Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/495

 9* s. ii. DEC. 17,

NOTES AND QUERIES.

487

granddaughter paternally of Ralph Mortimer, Baron Wigmore, who died 1 246, and Gladys his wife, daughter of Llewelyn ap lorwerth, sovereign Prince of Wales, who died 1240. Thus Gladstone was able to reckon among his forefathers many of the native rulers of Wales, whose people (he said) "are a sub- stantive historic race." T. C. GILMOUK. Ottawa, Canada.

MISTRAL AND TENNYSON.In my article ' Harmony in Verse ' (8 th S. ix. 482) I quoted the following line as a beautiful example of Tennyson's poetic music :

The mellow lin-lan-lone of evening bells.

I have just met with an interesting parallel

to this in Mistral's poem ' Nerto,' chant v. :

Et balalan ! et balalin !

On entend au lointain les cloches.

Et balalin ! et balalan !

Les cloches vont carillonnant.

Et balalin ! et balalon !

The words "balalan," &c., are the same in the original Provencal. The French or Pro- vencal words are not unlike Tennyson's " lin- lan-lone." ' Nerto ' came out in 1884, and the ' Demeter ' volume, in which ' Far-far-away ' occurs, in 1889.

Of course I am not suggesting that Tenny- son borrowed his "lin-lan-lone" from Mistral's "balalin, balalan, balalon." "Be it far from thy servant ! " as Adonbec el Hakim says in 4 The Talisman.' JONATHAN BOUCHIER.

POOR " PROTOTYPE." Pity me, reader, for I am haunted by the ghost of a shockingly ill-treated word ; perhaps the most alluring that ever graced word -painter's palette, but one whose sad fate it is mostly to mar the tonality of the picture. Turn where I will, look where 1 may, the mangled remains of poor " prototype" lie before me. Has it not been my fate to be associated with a facile journalist whose persistent misuse of this word was apparently as comforting to him as the fabled Mesopotamia 1 ? In a moment of good luck, did I not induce the editor of a prominent monthly to look with a favourable eye on a certain well-travelled manuscript of mine? And was I not horrified beyond expression when the article achieved print to find that this worthy scribe, by an asto- nishing emendation, had made me say that Mr. Hubert Herkomer, R.A., was the proto- type of the long-departed Philip de Louther- bourg 1

Only the other day I was browsing desul- torily on 'The Eccentricities of John Edwin, Comedian,' a clumsy bit of book-making

slung together at the beginning of the century by the scurrilous Anthony Pasquin. In the midst of my enjoyment of his narration of an incidentof the year 1766 my bete noire raised its head. " The host of the mn ; " I learnt, " was the prototype of Boniface in the ['Beaux'] Stratagem.' A strange reversal of the ordi- nary laws of parentage this, seeing that Farquhar's character had come into the world in 1707. It reminds one of the quaint Japanese system of ennobling one's ancestors. Not long after I had occasion to refer to the issue of 'Dramatic Notes' for 1889, and at p. 163 I suddenly chanced on the following lumin- ous passage in the account of ' Faust up-to- Date': "Miss Florence St. John is an ideal burlesque actress, so skilfully does she blend the innocence of the real Marguerite with the faster proclivities of her modern prototype." As Polonius would say, the " real Marguerite " is "good," but "her modern prototype" is better.

I have kept the bonne louche till the last. My scrap-book presents an otherwise excel- lent article from the Chicago Sunday Inter Ocean of 26 July, 1891, on 'The Bayreuth Festival.' Describing the characteristics of Frau Cosima Wagner, the daughter of the Abbe Liszt, the writer, Mr. Walter Ridgley, says : "Liszt was said to have been one of the homeliest and most fascinating of men, and his daughter is his prototype as a woman."

W. J. I

(gumess,

WK must request correspondents desiring infor- mation on family matters of only private interest to affix their names and addresses to their queries, in order that the answers may be addressed to them direct.

" FORREP-LAND." This word occurs in the Sussex glossaries of Cooper and Parish. It is said to have been a term used in Bosham manor for assart-land. The term "forrep- land" is also found in a MS. account of Bosham manor by John Smythe, written 13 May, 1637, and printed as a note in Dalla- way's 'History of West Sussex' (1815), i. 88 (Rape of Chichester), where it appears as one of three copyhold rents, the other two being Board-land and Cot-land. Whence did Cooper get his definition that " forrep-land " meant assart-land ? A. L. MAYHEW.

Oxford.

MEDIEVAL ECONOMIC HISTORY. Being engaged in preparing a volume of documents illustrating mediaeval economic history in England, I desire to find a series illustrating the history of a single manor, which would