Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 3.djvu/163

 S. III. FEB. 25, '99.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

157

/"ales ' (p. 93) we are told, on the authority of the late Canon Williams, that dwy in th< name under discussion du, black, the ful Welsh name of the Dee meaning simply Blackwater. Jenkinson's guide, on the other hand, explains the name as, probably, slowly moving water, from the verb dyfian, to move slowly, and wy, water. May I take this opportunity of asking whether there is any trustworthy work on Welsh place-names, a subject in which I am deeply interested ?

0. C. B.

"ASK NO QUESTIONS, AN 5 YOU'LL GET NO

LIES !" (9 th S. iii. 47.) This phrase is old, and is not confined to one part of the country. A century and a quarter ago Goldsmith, in ' She Stoops to Conquer ' (III. i.), put into Tony Lumpkin's mouth, when he was questioned as to the casket he had stolen, " Ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no fibs!" A variant which I have heard in my household is, ''Ask no questions, and you'll hear no stories ! " story being a nursery euphemism for the coarser word. F. ADAMS.

106A, Albany Road, Camberwell.

MR. KATCLIFFE'S note discloses a saying familiar to my ears. He has evoked old memories, for I can well remember the occasionally administered rebuke in my younger days, when too persistent in in- quiries, "Ask no questions, and you'll hear no stories ! " a milder form of the expression, as will be seen from MR. RATCLIFFE'S examples. It was very good advice, too, as I have long since found. There was some- times added a further admonition to the effect that " Little boys should be seen, and not heard." I suppose that almost everybody must have an acquaintance with these two expressions. Occasionally one hears the former remark made to those of maturer years who are prone to inquisitiveness, or who have a tendency to mind other people's business instead of their own. This "poking one's nose " into others' affairs will sometimes be met with such an expression as MR. RATCLIFFE shows. I notice a proverb in Andrew Henderson's 'Scottish Proverbs' that has some resemblance, but with a more proverbial expression : " He that speaks the thing he shouldna will hear the thing he wouldna." C. P. HALE.

"CAMBUSCAN BOLD" (9 th S. iii. 108). In speaking of " the fight at Finsbury," Morris, no doubt, had in his mind the existing frag- ment of the Saga of Finn in the ' Battle of Finnsburg.' It is uncertain whether this precedes or follows another portion of the

same saga as given in ' Beowulf,' and therefore it may be said (as in the quotation from Morris's pamphlet) to want both beginning and end. Mr. Stopford Brooke's account of it in ' English Literature from the Beginning to the Norman Conquest,' p. 51, should suffice for the modern reader. "Cambuscan bold" is Milton's phrase. Morris seems to have quoted from memory the couplet in 'II Penseroso ' which gives the expression. The correct reading is :

Or call up him that left half told The story of Cambuscan bold.

' II Penseroso,' 1. 110.

It is interesting to know that Chaucer, while naming Cambynskan, really refers to Kublai Khan, his grandson, the famous "Grand Khan "of Marco Polo (Prof. Skeat's 'Prior- esses Tale,' &c., Clarendon Press). Thus the mighty potentate who " did a stately pleasure dome decree" has in English verse a threefold immortality, through the high attention given him by Chaucer, Milton, and Coleridge. THOMAS BAYNE.

Helensburgh, N.B.

OMDURMAN (9 th S. iii. 67). The proper orthography of this word is Umm-Darmdn. It cannot, of course, rime with Hermon or sermon, but I do not see why it should not rime with firman, which is properly spelt far- man, as the vocalization of both words is identical. Farmdn, like darwesh (dervish), is a Persian word which has been introduced into the language of the Turkish rulers of Egypt. The form of the name Omdurman indicates that it has some kind of a history, of which I am ignorant. I am inconveniently away from books just now. W. F. PRIDE AUX.

45, Pall Mall, S.W.

At a military lecture lately attended by the writer this word was pronounced with the accent on the third syllable, the a being as in uther. The lecturer was an officer in the Guards. E. G. CLAYTON.

Richmond, Surrey.

" PIGGIN " (9 th S. ii. 85 ; iii. 73)? I beg leave }o refer your correspondent to Prof. Rhys's

Lectures on Welsh Philology.' It is there shown that the initial p was always lost in

eltic, and that no Welsh word beginning with p is original, except when the p repre- sents an original qu, as in pump, Lat. quinque; jedwar, Lat. qiiatuor, r Latin. The Anglo-Saxon piic, a pike, >ccurs as early as in the eighth century, but s probably of Latin origin. It is a long story, tnd must be studied in the philological works