Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 3.djvu/77

. m. JAN. ss, mj NOTES AND QUERIES.

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ies at the root of our difficulties. If we sup- to be supposed. In my edition of Chaucer's Jose that the original deed was witnessed after 'Works,' iii. 180 ('Astrolabe,' pt. i. sect. 8), we vespers, and admit the emendation that I have read, " thise degrees of signes ben everich of just now suggested in the moon's age, all the hem considered of 60 minutes, and every data are reduced to harmony. minute of 60 secondes, and so forth into

For these reasons it would seem that the smale fraccions infinit, as seith Alkabucius." charter relating to St. Peter's, Wolverhamp- And in the same volume, p. 353, 1 quote the ton, should be assigned to Sunday evening, original passage in ' Abdilazi Alchabitius,' 15 Oct., A.D. 993, when moon xxvi. and "xvii. from the edition of 1482 : "Et gradus diuidi- kal. Novembris" had already commenced and tur in 60 minuta ; et minutumin 60secunda; the seventh imperial indiction was current. | et secundum in 60 tertia. Similiter sequuntur

quarta, scilicet et quinta, ascendendo usque ad infinita." We thus see that not only

4, Temple Road, Hornsey.

A. ANSCOMBE.

seconds, but even thirds, fourths, and fifths,

"HELPMATE" (9 th S. ii. 105, 185 310 453 were already known in the tenth century. 496 ; iii. 50).-C. C. B. (9 th S. ii. 453) says, '" The WALTER W. SKEAT.

husband is not usually spoken of as the help- Dr. Hutton, F.K.S., in his * Mathematical mate of the wife." But why should he not ? Dictionary,' London, 1815, says that in the Is not each mated or married to the other? year 1500 George Purbach, a mathematician Is not each the mate or equal of the other? of Vienna, employed a watch that pointed to In Chambers's 'Etymological Dictionary,' of seconds for astronomical observations, which which the well-known etymologist the late was probably a kind of clock. The question Dr. Findlater was editor, helpmate is said has been discussed in 'N. & Q.'; see 6 th S. ix. to be "formed on a misconception of the 248, 295 ; x. 521. . phrase an help meet in Gen. ii. 18." Mate he defines " a companion, an equal, the male or female of animals that go in pairs," &c. He gives as its etymology "A.-S. ge-maca, lit. 'having make or shape in common with another '; Icel. maki, an equal, from the same

root as make.

I object to helpmate, as applied to the woman alone, that it suggests, what Gen. ii. 18 never intended to suggest, inferiority and servitude on her part. It was no doubt from his misreading of that passage that Edmund Bull learnt to " pitch the pipe too low ":

God made the woman for the man, And for the good and encrease of the world.

St. Paul pitches the pipe higher : " Neither is I Nugent's ' Memorials the man without the woman, nor the woman I borne on one side of without the man " (1 Cor. xi. 11), i. e., they are each to the other a co-equal counterpart.

The note of Tremellius on Gen. ii. 18 is excellent. To his rendering, "Faciam ei

EVERARD HOME COLEMAN.

"VESTIGIA NULLA RETRORSUM" (9 th S. ii. 348). Charles, Duke of Bruns wick- Wolf en- buttel, 1735-80, had the motto of "Nunquam retrorsum " upon many of his silver thalers and billon coins. And in the thaler lists of Madai or Reimmann there is no mention of other Hanoverian or Brunswick prince

use either of it or the inquiry is made. Manchester.

This was the motto of the ancient family of Hampden of Great Hampden, and accord- ing to Macaulay, in his 'Essay' on Lord of Hampden/ was the standard of the

Buckinghamshire Greencoats which John Hampden had levied for the Parliament.

I have frequently seen the same motto on the hatchments of the Viscounts Hampden in

auxilium commodum ipsi," he appends the the chancel of Bromham Church, Bedford- comment, "i.e., naturali specie et forma shire. Robert, Lord Trevor of Bromham, ai/aAoyoi/, juris vocationis que censors, et was created Viscount Hampden in 1776. omnium officiorum particeps, quod sit tan- Perhaps the idea originated from the passage

quam alter ipse.

in Horace where the cunning fox dreads the

The Hebrew word pTJJ) rendered " help " treachery of the sick lion :

in the A.V. has nothing of that sense of in- feriority which is usually attached to the English term. God Himself is called the "i$ of His people. See Psalms xxvii. 9, xxxiii. 20, Ixx 5, <fcc. R. M. SPENCE, D.D.

Manse of Arbuthnott, N.B.

MINUTES AND

The use of seconds i

Quia me vestigia terrent Omnia te adversum spectantia, nulla retrorsum. 'Epist.,'1. i. 74,75.

JOHN PICKFORD, M.A. Newbourne Rectory, Woodbridge.

Is your correspondent acquainted with what ha

much older than seems | 71, Brecknock Road.