Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/365

 9 th S. II. OCT. 29,'98.]

357

years later, in December, 1879, fifty - fiv< degrees of frost were recorded at Blackadder in Berwickshire, i. e., twenty-three degree below zero F. More remarkable, however than the heat in summer were the hot winter of 1748 and 1857, and the warm Januaries o 1877, 1884, and 1898. R. B.

Upton.

SOME AFRICAN NAMES OFTEN Mis PRONOUNCED (9 th S. i. 466 ; ii. 52, 96, 152 193, 310). If I may be allowed one lasi word, I would say that Magdala is pro nounced Magdala simply because of our incorrigible English habit of mispronoun cing foreign words. Why does every other Englishman call Mod8na, Modena, and Cor dova, Cordova 1 ? Why does everybody saj Himalaya instead of the euphonious anc correct Himalaya? Why do we generally hear from the lectern Dalllah, Zerubbabel, and Lama Sabachthani, and not Dalilah, Zerubbabel, and Lama Sabachthani? hardly think MR. PLATT'S explanation will fit the case, as in my long experience of Arab dialects I have never found Mustafa pro- nounced otherwise than Mustafa. Nor does this word illustrate his canon, for the first syllable of Mustafa is not long, but short. But to take an Arabic word of which the first syllable is long, say Mumenln in Amiru- l-Mumenln. Surely MR. PLATT has never heard the penultimate of this word lengthened, hardly feel disposed to dogmatize, but if I were, I should say that when the last syllable of a trisyllabic Arabic word is long and accented, the first syllable has also a stress. A good example of this rule is the name Sulaiman, where the penultimate is long and yet is never accented, a stress being laid on the first syllable and a forcible accent on the last. Musalman is another well-known in- stance, in which the stress on the first syllable generally tempts the Englishman to double the letter s. In reply to MR. BRESLAR, I would observe

that I did not cite fcvHpO as the transliteration of Magdala, but of Maqdala, as the name is spelt in Amharic. Magdala is situated in the Wollo Galla country, and there are no grounds for thinking the name is Semitic or connected in any way with the Hebrew Migdol or the Aramaic Magdala. W. F. PRIDEAUX.

45, Pall Mall, S.W.

HUMPTY - DUMPTY (9 th S. ii. 307). I am sorry to say that I cannot give DR. MURRAY any absolute proof of theexistence of Humpty- Dumpty before the date he mentions (1848), but I have strong reason for believing that

the gentleman or lady (I am uncertain as to the sex) was flourishing at a much earlier period. I well remember reading, at about the time of the repeal of the corn laws, in a provincial newspaper the Eastern Counties Herald, I think, but of this I am not certain the following parody of the Humpty- Dumpty jingle :

Dumpy-monopoly sat on a wall, Dumpy-monopoly had a great fall ; All the Duke's horses and all the Duke's men Can't set Dumpy-monopoly up again.

Verses are rarely parodied until they become widely known in their original form.

EDWARD PEACOCK.

Kirton-in-Lindsey.

"SABLE SHROUD" (9 th S. i. 445 ; ii. 133, 231). Surely Beatrice never meant " that she would rather lie in a shroud " than marry a man with a beard. There seems to me no neces- sary connexion between the passage in Pope and the remark of Beatrice. Woollen, frieze, or worsted blankets were probably the only bed-covering of humble folk in Shakespeare's time, the well-to-do possibly only affording themselves the luxury of linen sheets between. We know how carefully such things were often kept in well -carved linen chests. Woollen being a home manufacture, linen a foreign produce, the one would be cheaper and more easily obtained than the other. Again, the saying among poorer people, " Born on the wrong side of the blanket," used for illegitimacy, seems to imply this. I would refer your readers to a passage in ' The Fable of the Bees,' pp. 377-9, in the chapter en- titled " A Search into the Nature of Society," edition published in 1728, for some reference
 * o this Act about woollen and its working.

E. A. C.

Probably corpses were wrapped in woollen ong before the Act was passed which com- Delled people to bury them in this manner.

E. YARDLEY.

THE YORKSHIRE ARCHAEOLOGICAL JOURNAL ' 9 th S. ii. 240). At the above reference there s quoted an inscription of Queen Elizabeth's line, concerning which the writer remarks hat the beginning was slightly altered from he old form of words to make it tally with nodern thought. In the burial-ground at lowley, Massachusetts, the gravestone of my incestor Mrs. John Pickard (born Jean >osby) bears the following inscription, in vhich the alteration of an old form to suit uritan times occurs at the end : Here lyes y e body | of Mrs. Jean Pickard | wife f Mr. John '| Pickard who died | February y 20,