Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/494

 486

NOTES AND QUERIES.

[9 th S. II. DEC. 17, '98.

that it has obtained a place in the 1 H.E.D.,' only, however, to be condemned as a ghost-word.

The theory is that it signified " chained " or " bound with chains," being derived from the Lat. catenatus; which is obviously impossible. . It arose from a passage in ' The Testament of Love,' bk. i. c. i. 1. 16, where we find, ac- cording to Thynne's edition : " I endure my penaunce in this derke prisoun, caytisned fro frendshippe and acquayntance." We have no original MS. to go by, but it is clear that Thynne has simply misread the word before him. His original must have had caytifued, i. e., made captive. He has misread the /as if it were a long s, and the u (for v) as if it were an 71, and by this double error has succeeded in baffling most of his readers. The verb caitifven or caitiven, to take captive, is formed from M.E. caitif, a captive, and is explained in the ' H.E.D.,' with two quotations from Wyclif 's Bible and one from the Thorn- ton MS. Cotgrave gives a parallel O.F. verb chetiver, coined from the O.F. chetif, wretched (Mod.F. chetif). I may note here that the confusion between n and u, and between / and long s, is almost endless, and accounts for many ghost-words.

WALTER W. SKEAT.

Unless PROF. SKEAT has captured it, I should like to add phantomnation, which ap- peared in Webster, Worcester, and the ' Im- perial Dictionary.' Webster defined it as " n. Appearance as of a phantom ; illusion. (Obs. and rare.) Pope." Three or four years ago it was pointed out that this portentous ghost-word originated in Richard Paul Jod- rell's ' Philology,' 1820. That author invented such compounds, without any hyphen, as city- solicitor and homeacquaintance. He might have begun with blackcat and busybee. He did apply his method to Pope's line,

All the phantom nations of the dead, and the well of English undefiled was in- creased by one drop. But of late years the editors of dictionaries have taken to omitting phantomnation, which is thus likely to return " to the barren womb of nothing," whence it came. RICHARD H. THORNTON.

Portland, Oregon.

" SAVING HEALTH." It is often interesting to notice the changes made when a word or expression is in a state of transition. The word salvation (salvation) is found in Chaucer, but it is never once used in the Wycliffite version of the Bible, where health (helthe) takes its' place. In Luke i. 77 we have what now sounds the quaint expression "science of helthe " for " knowledge of salvation," The

word health gradually ceased to represent the idea and was dropped, though for some time occasionally usea. Thus in several places in the Prayer-Book version of the Psalms (e. g., Ixii. 7, cxviii. 15, cxix. 155) it is retained where later versions have salvation. But a remarkable compromise is made in Ps. Ixvii. 2 and cxix. 1 66, 1 74, where the unusual expression "saving health "is employed. This appears to have been imitated by Bishop Gunning in the prayer for all conditions of men, which was introduced into the Prayer-Book at the last revision in 1662, when surely it would have been better to have used the single word salvation. W. T. LYNN.

Black heath.

V AND W. Not long ago I read something in 'N. & Q.' about Charles Dickens's render- ing of cockney English. I have not the series to refer to, but if I recollect aright, doubt was thrown upon the probability that in the London dialect v and w were ever sounded interchangeably. Looking over the first number of the Etonian (October, 1820), I find the following on p. 5 :

" Woe to the dandeyfied cit, who has just escaped from the foggy atmosphere of Cheapside, in his hired gig, with his smiling sweetheart at his side, to visit Findsor, and act the gentleman on the Terrace."

The initial V is an italic capital in the original, showing that Dickens did not origin- ate the libel upon Londoners if libel it be. HERBERT MAXWELL.

[See 5 th S. vii. 28, 58, 75, 217; xii. 136; 6 th S. iv. 236.]

GLADSTONE'S WELSH FOREFATHERS. (See 5 th S. i. 486 ; 7 th S. xi. 108, 152.) M,any sup- pose that the Right Hon. W. Ewart Glad- stone's connexion with Wales arose only from his marriage to a descendant of Sir John Glynne, a native of Carnarvonshire, and his consequent residence in the Principality. Yet, if we consult careful works on genealogy, we shall come to a different conclusion. Foster, in ' Our Noble and Gentle Families,' shows how Gladstone was descended in the female line, through the Robertsons, MJIC- kenzies (seven generations), and Stewarts, from Joane, Queen of Scots, and Sir James Stewart, the Black Knight of Lorn, her second husband. Now Queen Joane was daughter of Sir John Beaufort, Marquis of Dorset, who died 1410, and Margaret, daughter of Thomas de Holland, Earl of Kent, who died 1397, by Alice, daughter of Richard Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel, who died 1376. Earl Richard, again, was great-grandson of John Fitzalan, Baron Arundel, who died 1272, and Isabel his wife,