been away for more than thirty years, I still find myself using the word. I cannot see what it has to do with stuff. ERNEST B. SAVAGE.

St. Thomas, Douglas.

BLUE ASSOCIATED WITH THE BLESSED VlRGIN

(9 th S. xi. 388, 496). Surely MR. WAINE- WRIGHT is wrong in saying that blue (if it be the blue associated with the Virgin Mary)

"is the ecclesiastical equivalent of black."

If so, it must be by relatively recent and ignorant usage. The blue of the Virgin, like the blue of Isis, her virgin prototype, whose son was an immaculate conception, was anciently the mystical equivalent of white, and was the feminine colour, indicative of the spirit (as contrasted with matter), and of the conservative (or preservative) power, in contrast with the creative energy. It is associated with water, as when " the spirit of God brooded on the face of the waters " ; and in the case of both Mary and Isis is frequently associated with a position on the crescent moon. It is a lucky and an unlucky colour at the same time, an apparent contra- diction explained by the fact that we are at present (and have been well back into the times when Isis was worshipped) in a material- istic period, when the physical is in the ascendant and things of the spirit are un- fortunate (from the prevailing point of view). Therefore the white (and blue) have been held unlucky, and "' white " names are sup- posed to be especially unlucky in the British royal family. This led certain mystics to suggest that the present king would avoid misfortune by being known as Edward VIL, rather than as Albert ; and they pointed to the White Ship, the white rose of York, Charles I. (the only king crowned in white

robes), the Prince Consort, Albert (who died untimely young), with many other instances.

It is quite true that the Virgin Mary is represented as clad in black and other colours ; but admitting this is very different from saying that the blue used in one case is the "equivalent" of the other colours.

H. SNOWDEN WARD.

Hadlow, Kent.

THE AUTHOR AND AVENGER OF EVIL (9 th S. ix. 22, 229 ; x. 35 ; xi. 35, 455 ; xii. 14). In my 'Hero of Esthonia' (vol. i. p. xxxi) I wrote, " The Tont or House-Spirit goes by various names ; among other Kratt or Puuk. Kratt is perhaps a word of Scandinavian or German origin ; Puuk must be the same as our Puck." And, further, a propos of the story of the Treasure-Bringer (p. 167), " The Kratt seems originally to have been nothing worse than Tont, the house-spirit, who robbed the neighbours for the benefit of his patrons, and it is probably only after the introduction of Christianity that he assumed the diabolical character attributed to him in the present story," in which he becomes a sort of " Bottle Imp " or " Artificial Elemental," whose only object is to destroy his master, body and soul.

I also find a MS. note, "According to Agricola (1551), Kratti was the name of the God of Riches among the Ta vasts ('Haraa- laiset) in his time."

There are several references to the Schrat or Schratzel (wood-sprite) in vol. iv. of Stallybrass's translation of Grimm's 'Teutonic Mythology.'

In Swedish the word kratta means a rake, and -skratt means laughter.

I do not find more meanings in my small Swedish dictionary, but Lonnrot in his 'Finnish-Swedish Dictionary' explains kratti to mean a guardian of buried treasure, and refers to the Swedish word skratt as having a similar meaning.

All this illustrates the frequent difficulty of settling the meaning of a word, or even the language from which it was originally derived. W. F. KIRBY.

SKULLS (9 th S. xi. 287, 474 ; xii. 51). I am able to furnish an example which may in some degree help to prove the correctness of the theory advanced by MR. HOLDEN MAC- MICHAEL at the second reference. The other day I was conversing with a sexton concern- ing certain gravestones which had ^ been removed from the positions they originally occupied. The sites of the graves they once marked are now enclosed within the walls of a new vestry on the north side of the church. At the time the building was erected these