Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/397

 9* s. ii. NOV. 12,

NOTES AND QUERIES.

389

named are her father ; Thomas Wills, of Ladenham, co. Lincoln, Esq. ; Thomas Jenner, of the Inner Temple, Esq. ; and William Avery. Information as to any of the above would be acceptable.

JOHN PARSES BUCHANAN.

Union Club.

PORTRAITS BY WARD. Will MR. ALGERNON GRAVES, or some other authority, kindly tell me what ladies are represented in a pair of oval portraits of girls in large hats, titled 'Hesitation' and 'The Choice,' painted and engraved by W. Ward, and published by Dickinson in 1787? BLUE GENTIAN.

THE WEYMOUTH PINE. In a letter of Horace Walpole to Montagu of the year 1 755 (Cun- ningham's edition, vol. ii. p. 481) reference is made to " Lord Weymouth s pine " as growing in England. It appears from the 'Encyclo- paedia Britannica' (articles 'Arboriculture' and ' Pine ') that this pine is Pinus strobus, a tree which furnishes "the white wood of American commerce." I should be glad to know to which Lord Weymouth its introduc- tion into England is due. Thomas Thynne, the first Viscount, was Lord of Trade and Foreign Plantations from 1702 to 1707, and may in that way have had opportunities of procuring seeds of plants and trees hitherto unknown in England. HELEN TOYNBEE.

Dorney Wood, Burnham, Bucks.

AUTHORS OP QUOTATIONS WANTED. Res nolunt cliu male administrari.

Emerson's ' Essay on Compensation.'

Oi Kv/3oi Aio? ai ev TriTrroixri.

Emerson's ' Essay on Compensation.' 'Twas meant for merit, though bestowed on me. RICHARD H. THORNTON. My songs have had their day, The charms I sang have fled, The ears I charmed are deafened in the dust, What would ye with my ditties ? M. N. G.

1. " One with GoJ is a majority."

2. To what High Anglican do we owe the defini- tion of the Thirty-nine Articles, " Forty stripes save one " ? C. C. M.

In an old commonplace book I have noted as a

quotation from Walter Savage Landor the following

lines :

You should indeed have longer tarried By the roadside before you married, And other flowers have plucked in jest Before you singled out your best. Many have left the search with sighs Who sought for hearts and found but eyes.

I cannot find this in Landor. Can any of your

readers help me ?

J. B. MONTOOMEKIE-FLEMINO.

Boys flying kites haul in their white-winged birds ; You can't do that way when you 're flying words.

W. B.

ALGERNON, ;

(9 th S. ii. 248, 293 )

Miss YONGE'S account, repeated by CANON TAYLOR, is mythical. There is no evidence that " William de Albini's usual title was William alsGernons,"and just as much warrant, accord- ing to my research, for her designation of this Norman baron as " the common ancestor of the Howards and Percys." We have, however, the evidence of the very first document in the ' Cartularium Abbathise de Whiteby,' edited for the Surtees Society by Canon Atkinson, that the cognomen in question was borne by William de Percy, companion of the Con- queror and founder of the Percy family in England. In this document, referring to Percy's foundation in 1078 of the abbey at first a priory, but raised to the dignity of an abbey in the reign of Henry I. he is named as "Willielmus de Perci, cognomento As- gernuns," and Kichard de Percy is mentioned as " filius Willielmi de Percy Ohtlesgernuns." Dugdale, in his ' Monasticon ' (i. 74 b), prints this last name "Otlesgernuna," which is really three words (tria juncta in uno), " ot les ger- nuns." The Surtees editor maintains that the " oht " of his MS. is a misspelt English " hote." a variant of hight, "called," replacing the " cognomento " of the previous mention. Here he is at fault. Such a replacement of " cognomento " in a Latin composition by its English equivalent when there was no reason for it is incredible ; and besides the almost impossible misspelling of "oht" for "hot," it gives us "les gernuns" instead of "as gernuns." The reading " William called Les gernuns " is nonsensical. Now as in the one phrase is a contracted form of a les (Mod. Fr. aux), as the editor knew, but his know- ledge of Old French did not avail to suggest to him that oht in the other phrase was for ot, a variant of the Norman od, the h being intrusive by reason of a besetting sin of mediaeval scribes ; the form ot, with a variant oth, may actually be found in the O.Fr. ver- sion of the Psalms edited for the Clarendon Press by Michel (see Godefroy's ' Old French Dictionary'). Ot is the same word as ove (both being from Lat. ajmd\ a word with which Canon Atkinson was acquainted, and as and ot les, though of different etymologies, have the same meaning, "with the." Od or ot is very often shortened to o. The phrase o le grenon or guernon, coupled with an epithet such as mdU (grey) or flori (white), is fre- quently added to a man's name in the Old French romances, e. g. :