Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 12.djvu/445

. XIL NOV. 28, loos.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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small shrub, bearing small flowers of a greenish - j^ellow colour, and with a corolla tubular. The seed is contained in a fruit the size of a small orange, which turns a dull yellow when ripe. The stem of the plant is thick, often being over eight inches in dia- meter. The wood and root contain strychnia ; this the natives extract and use medicinally. They also use it in the preparation of charms against snakes, which are to be worn on the person. Cups are also made of the wood; they are supposed to render poisoned drinks innocuous. The Strychnos colubrina grows at Matheran, Goa, and along the lower slopes of the western Ghauts where they approach the sea. It is also found in Ceylon. There is a very general belief in the south of India that hidden treasure is guarded by snakes. The treasure-seeker therefore arms himself with a short staff of jmo da cobra when he is prosecuting a search. I have never heard of it as the plant sought by the mongoose after an encounter with a cobra ; but [ have been told that it has certain snake-poison counteracting properties, and that it is highly valued by the medical faculty in Australia in consequence. In the sixteenth and seven- teenth centuries there was a market in Europe for Oriental charms. In 1614 the bezoar stone was in the list of articles imported by the London East India Company. Pdo da cobra was not needed in England ; but it probably had a market in the southern parts of Europe. (Mrs.) F. E. PENNY.

LIEUT. - COL. HENRY OSBORN (9 th S. xii. 348). He was knighted at Whitehall 13 January, 1672/3, being then "esquire of the body." The legend on the Chicksands por- trait would seem to be a mistake. No such name is to be found in 'The Loyalists' Bloody Roll.' W. D. PINK.

JOHN GILPIN'S ROUTE (9 th S. xii. 170, 217, 255,
 * 371). ST. SWITHIN'S remarks are excellent. I

have grave doubts whether any one in those good old " three-bottle " times would have had the temerity to override a custom which lingers on to-day in the breasts of a few lordly bagmen of the old school who spend their earnings joyfully "for the good of the house." In those days any proposition to provide one's own wine would have been looked upon as a mark of lunacy in the pro- poser. So rigid was the custom that governed the daily dinners in the commercial rooms of country hotels up to a quarter of a century ago, that no one could take his seat at the table unless he was prepared to take scot and lot in the " wine bill." The downfall of many worthy bagmen could be traced to this

unholy practice, which few young men were courageous enough to resist. I have often been asked to join these " wine bouts " in the commercial room, but I have always declined the privilege. M. L. R. BRESLAR.

THE WYKEHAMICAL WORD "TOYS" (9 th S. xii. 345). A Winchester man sends this as the accepted derivation : "French toise, fathom --= the space allotted college men." 1. B. B.

As PROF. SKEAT has clearly shown long ago in his ' Etymolog. Diet.,' the origin of toy is found in the cognate Dutch noun tuig, which has the wider meaning of tool, utensil, stuff, and the special sense of plaything in its com- pound speel-tuig, just as the High German cognate Spiel-zeug. Both Low Germ, tiig and High Germ. Zeug^ (=Old High Germ. zvug\ as well as Icelandic tygi, Swedish tyg, and Danish toi, are undoubtedly akin, and identical in their original meaning, viz., materials, movables, gear, &c. Cf. also Weigand's 'Deutsches Worterbuch,' sub 'Zeug,' and Vigf usson's * Icelandic -Engl. Diet.,' sub ' Tygi.'

H. KREBS.

HAWTHORN (9 th S. xii. 268, 334). I feel deeply grateful to PROF. SKEAT and CANON FOWLER for so clearly showing that " haw- thorn" has not been derived from any form of " hoarthorn." But I never supposed it had been. The utmost I contemplated was the possibility that in far distant times, when to other causes was added a similarity in sound, the one word had in a measure supplanted the other. And I gave a reason (not necessarily " absurd " at all) for the faith that was in me, namely, that hedges must be a comparatively recent invention. I argued in this way. I imagined that, just as over wide regions of the East, where the village community system still flourishes in full vigour, hedges to divide field from field, and village lands from village lands, are quite unused, or any hedges at all, with probably this one exception, that vast quantities of cut thorns of every conceivable variety, from thorny acacias and prickly plum-trees to the trailing bramble, are heaped up round the smaller unwalled villages to keep out wild beasts, so among the ancestors of the Anglo- Saxons, long before the times of ' Beowulf,' hedges may have been quite unnecessary. And yet, even then, the hawthorn must have had a name, and the name would have been a descriptive one. All I suggested, then, was that the simple descriptive name hoar- thorn in its original form may have preceded in point of time the utilitarian name haw- thorn, that it held the ground first, and that