Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/493

 9*s. ii DEC. 17, '98.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

485

the Master of the Bolls. Littre quotes a p. 143 the following lines (295-7) describing a single combat between Edmund and Cnut who

A Aedmund fait un fer assaut, Fert e refert : ke du mivel Escu Aedmund fajj; un chancel. Luard's translation is :

"Makes a fierce assault on Edmund, strikes anc strikes again, so that from the middle of Edmund's shield he breaks off a piece."

But Littre objects to mivel as unknown to him, either in the sense of milieu or in any other. He proposes, therefore, the reading uivel (representing the Latin cequalis)& reading involving the change, for versifica- tion, of du to (Fun and renders the pas- sage :

"II frappe et refrappe, de sprte que de 1'ecu egal, regulier, d'Edmond, il en fait un echancre."

Here we have an improved sense, but the conjecture cannot be accepted. The true reading is nuvel(mod. Fr. nouvel), the objective case, nuveus (1. 4283) being the subjective. The misreading of nu for mi in old manu- scripts is very frequent. With my reading

du needs no change, and I interpret, " so

that of Edmund's new shield he makes a lattice or grating" a quite intelligible hyper- bole, much more expressive than Littre's un (ecu) e'chancre'. A new shield would, of course, be egal, i. e., smooth and even. Luard's mis- reading of nuvel is accompanied by a con- fusion of chancel (from late Latin cancellum) with chantel, the cantle or fragment of which we are wont to read as quitting the shield under opposing blows (see Halliwell, s. v. 'Cantle'). For the use of chancel = fenetre qrillee, see Godefroy's 'Diet, de 1'Ancienne Langue.' F. ADAMS.

THE BELL PUNCH POEM. The following extract from a letter sent by Morisignor Doane to the New York Tribune is worthy of preservation. Monsignor Doane is an eminentecclesiasticin the immediate entourage of the Pope, and though a Catholic, a de- voted admirer of everything English :

"Some time ago there was a quotation in your columns from Andrew Lang, in which he attributed ' Punch, boys, punch with care, punch in the pre- sence of the passenjare,' to Mark Twain. This brought to my mind a pleasant meeting of the Fortnightly Club in this city last winter, when the subject was 'Mark Twain.' As is our custom, one of our members read a paper on the subject, and then each member present, except the host, whose duties would come later in the evening, made some remarks. When my turn came I spoke of several matters in connexion with Mark Twain how the frog -jumping story was said to have been told in Greece 2,000 years ago ;

how I had crossed the Atlantic with him and listened to the funny stories he told at the concert ; how I had met him in London, at the Athenaeum Club, and then referred to the famous verse, 'Punch, boys, punch,' which I supposed he had written.

"The words were hardly out of my mouth when Noah Brooks, a fellow-member, told me I was mis- taken, and gave a most interesting acdount of its origin. He said that one summer day in 1875 Mr. Bromley and he were coming down to their newspaper offices one to the Tribune, the other to the Times in an early morning car, when Mr. Bromley called Mr. Brooks s attention to the notice which formed the basis of the verse. His eyes were closed, and he said : ' Let me alone ; I am burying Brigham Young,' i. e., composing in his mind an editorial on Brigham Young, who had just died. When he got through he looked at the notice, and when he went to the office he wrote out the verse, which ap- peared in an obscure corner of either the Tribune or the Times, and was very little noticed until Mark Twain unearthed it and made it the subject of an article in the Atlantic Monthly for February, 1876, entitling his article ' A Literary Nightmare.' in that way the world got cognizance of it, and many another besides Mr. Andrew Lang and myself have been led to the belief that the jingle was one of the best things that Mark Twain ever did, whereas its real author or authors were Mr. Noah Brooks, Mr. Wyckoff, and Mr. Handy, for it seems, short as it is, that it was a tripartite affair.

"Mr. Bromley, in a letter which appeared in Scribner's Magazine, old series, for April, 1876, over the signature of ' Winkelreid Wolfgang Brown,' gives this account of it in brief : ' He speaks of the early morning ride in the horse-car No. 101, Fourth Avenue line.' The notice to which his attention was attracted read as follows :

" 'The conductor, when he receives a fare, will punch, in the presence of the passenger, a blue trip-slip for an eight-cent fare, a buff trip-slip for a six-cent fare, a pink trip-slip for a three-cent fare.'

" Mr. Bromley says that Mr. Brooks in a moment of inspiration changed the phrase ' will punch, in the presence of the passenger,' to 'all in the pre- sence of the passenjare,' and put it at the end instead of at the beginning. Messrs. Wyckoff and Handy, of the Tribune office, added the immortal chorus, 'Punch, boys, punch with care, punch in etter was entitled ' The Horse Car Poetry, a True Bistory.'
 * he presence of the passenjare.' Mr. Bromley's

" I send you this, as it may be of interest to your readers, and, at any rate, ahow that, whatever other things Mark Twain has written, he did not write this, as has been very generally supposed : )ut he did the next best thing by calling universal attention to it in his article on ' A Literary Niglit- nare,' which appeared in the Atlantic Monthly for February, 1876. It is also referred to in the Editor's drawer in Harper's Monthly for February, 1876.

"In Mr. Clemens's article the 'Punch, boys, -much,' is changed to ' Punch, brothers, punch.' >f SEYMOUR HADEN.

Woodcote, Alresford, Hants.

GHOST-WORDS. (See ante, pp. 341, 406.)

\. Caitisned. This is a form which appears

oO persistently in Speght, Skinner, and

Sailey, and in st. 5 of Chattel-ton's, poem of