Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 12.djvu/125

 9*" s. xri. AU. s, iocs.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

117

ing statement (7 th S.'i. 232) : "The word was habitually applied to the king of feudal times ; but always, of course, to mark his character, not of sovereign ruler, but of lord paramount of feudal lords." For if this be so, the fact may doubtless be con- sidered to have afforded both Freeman and Gladstone a precedent justifying such an interpretation (see note by HITTIM, 7 th S. i. 147).

The fact of our word sovereign being the anglicized form of souverain, and the equiva- lent of supranus and supremus, of which souverain appears to be but a euphonic and convenient spelling, certainly points to that title having been supreme as regards temporal authority as it existed in France, although neither Hugues Capet nor his immediate successors appear to have possessed this supreme authority over their grands-vassaux. Tnis being so, to speak of suzerain as a corruption of supra-souverain is to claim for the word a redundancy that could only have expressed the relationship of the Pope in respect of his temporal or spiritual authority to the French monarchy, giving the possessor of the title a supreme instead of a subordinate power. If the king himself had been a suze- rain, his suzerainty must have been either in the nature of a fealty to the Pope, or, as a correspondent at one of the references kindly pointed out by MR. WAINEWRIGHT seems to think, to the Lordship-over-all of the Supreme Being. But the etymology of souverain being, according to the best authorities, unmistak- able, what could be more likely than that a noble who possessed in his own peculiar region a supreme power should be designated a sous- souverain ? It is certain that in all French words where the first syllable sous is followed immediately, not by a consonant, but by a vowel, or even by an h, the second s is pronounced hard like zsous-ambassade for instance, sous-officier, and sous-aide. Roque- fort says a suzerain was "un souverain absplu dans son canton" ; and Menage, while giving suzerain, sursum, susum, suzeranus, suzerain, says also that a suzerain is under one who is supremus. Diderot tells us :

" Du Tillet dit que le droit de ressort est un droib de souverainete ; c'est pourquoi les modernes, pour oter Pequivoque, appellant suserainete le droit de ressort que quelques grands seigneurs du royaume ont conserve: il faut avoir un titre pour cela." 'Diet, de T rev.'

Again he says :

" Loyseau a observe que les mots de suserain et de suserainet^ n'avoient e"te faits que pour designer cette portion de la puissance publique, et de la souverainete qui a et6 usurpee par les particuliers, et que ces termes sont aussi etranges, que cette

espece de seigneurie est absurde Les seigneurs

suzerains sont les dues, comtes, et autre grands seigneurs."

J. HOLDEN MAcMlCHAEL.

WESLEY QUERIES (9 th S. xii. 27). 3. Glan- vill, in 'Sadducismus Triumphatus,' gives the account of the ghostly drum heard by Mr. Mompesson of Ted worth in 1661 ; see more in 3 rd S. ix. 147. Addison took the idea of his ' Drummer ' from this source.

W. C. B.

'The Enlarged Narrative of the Daemon of Ted worth, or of the Disturbances at Mr. Mompesson's House caused by Witchcraft and the Villany of the Drummer,' is given in Relation i. of ' Proof of Apparitions, Spirits, and Witches from a Choice Collection of Modern Relations,' which is appended to the second edition of 'Sadducismus Triumphatus,'

MDCLXXXVIII. ST. SWITHIN.

1. The history of Santon Barsisa will be found in the Guardian, No. 148, translated from the ' Turkish Tales ' by Steele.

3. Does this refer to the Rev. William Mompesson, who was rector of Eyam, Derby- shire, during the plague year ' 1666, where 259 died of that disorder out of a population of 330? Mr. Mompesson was subsequently presented to the living of Eakring, Notts, where he died in 1708.

I do not possess a copy of Wesley's works to which I could refer.

EVERARD HOME COLEMAN. 71, Brecknock Road.

The history of Santon Barsisa, taken by Steele out of the 'Turkish Tales,' forms No. 148 of the Guardian, 31 August, 1713. It is the familiar story of a hermit tempted to incontinericy by the devil, who afterwards persuades the hermit to hide his sin by murdering his victim and concealing the body. ADRIAN WHEELER.

GOOD FRIDAY IN 1602 (9 th S. xi. 368, 412). At the beginning of the Book of Common Prayer will be found various tables for find- ing Easter and dealing with Golden Numbers arid Dominical Letters, but 'Whitaker's Almanack ' contains a simple table of Easter Days and Sunday Letters from 1500 to 2000. From this I see that Easter Day in 1602 (Old Style) fety on 4 April, so that (if I am correct: please verify) Good Friday would, of course, have been 2 April. In this connexion I may mention that 'A Standard Dictionary of the English Language' (Funk & Wagnalls Co., 1900) contains, at the end of vol. i M 'A Universal Calendar for every Year of the Christian Era/ from which one can at a