Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/60

 NOTES AND QUERIES. & s. n. Jn.v 10,

John, died 1479/80 ; 2. Sir John the junior, who survived till 1503, A. H,

In ' Parish Registers,' by Chester Waters, a most valuable little book for reference, this custom is alluded to. E. E. THOYTS.

SOME AFRICAN NAMES OFTEN MISPRO- NOUNCED (9 th S. i. 466). It would be easy to add to MR. PLATT'S list. Sir Robert Napier, when raised to the peerage as Lord Napier of Magdala, went so far as to lengthen the penultimate on his card. The correct pro- nunciation is Magdala, as I can assert on the strength of nearly two years' enforced re- sidence in the place, and not Magdala, as Lord Napier wrote it. Kassala, in the Egyptian Sudan, is often mispronounced. The word is a dactyl, and the stress should be laid on the first syllable. I spent some days in the town in the autumn of 1865.

Sahara is rather a glaring case, because, correctly speaking, the word is a dissyllable, and should be written Sahra. We first of all misspell the word, and then mispronounce it. About Kumassi I do not feel quite sure. One of my sons served with his regiment in the last Ashanti expedition, and spent some weeks at Kumassi. On his return I noticed that he pronounced it in the usual way, with the accent on the penultimate. He also strongly reprobated the common pronunciation of Ashantee, with the stress on the final syllable, and said that it was properly Ashanti. My son does not, however, profess to be a philo- logist, and merely gave the sounds as he heard them from the natives.

I have not Sir Richard Burton's works at hand, and cannot refer to his remarks on the word Swahili. He doubtless gave the correct derivation from Sahil, the Arabic word for coast or shore. The regular plural of this is Suwahil, and the hybrid native of the East African coast is called by the Arabs Suwahili, or longshoreman. An Arab would accent this word on the antepenultimate, but it is a peculiarity of the East African that he throws the accent on Arabic words as far forward as he can. He pronounces, for instance, 'askari, a soldier, as askdri; khabr, news, as habdm. MR. PLATT will find many instances of this tendency in any Swahili grammar, but I have given these two examples because they illus- trate another peculiarity of the East African his aversion to gutturals. Similarly, he calls himself a Swahili, and his language Kiswahlli.

I may take this opportunity of saying that I was sorry to see the terms in which, in a former note (9 th S. i. 261), MR. PLATT spoke of Bishop Steere's works on Swahili grammar.

I was intimately acquainted with Dr. Steere, in whom earnest piety and profound learning were united to a geniality of disposition that rendered him a favourite in every circle which he entered. His books on the lan- guages and folk-lore of the East Coast have at least the merit that attaches to the work of a pioneer. It was at the request of Dr. Steere that on Christmas Day, 1873, 1 was privileged to lay the first stone of the cathedral of Zanzibar on the site of the old slave market ; and photographs which I have recently seen prove to what an extent the progress of the sacred edifice has answered to the expectations of the self-denying man to whose exertions the foundation was principally due. I ven- ture to assert that without the assistance afforded by Dr. Steere's grammatical works on the Swahili, Yao or Makua, and other languages, missionary enterprise on the East Coast would have encountered many more difficulties than has fortunately been the case.

W. F. PRIDEAUX. 45, Pall Mall, S.W.

ST. SYTH (8 th S. xii. 483 ; 9 th S. i. 16, 94, 238). St. Eadburgh, sister of St. Osyth, and daughter of Frithewald, King of Surrey. Rfedwald was King of East Anglia, and died 599, while St. Osyth was married quite young to Sigehere of Essex, 654. Frithewald gave Aylesbury to Eadburgh and her sister Eadgytn. She had Bicester Priory dedicated to her.

St. Eadburghs are, I suspect, more in number even than MR. SEYMOUR gives, as the aunt of this St. Eadburgh is said to have been head of the religious house at what is now Edlesborough, where two of her nieces, St. Osyth and St. Eadburgh, were educated. Leland calls the place Ellesburrowe. Elles- borough and Edlesborough are within a dozen miles of each other. This aunt, I fancy, must have been aunt by marriage, and not a daughter of the old pagan Penda.

Was Eadburgh, daughter of Offa, a saint ? She was wife of Brihtric, King of Wessex, who must have died about 800. Broadway, near Pershore, might have been dedicated to this lady.

The St. Eadburgh, daughter of Centwine, I did not know of, unless she was the same as Heaburga, or, as usually called, Bugga. This lady's mother, Abbess Eangith, may have been widow of Centwine ; but it is not a safe conclusion, says Bishop Stubbs.

Then Eadburgh, daughter of Eadweard the Elder, who chose the religious life at the age of three. She died in 960 as nun of Winton, and was there buried, The story of