Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/193

 ii. SEPT. 3,

NOTES AND QUERIES.

185

great intimacy with one Alchmerin, his friend and a Jew, and his little adhesion to some of his opinions, was sent into the Island of Conversion close prisoner: who there to hold constant intelligence with his intimate, first found out this admirable invention. And therewith he showed me those two very tables by which, during that his confinement, thus they communicated their thoughts each to other."

J. LANGFIELD WARD, M.A.

FOLK-LORE. It would be well to reproduce the following piece of folk-lore in the pages of 'N. &Q.':

" Our phrase 'a fig for him ' is explained by an amulet in use here [Portugal] against witchcraft called afiga; the mules and asses wear it. It is the figure of a hand closed, the thumb cocked out between the fore and middle fingers. I first saw it mentioned in a curious poem by Vieira, the famous and, indeed, only good Portuguese painter. He had one given to him when a child to save him from the evil eye, for he was in more danger on account of his being handsome and quick ; as we say, a child is too clever to live." ' Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey,' ed. by his son, C. C. Southey, 1850, vol. ii. p. 70.

EDWARD PEACOCK.

"CYCLOPEDIA." The use of the word cyclopaedia in the following passage, which concludes the preface to 'Parables of our Lord,' by the late Rev. W. K. Tweedie, D.D. (London, T. Nelson & Sons, 1865), seems suffi- ciently remarkable to deserve a niche in 'N. &Q.':

"The sage whose head is hoary or whose know- ledge is profound, and the child who can but lisp its little cyclopaedia, may each be instructed by the Saviour's words of weight and wisdom."

" Its little cyclopaedia " apparently denotes the whole range of the child's limited know- ledge contrasted with that of the hoary- headed sage. Possibly Dr. Tweedie may, on the other hand, have intended it as a refer- ence to a class-book or catechism of general knowledge adapted to the wants of a child. In either case the sense does not exactly correspond with any of the meanings of "cyclopaedia " given in the ' H.E.D.'

JOHN T. KEMP.

FALSE QUANTITIES m SCOTT'S POEMS. There are two false quantities in poems by Scott which deserve recording here, if only for the lesson they suggest. The first is in 'Rokeby,' canto vi. 21 :

Panama's maids shall long look pale When Risingham inspires the tale.

The second is in ' The Vision of Don Roderick,

xxxi. :

Ingots of ore from rich Potosi borne, Crowns by Caciques, aigrettes by Omrahs worn.

Here we have illustrated a tendency, strong in English, to stretch too far the well-known

rule that Spanish and Portuguese names, when ending in a vowel, are accented upon the penultimate. These names should, of course, be Panama and Potosi. Similarly I find in a modern school geography, issued by the Scottish School -Book Association, Bogota and Cumana, instead of Bogota and Cumana. The fact is, the rule does well

nough if restricted to the Peninsula, but for Spanish and Portuguese America it is as often wrong as right. Throughout the entire

mpire of Brazil, as well as in some of the neighbouring states, wherever the Tupi and Guarani tongues are spoken, native names ending in a vowel are accented upon it. The only exception is final a, which is sometimes accented and" sometimes not. No rule can be easier to apply in practice.

JAMES PLATT, Jun.

[It appears to us that "Panama's" may just as' easily oe pronounced correctly as incorrectly in Scott's line.]

" HELPMATE." (See 9 th S. ii. 105.) We are told at the above reference that " helpmate " is intelligible, but "helpmeet" absurd. Both forms are given by Webster, and also by Nuttall, and as the use of neither form can be defended on any other ground than that the dictionaries sanction it, Miss Corelli may perhaps be allowed to choose whichever she prefers. If, as I suppose, this word, however spelt, is traceable to a mistaken apprehension of Gen. ii. 18 " an help meet for him" the form Miss Corelli actually does choose is pro- bably the older of the two, and I do not see that it is much improved by being changed into " helpmate." A mate is a companion, an equal, a fellow. A workfellow is one who works with another, and a helpmate should therefore be one who helps with another, but this is not the meaning usually attached to the word. Indeed, I am afraid that it is not so very intelligible after all. Can it mean a companion who is also a help 1 Then " school- mate " should mean a companion who is also a school, which is truly absurd. C. C. B.

MR. THOMAS BAYNE, in his strictures on Miss Corelli's syntax and spelling, denounces "helpmeet" as objectionable and absurd. On reading this I was so loath to surrender the dear old word, which most of us love so well, that I at once turned up Gen. ii. 18, and there it was in all the Bibles in my house. I then had recourse to the 'Encyclopaedic Dictionary,' and there I find "helpmate, a coinage due to a mistaken notion of the phrase 'an help meet' in Gen. ii. 18." Accordingly I shall continue to write "helpmeet" at the risk of its being objectionable and absurd,