Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/358

 350

AND QUERIES.

IL OCT. 29, '93.

might be inclined to think that Ches was a word after all, corresponding to the German Kies = gravel (also Kiesel = sand).

The other field, "Uhesylls," 1589, is hilly ground ; but nevertheless we must take it. I think, that Chesil or Chisel is the real word.

ALDENHAM.

Aldenham House.

RIVERS' BANKS (9 th S. ii. 205, 251, 295). The confusion between the custom regulating the numbering of cataracts and that deciding the relative location of a river's banks is natural. But a deeper consideration of the question will show that a due regard to the claims of the inevitable, as contrasted with those of the accidental, has not been paid. All rivers have sources ; all rivers have not cataracts. We must infer a source, though it has not been discovered. We take cataracts, if we be wise, like the (jther ills of life, with strategy and philosophy. How can we number the cataracts until their number is known 1 And if there be a thousand or more years between the discovery of the first of them and their full tale, it is manifestly convenient to number from the mouth upwards, not forgetting that the last found may not be that nearest the source, and that therefore, in this case, it is not order of discovery that settles the point. Expedience as applied to the accidental, however, should not displace natural methods governing the inevitable and invariable.

ARTHUR MAYALL.

KILLIGREW argues neatly, so far as he goes but fails to reach the truth because he does not dig deep enough. With his illustrations of a house, stage, battalion, &c., let him com- pare the left and right sides of a table, the left and right pages of a book, and the left and right turnings of a cross-road, &c., and it will be found that the analogy does not hold. The fact is that an object like a house, garden, hill, river, has no real left and right. They spring from the individual, not the object, and depend upon the way the object is viewed (a) whether in juxtaposition to the right or left of the spectator, or (b) by the mental process of the spectator turning him- self round into the place of the object, anc attributing to it his own right or left accord- ingly. It follows that in every instance oi application of the terms the actual standpoint (a or b) must first be ascertained to employ them rightly, and custom, in each case, alone deter mines that. Todemonstratetheabsurdity of endeavouring to settle the point from logi cal deduction, take the aboriginal with MR MAYALL'S argument of primitive geography

tvhen the only way of navigating the Nile was by nature's method of swimming the iver. With the stream, the same bank jecomes either left or right accordingly as the current is too strong for him, and he is
 * he native lies on his face or his back ; and if
 * arried away feet foremost, another, and the

everse, order of things occurs. The only proper course of determining whether my original assertion is right or wrong is to see low the older geographers (e.g., Park, Living- stone, Baker) treated the subject. Unfor- tunately I have not their works at hand to refer to, nor the leisure, at present, for the search. Perhaps some of your readers would dndly, and without much trouble, make
 * he examination. Depend upon it, it will be
 * ound that whoever named the cataracts of

Nile also designated its banks in the way I have stated. J. S. M. T.

WILKIE'S 'EPIGONIAD' (9 th S. ii. 121). In regard to the rhyming of "retrieve" with words like " survive " and " deprive," it now occurs to me that Wilkie may have given the i in the latter words the value it had in Early English. This would make them rhyme per- fectly with " retrieve " as pronounced at the present day. Curiously enough, this has been coincidently suggested to me by a remark of a scholarly correspondent and by a perusal of the following passage in ' Collections and Recollections,' p. 14 :

" Like other high-bred people of his time, he [Lord John Russell] talked of ' cowoumbers ' and ' lay- locks '; called a woman an ' 'ooman,' and was 'much obleeged ' where a degenerate age is content to be obliged."

THOMAS BAYNE.

Helensburgh, N.B.

CHELSEA (9 th S. i. 264; ii. 156). At the first reference, with the Ordnance Department facsimile and " extension " before me, I gave the correct Domesday spelling of Chelsea,

viz> ' G Ghdchel \ Four months afterwards a correspondent sends a cutting from a local paper, in which the word is spelt Chelchea, and an extract from Timbs's ' Curiosities of London,' in which it is spelt Cerechede and Chalced. All these misspellings are said to be in Domesday. They may be misprints, but in that case the venue is merely changed from the field of error to that of super- fluity. What possible object is gained by repeating, after an interval of a few months, a statement that has already appeared in 'N.&Q.'I

I have on a former occasion suggested that newspaper extracts should not be