Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/324

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [8* s. ii. OCT. is,

with regard to names now, but if this patronymic had been introduced into Eng- land a hundred years ago it would probably have become Drinkbeer by this time. Drink- water may also have had a foreign origin. Be van is no doubt Ab Evan, just as Bo wen is Ab Owen, and Benyon Ab Einion.

W. F. PEIDEAUX. 45, Pall Mall, S.W.

"HOOLIGAN" (9 th S. ii. 227). One of the so-called comic papers Nuggets, if my memory does not deceive me has served up to its readers week by week for several years certainly more than two the doings of a fictitious personage by the name of Hooligan. Some years ago, I remember the name McGinty was used in a jocular manner. The small boy in the street used it as an answer to any and every question. Sometimes it led to amusing results. In one of our police- courts a man was brought up, charged with some petty offence. " What is your name 1 " asked the presiding magistrate of one of the witnesses. " McGinty ! " The court tittered and the bench looked grave it was a clear case of contempt until it was explained that the man's name was really McGinty. May Hooligan not have a similar origin ?

ROBERT F. GARDINEE.

64, Abbotsford Place, Glasgow.

As an " inventor " and adapter to general purposes of the tools used by navvies and hodmen, "Hooligan" is an Irish character who occupies week by week the front page of a comic literary journal called Nuggets, one of the series of papers published by Mr. James Henderson at Red Lion House. " Pre- vious to publication in London, " Hooligan " appears, I believe, in New York in a comic weekly, and in London he is set off against " Schneider," a German, whose contra-inven- tions and adaptations appear in the Garland (a very similar paper to Nuggets), which also comes from Mr. Henderson's office. "Hooligan" and " Schneider " have been running, I should think, for four or five years.

THOS. RATCLIFFE.

ON ACCENT (9 th S. ii. 61). I thank ME. PLATT for his paper. The subject is made somewhat difficult by the uncertainty of terms. I suggest that accent should be re- served to denote the musical accent of the ancient Greek, and stress for increased loudness of a syllable, which resembles the increased loudness of an emphasized word. Quantity or length explains itself. The Englisn accented syllable has commonly all three elements, but not always ; e. g,, in female the first syllable

has the stress and I think accent, but in quantity it is rather shorter than the final syllable. Would it be possible to teach enough music in our grammar schools to get boys to distinguish the true or musical accent? I believe it would be both possible and profit- able. I utterly disagree with the learned Dr. Gennadius about the right pronunciation of ancient Greek. Av av, the exclamation of Aristophanes's dog, should rime with bow-wow, and not be sounded af af, which, as he says, may remotely represent the bark of a little dog. It is not likely that modern Romaic pro- nunciation should represent the pronuncia- tion of Homer's time any better than our pronunciation represents that of Alfred's time. Can any reader explain what is meant by the difficult " tones " of Chinese 1

T. WILSON. Harpenden.

DERIVATION OF " SETTLE " (9 th S. i. 245). I think the derivation seat-all for settle too fanciful and not in the least required. The O.E. form seyt-el is simply the diminutive of seyt, and settle originally referred more to the duration of the sitting than to the seat itself. A settle is by no means a small seat, but it was one on which one man or more could sit to transact business or just while he drank his cup of ale. It is strange that when we now use the verb to settle we mean the exact opposite.

With regard to the ancient carved settle at Combe St. Nicholas, I have a note to this effect :

"In Turner's 'Domestic Architecture of Eng- land ' there is a full-page engraving and description of a settle in an old house at Combe St. Nicholas, now the Green Dragon public-house, which is partly of the time of Henry VIII. In the illustration a labourer is depicted sitting on the settle, smoking a long pipe and with a jug of foaming ale on the table before him."

This settle doubtless was of ecclesiastical origin, as the whole _ parish, sometimes styled Combe Episcopi, belonged to the Bishop of Bath and Wells. But, alas ! the fourteenth-century house of which it was part and parcel has been of late recon- structed ; and barely a week ago I saw the same old settle, with its elaborate linen -pattern _ carving, lying dismembered and neglected in a loft at Chard.

W. L. RADFOED. Ilminster.

REV. EDWARD ASHBURNER (9 th S. ii. 228). In his will, dated 30 October, 1798, and proved 6 August, 1804, he mentions that he was educated at Homerton Academy. He refers to his wife Frances, his brother-in-law