Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 3.djvu/200

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NOtES AND QUERIES.

. m. MA B. >i, m

seen dozens of these carnelian rings, and have also heard them called "camelian"; but their fashion having gone by, I doubt whether many of the brittle trinkets remain in use.

I remember another neglected reply to a query somewhat allied to this one, and, as I cannot supply the separate reference, am tempted to give a partial response here, though the inquirer no longer needs the answer. HERMENTRUDE, like ST. SWITHIN, had been reading an American story, and had found there what seemed to her very odd names for things, about which she made com- ment and question. Some of the names were really old-fashioned survivals of former usage, such as linger in remote nooks in every coun- try, but of others the supposed oddity was due to a misconception of their real use and meaning. Such a one was the word " postal," which the inquirer thought was a very strange and " very American " appellation for a letter sent by post. But " postal " is only the collo- quial and perfectly natural abbreviation for our "postal card," the equivalent of the English and Canadian " postcard."

M. C. L.

New York.

Can there have been a confusion here with carnelian or cornelian, the chalcedonic stone often used in signet rings and the like ?

E. G. CLAYTON.

Richmond, Surrey.

" DIES CRETA NOTANDUS " (9 th S. ill. 48).

The following is an earlier example than the reference to Persius :

Sanin' creta, an carbone notandi ?

Hor., Lib. II. Sat. iii. 1. 246. Compare with it ' Carm.' I. xxxvi. 10 :

Cressa ne careat pulchra dies nota. Pliny speaks of the custom of the Thracians to place in an urn " calculos colore distinctos pro experimento cu j usque diei," and then to sum them up at last (' N.H.,' vii. 40). There is in Horace, u.s., the variant " Thressa." When Pericles overcame Melissus, and blockaded the town of Samos, to relieve the discontent of his army and restrain its eagerness,

" he divided it into eight parts, and ordered them to draw lots. That division, which drew a white bean, was to enjoy itself, in ease and pleasure, while the others fought. Hence it is said, that those who spend the day in feasting and merriment, call that a, white day, from the white bean." Plut., 'Life of Alcib.,' vol. ii. p. 39 of the Langhornes' trans., Lond., 1819.

as " a lucky day," occurs in a fragment of Sophocles (lOa Bind., in Liddell and Scott, 1897). ED. MARSHALL F.S.A.

THE SIBYLS IN SCOTLAND (9 th S. iii. 101). There was demolished about twenty years since a quaint little cottage at the east or Castle end of Oseney Lane, Oxford, one of the rooms of which had a series of Sibyls round its cornice. An account of these, and a little upon the subject in general, is being printed for the Berks, Bucks, and Oxon Journal, edited by the Rev. P. H. Ditchfield, Barkham Rectory, Wokingham. Visitors to Christ Church Library can see six specimens of these over the doorways by which they enter. H. HURST.

The Sibyls painted in Cheyney Court, Herefordshire, were described in *N. & Q./ 4 th S. v. 494. The house has since been destroyed by fire. A paper on the 'Icono- graphy of the Sibyls' appeared in Norfolk Archaeological Journal ; see ' N. & Q.,' 7 th S. ix. 408, 472. W. C. B.

A copy of the German volume, of extreme rarity, bearing the title * Opusculum de Vaticiniis ' (printed at Oppenheim, near Frankfurt, without date, about 1516, according to Ebert), and containing wood- cut portraits of the twelve Sibyls, together with a Latin description in prose and verse, may be seen at the Taylorian Library, Oxford.

H. KREBS.

"CEILING" OR "CIELING" (9 th S. ii. 284; iii. 53). If I understand PERTINAX (at first reference) aright, he seems to be under the impression that it is only in one or two of the passages in the A.V. in which the word occurs that we find the spelling deling. Now it was the edition of 1611 that the Revisers had before them, and in every instance in which the word or its cognates are found in that edition the spelling is as above. The passages are : 1 Kings vi. 15, 2 Chron. iii. 5, Jerem. xxii. 14, Ezek. xli. 16, Hag. i. 4. While PERTINAX is right in his contention that the spelling ceil- ing has now become the usual one (though the dictionaries still give both), one is in- clined to wonder how this came to pass. Derived as the word is from the French del, it might have been expected that deling, as the only correct form, would have been retained. R. M. SPENCE, D.D.

Manse of Arbuthnott, N.B.

The frequent occurrence of e before i in certain words in MSS. and printed books of the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- turies, in place of the now customary spelling, is a feature which has often forced itself on my attention. It seems to me that the modern way is in these older writings comparatively seldom met with. I have observed the fol-