Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 3.djvu/302

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NOTES AND QUERIES.

. m. APRIL 15, m

the right word. An examination of Gode- froy's ' Old French Dictionary ' will show that the only derivative of rotundus which had the sense of "round stick" was rondel, though the same sense has since been ac- quired by the mod. F. rondin. Hence the right word would have been roundel, or, more familiarly, rundle ; and thus it is that both these words have the sense of " rung " assigned them in some dictionaries. An in- teresting example occurs in Sir T. Browne's 'Religio Medici,' i. 12, where he uses scales and rundles as the French equivalents of the English ladders and rungs :

"There is a set of things that serve as lumi- naries in the abyss of knowledge, and, to judicious beliefs, as scales and rundles to mount the pinnacles and highest pieces of divinity."

For another example, see Todd's 'Johnson.' Let us be thankful that ladder is still left to us. It may be vulgar, but I prefer it to scale. WALTER W. SKEAT.

DEAN OF CANTERBURY (8 th S. xii. 108). In answer to C. W. S., I think the following par- ticulars may furnish him with what he wants to know. I have, carefully preserved among my father Dean Alford's papers, four MS. Latin verses, signed W. S., addressed 'Ad Decanum Reformatorem,' and referring to articles of his in the Contemporary Review. These verses are dated October, 1869.

In the Contemporary Review of September, 1869, appeared an article on the above sub- ject, and in the number for November of the same year a supplement on the recent article, both by the Dean. In the latter of these the writer gives at length the " quarto tract of Latin verses" about which the querist desires information. The Dean speaks of the

" hand which every cultivated reader will recognize, as perhaps the only survivor among us of the set of sportive scholars who knew how to cast over every \\n welcome subject the graceful veil of classic metre."

To this he appends a version for the benefit of English readers probably his own and in a few concluding remarks quotes two lines from the MS. Latin verses referred to in my opening remarks, as the " distinguished author's own characteristic words." Thus the fact is without doubt established that the same hand wrote the three poems, viz. :

1. ' Ad Decanum Reformatorem.'

2. ' Decanus Cantuariensis more suo Ecclesiam reformat.'

3. 'Ad Decanum Cantuariensem Canonicorum Responsio.'

These last two are the verses asked about by C. W. S., and are reprinted on p. 366 of Con- temporary Review, November, 1869, " with the

author's permission," but there is nothing to show whether they had previously appeared in print, or were, as well as No. 1, sent in MS. to the Dean, and only first published in the said article. The signature of No. 1, W. S.,

that of William Selwyn, Canon of Ely.; F. M. O. CRUSO.

Tunstall Rectory, Sittingbourne.

CHARADE (9 th S. iii. 187, 237). The charade may bo very easy, but the key furnished by PROF. SKEAT does not seem to fit the wards of the lock. ST. SWITHIN.

AGAM COLOURS (9 th S. iii. 68, 170). The references asked for by MR. WHITWELL (whose reply I have only just seen) are as follows : (1) ' Letters received by the East India Com- pany' (Sampson Low, 1897), vol. ii. p. 237. Thomas Mitford, writing from Ahmadabad, 26 Dec., 1614, says that " Persia will vent five hundred cloths and one thousand kerseys, agam colours, per annum." (2) Same series, vol. ii. (now in the press), p. 84. The same factor, writing from Ajmere, 25 March, 1615, repeats the statement in almost identical words, mentioning again the "thousand kerseys, agam colours." The word is plainly written in each case. WILLIAM FOSTER.

PAUL JONES (9 th S. ii. 306, 353, 495 ; iii. 34). My authority for stating that Paul Jones shot his first lieutenant for going to strike the American flag in the engagement between the Bon Horn me Richard and the Serapis was a coloured engraving which I once possessed as a little boy and pasted in a scrap-book. In an old book, long since destroyed, entitled ' Select Biography ' was a memoir of Paul Jones in which this circumstance was men- tioned, and the name of the lieutenant said to be Mr. Grubb. Paul Jones was represented as holding the pistol close to the lieutenant's head. JOHN PICKFORD, M.A.

Newbourne Rectoi'y, Woodbridge.

SLAVONIC NAMES (8 th S. xi. 488 ; xii. 31 ; 9 th S. ii. 93). I must apologize for referring again to this, but in turning over an old volume (the ninth) of the ' Archiv fur Slavische Philologie ' I have come across a rule for the accentuation of South Slavonic family names of four and five syllables, so simple that it will doubtless prove as useful to MR. RICHARD- SON and MR. RAYMENT as it is to_ myself. My authority states that in Croatia, Slavonia, the Banat, and other territory inhabited by Austrian Slavs, these names are accented uniformly upon the antepenultimate. Some of the examples given are Milutinovic, Vladi- savlievic, Veselinovic, Jovanovic, Obradovic, Stojanovic, Vukashinovic, Milashinovic. A