Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/293

 9 th S. II. OCT. 8, '

NOTES AND QUERIES.

285

poet's conversation and not to his writings for Ben Jonson has recorded that his friend had " an excellent phantasie ; brave notions and gentle expressions ; wherein he flowed with that facility that sometimes it was necessary he should be stop'd."

If such things were said only by the dull and stupid we could pityingly allow for it, but we sometimes hear the like remarks made by really intelligent people. For them it is hard to account. Jealousy cannot be assigned as the sole cause, though no doubt it some- times has a potent influence. Probably it often arises from the listener's brain working more slowly than that of the speaker.

The foregoing quotation has been extracted from the July number of the Quarterly Review (p. 47). Where does it occur in Jonson's writings 1 I have been unable to find it. Of course, I ought to remember where it is, and shall incur contempt by exposing the limita- tions of my knowledge ; but that fate is better for me than continuance in ignorance.

ASTARTE.

RICHIE MONTPLIES AND R. W. ELLISTON : A CURIOUS COINCIDENCE.

" In the meanwhile the magnanimous Richie Moni- plies had already reached Tower Wharf. Here, after looking with contempt on several scullers by whom he was plied, and whose services he rejected with a wave of his hand, he called with dignity, ' First Oars ! ' and stirred into activity several lounging Tritons of the higher order, who had not, on his appearance, thought it worth while to accost him with proffers of service." Scott, ' The Fortunes of Nigel,' chap. xxxi.

" It irks me to think that, striptof thy regalities, thou shouldst ferry over, a poor forked shade, in crazy Stygian wherry. Methinks I hear the old boatman, paddling by the weedy wharf, with raucid voice bawling, 'Sculls, Sculls,' to which, with waving hand and majestic action, thou deignest no reply other than in two curt monosyllables, ' No : Oars.'" Charles Lamb, 'Essays of Elia,' 'To the Shade of Elliston.'

JONATHAN BOUCHIER.

MAELSTROM. This is a curious example of the influence of spelling upon pronunciation. All our dictionaries ('Century,' Nuttall, Ogilvie, Smith, Webster, Worcester), follow- ing a false spelling, have given the pronuncia- tion incorrectly, with the first element like English mail or male, instead of like mahl or marl. Lippincott alone gives both right and wrong pronunciations, but, misled by the spelling, he prefers the latter. How did this false spelling arise? Canon Taylor, in his 'Names and their Histories,' has shown that this word should properly be spelt mal- strom, but he does not explain how the in- trusive e first crept into it. I have traced the bad spelling in the encyclopaedias as far back

as the 'Londinensis'(1810)and the 'Perth ensis (1816). Both these give as their authority Jonas Ramus, but on referring to his original Danish (date about 1735) I see he used only bhe alternative form moskoestrom. As it will be some time before the ' H.E.D.' arrives at bhe letter m, I may be allowed to indulge in a guess that it was from a Dutch source that we obtained our spelling. The old Dutch form would be, maelstroom; the *new Dutch orthography is maalstrooni, as in Franck's ' Etymological Dutch Dictionary ' and in Van Dale. I suggest Dutch because that is the only language in which mael could have been written for mal in the first instance. After- wards it could be copied, and has been copied, by other tongues ; even Spanish has maelstron (Barcia, 'Etymological Dictionary'). French, like English, has maelstrom, but, curiously enough, unlike English, the corrupt spelling has not affected French pronunciation ; the orthoepists (such as Malvin Cazal) class it with Maestricht as one of the names in which ae is to be sounded a. In German the older editions of such a work of reference as Meyer's ' Conversations-Lexicon ' admit the spelling maelstrom, but the newer ones correct it to malstrom. JAMES PLATT, Jun.

WOODEN PILLARS IN AN OLD CHURCH. The fine church of Wingham, in Kent, mid- way between Canterbury and Dover, till 1547 a collegiate church with provost and six secular canons, has a row of tall plain octago- nal pillars of wood " chestnut" wood, i.e., no doubt the wood of the fast-growing and now rare species of oak without the silver grain. The effect is good, for the church is remark- ably light, and sound and sight are less obstructed than usual. There is one pillar of ordinary oak only thirty-five years old, but this is already decaying at the base from dry rot. T. WILSON.

Harpenden.

LEATHERHEAD : MAIDENHEAD : THICKHEAD. Names in -Aeac?haveoften been assimilated in order to make them significant in modern English. Thus Leatherhead is called Leod- rithe in King Alfred's will. Here rithe means a rivulet, or stream of running water ; leod meaning people, country, district. This is no guide to the etymology of Maidenhead, which is a corruption of Maidenhythe, the mediaeval name which replaced the older name Aylinton or Elington. It means either the wharf by the meadow, or, accord- ing to a conjecture of Prof. Leo, the timber wharf. Before 1297 a timber bridge had been built over the Thames, and the Crown granted to the town the right to have a tree