Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 3.djvu/123

 9 th S. III. FEB. 11, 3 99.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

117

he point before beyond the etymology" i lot, as a matter of fact, true. Perhaps I maj >e allowed to say that I have studied English iterature as well as the English language fo: prty years, and am quite as observant o: iterary usage as of spellings. Everything hat is English is a perpetual delight to me t is just such uncalled-for assertions that are -uperfluous and displeasing.

Of course it is very difficult to collecl results for the Middle-English period. We cannot then resort to the help of dictionaries jind other such helps. I know of only two, viz., the ' Promptorium Parvulorum ' (1440] and the ' Catholicon Anglicum ' (1483). Botli are so imperfect that the absence of the word from them might be expected. Nevertheless it occurs in the latter, ed. Herrtage, p. 311 : " A ronge of a carte, epiridium, limo." Also, " A ronge of a stee, of a tre, or ledder, sca- lare" The editor adds the usual references to Langland and Chaucer. The author was evidently unaware that the use of ronge became a vulgarism as soon as it was applied to a ladder.

In Wright's 'Volume of Vocabularies, p. 168, we have the curious treatise by Walter de Bibbes worth (misspelt Bibles worth) of the thirteenth century, wherein it is explained that the Anglo-French redele, a rail of a cart, is called ronge in English.

I now beg leave to retire from the discussion It is a thankless task to explain things to one who admits only modern authorities. But I am still curious to know what was the literary English name for the round of a ladder before the year 1600.

WALTER W. SKEAT.

To the long array of witnesses brought forward by J. S. M. T. at the last reference to prove that round, not rung, is the original term, may be added Elisha Coles, who, in his ' English - Latin Dictionary,' ed. 1749, has "The round of a ladder, climacter" and does not mention rungs in connexion with a ladder, but with the floor of a ship, " tigna quse fundum navis constituunt."

W. R. TATE. Walpole Vicarage, Halesworth.

"So-Ho" (7 th S. xii. 144, 198, 253, 296 ; 8 th S. vi. 365, 455 ; vii. 195 ; viii. 136). In these word-hunts PROF. SKEAT is, if not always in at the death, at any rate seldom far away ; and he seems very close to the capture here. When he hangs up the brush in his hall with his countless kindred trophies, he might fix along with it a label still older than any yet cited. My friend Mr. Joseph Bain, whose Scottish calendars are without rival the

noblest contribution of this century to our Northern history, has the following descrip- tion of a seal understood to belong to a period not later than 1307, "A hare in her form SOHOU SOHOU" (Bain's 'Calendar,' vol. ii. p. 539). It is from the Chapter House collec- tion (A) 34, and is photo-mechanically repro- duced in the ' Calendar,' plate in., No. 18.

GEO. NEILSON. Glasgow.

4 BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE ' (9 th S. iii. 81). "Maga" was dear to me from my earliest years, when it was only five years old and my father's favourite, so that I heard familiarly discussed among his friends laudation of its rollicking sprightliness, which found a crisis in the " Culdee " (alias " Chaldee ") MS. Those were bright times, when Auld Reekie was a power in literature, thanks to Black wood (with whose family my father was closely intimate). I used to meet Prof. Aytoun, Sheriff Gordon, and Ferrier of St. Andrews, as well as the great and genial " Kit North," Prof. Wilson himself. "He looked like a lion with a hat on." It was indeed a delight to hear Aytoun sing inimitably his own 'Mas- sacre of ta MacPhairson ' (with sham bagpipe accompaniment), rollicking, but always gentle- manly and courteous. Of his 'Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers' he remained entirely devoid of conceit, yet afterwards scarifying the small urchins of the " Spasmodic School " in his delectable travesty " Firmilian ; or, the Student of Badajoz : a Spasmodic Tragedy, by T. Percy Jones " ; but the culmination of tun came from his supreme Blackwoodian
 * ale, 'How We got up the Glenmutchkin

Railway,' in 1845. Ebony "Maga" was to me always the best of magazines, and right tribute alike so genial and enthusiastic- lly appreciative to its thousandth number. J. W. EBSWORTH.
 * lad am I to welcome my friend FRANCIS'S

" ON THE CARPET " (9 th S. i. 26, 95). PROF. IENRY ATTWELL'S tap is very hard on the

carpet. The expression may well have

entered the language through other channels
 * han the French tapis, which, by-the-by, is

still the name given in France to the cloth t so used a few days ago in the Cafe Farnie
 * over of a card-table, for instance. I heard

at Bayonne. In that interesting book 'A dictionary, Spanish and English,' by H. S.

Joseph Giral Delpino (London, 1763), you will ead, " Carpeta, s.f., a leather, cloth, or silk over for a table ; also a kind of blanket at the loor of taverns in Spain." To show that the

word is still recognized in this sense as a table rnament by Academicians, it is enough to