Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 4.djvu/198

 278 NOTES AND QUERIES. [«"■ s. iv. sept. 30, m the bites of insects known in this part of the world as " harvest bugs." I never heard of them till I came here, about twenty-five years ago, when I felt their bites for the first time. I was at a loss to understand what was the matter, as no other insect bites me. F. Coventry. Ketton, Stamford. [Other replies acknowledged.] Russian Word (9th S. iv. 206).—Such an expression cannot be easily identified by the connotation given by Mr. F. R. Fowke, and the dictionary would probably explain it by an equivalent more or less approximate. Perhaps the word is nenagliadnaya, a sur- passing beauty (literally, she who cannot be gazed upon sufficiently). A familiar term of endearment is dusha, the soul, or its diminu- tive dushenka. little Psyche (the title of a poem by Bogdanovich). Russian is, however, like German, remarkable for agglutinative compounds, of which the following are instances : bezbozhnichestvovat, to be in a condition of being without God ; nelitsemierie, ingenuousness (without the quality of fashion- ing the countenance); titles like vwisoko- prevoskhoditelslvo, high excellency. As an inducement to your correspondent, may I mention the self-taught grammarian and man of science Loraonossov's opinion of his language? Alluding to Charles V., he says that if that linguistic monarch had known Russian he would have found in it " the majesty of the Spanish, the vivacity of the French, the strength of the German, the sweetness of the Italian, besides energetic conciseness in its imagery combined with the richness of the Greek and Latin." Ivan Turgeniev, in an eloquent passage, speaks of the consolation in distress afforded by his beautiful language, " which cannot be spoken by a mean-spirited race." Apropos, Russians in Moscow and St. Petersburg com- plained bitterly to me of the application of the term " barbarous" to them by Western people. True, in Peter the Great's capital French and German are at least as frequently spoken as Russian, and I was directed to say merci at table instead of the resonant and picturesque Slavonic spasibo. Francis P. Marchant. The single Russian word which, according to Mr. Fowke's French gentleman's state- ment, means "that one being but to gaze into whose eyes suffices to wholly satisfy one's love," seems to be nearly as wonderful as Covielle's Turkish word, or rather two Turkish words, Bel-men, which, to M. Jour- dain's bewilderment, he was told by Covielle meant "que vous alliez vite avec lui vous preparer pour la ceremonie, afin de voir ensuite votre fille, et de conclure le mariage." On M. Jourdain's expressing his astonishment that all this could be expressed in two words, Covielle replies, " La langue turque est comme cela: elle dit beaucoup en peu de paroles." I think we may say " la langue russe aussi"! Compare also, in our own literature, Lord Burleigh's famous shake of his head. Of course I am not denying the French gentleman's statementconcerning the Russian edition of Bel-men, as I know nothing about the matter ; hut I hope there is no harm in asking, like Mr. Fowke, for a little more information on the subject. At present, like another " sinner," I should have to " gape" pretty wide in order to " swallow " such a spoonful as the above. I cannot wonder tnat Mr. Fowke feels, in Browning's words slightly altered, that He must learn Riusian one of these days, Only for that slow sweet wortVs sake. Cannot H. E. M. enlighten us ? Jonathan Bouchier. " Housen " (9th S. iv. 205).—It is misleading to call housen an "old Saxon plural"—for that is just what it is not. I would recommend all who use the word " Saxon " to invest half- a-crown in Dr. Sweet's' Anglo-Saxon Primer,' and thus to ascertain the elementary facts. It so happens that the A.-S. hus, a " house," was a neuter noun, and therefore (since the vowel was long) unchanged in the plural. The A.-S. for houses was simply hus. In Middle English the old plural hous was gradually replaced by houses or housis in the North, and in some Southern and Midland dialects by housen. Both -es and -en are of A.-S. origin. Walter W. Skeat. This and similar forms, such as cldsen= "closes" (I have even heard posen for "posts "), are still heard daily in the Midland Counties. I suppose, however, that the point of Mr. Breslar's note is that the man using this plural had lived all his life close to London. The persistence of habit in such matters is really wonderful. A large firm in Liverpool, in whose service I spent a con- siderable time, had a Welsh porter in their employ who, when I first knew him, had been with tnem for more than thirty years. He was then, and had for a long time been, the only Welshman on the premises, and during at least ten hours of all his working days for the whole thirty years and more he must have spoken mainly with English people. His English, nevertheless, remained as Welshy "