Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/374

 366

NOTES AND QUERIES.

[9 th S. II. Nov. 5, '98.

the Prince of Wales (afterwards George III.). All these gentlemen are referred to by name viz., Lord Harcourt, the Bishop of Norwich (Hayter), Andrew Stone, and George Scott. Stone was accused of Jacobitism, and it was evidently suspected that efforts had been made to instil Jacobite principles into the mind of the young Prince. Walpole writes :

" The first occasion of uneasiness was the Bishop's [of Norwich] finding the Prince of Wales reading the ' Revolutions of England,' written by Pere d'0rl6ans to vindicate James II., and approved by that Prince."

The ' Revolutions d'Angleterre ' here re- ferred to (first published in 1693) was the work of the well-known Jesuit historian Pierre Louis d'Orleans. The incident in question occurred in the year 1752, as appears from Wai pole's letter above mentioned. Mr. Tovey, in a foot-note, identifies the "P. d'Orleans" with Voltaire's 'Pucelle d'Orleans.' This poem, however, was not printed till 1755 (in which year a surreptitious edition ap- peared), and it was not till 1762 that an authorized version was published (see Dow- den's ' History of French Literature '). It is evident, therefore, that Mr. Tovey's identifi- cation is impossible.

It seems likely that Mitford, having no clue to the incident referred to, extended Gray's abbreviation (probably " Pr.") into " Pretender " instead of " Prince " (of Wales), and thus altogether obscured Gray's meaning. HELEN TOYNBEE.

Dorney Wood, Burnham, Bucks.

THE THIRD SEX. -It is an old gibe that the human race consists of three sexes men, women, and parsons ; but the late Mrs. Lynn Linton, in her admirable tale 'The Atone- ment of Learn Dundas,' confers the sarcastic designation upon her pet aversion, the girl of the period, or the new woman. In book ii. chap. xv. of the work referred to, she de- scribes her heroine as

"beginning to feel that delightful sense of depend- ence on a strong man's love which, in spite of what the third sex, born in these odd latter times, may say, is the most exquisite sensation that a woman can know."

Possibly some social philosophers would give us a fourth division of the caeca gens mortalium the epicenes. JAMES HOOPEK.

Norwich.

" HONI." I read the other day, in one of the irresponsible papers, that some lady is taking great credit to herself for spelling honi, in the well-known motto, with two n's, because it is " correct." By " correct " must be meant that such is the modern spelling ;

but it shows a woeful disregard for history, and a total ignoranceof the fact that the motto happens to belong to a period when the form horn was quite as " correct " as honni is now. Etymologically, honir represents the O.H.G. honjan, to disgrace, and there was only one n, because the vowel was originally long. WALTER W. SKEAT.

PINNER. In p. 379 of his ' Names and their Histories,' Canon Taylor alludes to the scarcity of English village-names referring to the pine or fir, which, he says,

"bears out to some extent Csesar's assertion as to its absence from Britain, the few existing names being chiefly confined to the northern region, which was not visited by Ctesar."

Whatever may have been the case then, there is now an abundance of pines in the western part of Surrey, not far from the traditional site of Csesar's passage over the Thames. And it is equally remarkable that he should speak of the absence of the beech as of the fir. But what I seek to know is whether the small village in Middlesex between Harrow and Watford takes its name from pine trees.

W. T. LYNN. Black heath.

SPIDERS IN HELL. Some one recently asked for parallels to the belief of hell being occupied by spiders. In a Greek folk-song (Passow, ccccxxxiii. ; Garnett, Stuart-Glennie, ' Greek Folk Poesy,' i. 92) I find that Zahos descends to Hades :

Thy golden saddle, Zdhos, say, hast thou another

given, Who com'st whence there is no return, to regions

spider-woven ?

WILLIAM CROOKE.

" WILL YE GO AND MARRY, KATIE ? "Seek- ing to verify the following quotation as illustrative of the word wanter being applic- able to a spinster, and not only to a bachelor or a widower, as Jamieson says it is :

Mony words are needless, Katie,

Ye 're a wanter, sae am I. Burns, song, " Will ye go 'and marry, Katie "

I looked up Dr. Currie's edition of Burns (London, Thomas Tegg, 1824), but could find no trace of what I wanted there ; and I hardly expected to find any, for the book is horribly indexed virtually not indexed at all. I then turned to "The Life and Works of Robert Burns. Edited by Robert Chambers. Re- vised by William Wallace. Edinburgh, W. & R. Chambers, 1896," but could find no trace of it there in the "Index of Titles and First Lines." Nor is it to be found in the "General Index of Titles and First Lines" in "The Centenary Edition, by