Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 4.djvu/244

 316 NOTES AND QUERIES. [w s. iv. Oct. h, v hele used a9 quoted during the last thirty odd years' residence in this county, and on reference to Hewitt's ' Peasant Speech of Devon' (1892) do not find it mentioned. Mr. Elworthy is probably confounding the somewhat similar verb hale with hele. To hale means to "cover up"—"hale up tha tatties," for instance ; but hele, save that it is common enough locally as a surname and as the name of small places (there are four Heles marked upon the map of Devon), is altogether unknown hereabouts. Harry Hems. Fair Park, Exeter. " Bard wif," &c. (9th S. iv. 247).—Bard wif is probably, as suggested by Mr. Balfour Paul, a female bard or singing woman. Corresponding terms are wed wif, for a female pawnbroker, which occurs in the Haddington Burgh Records in 1536 ; ale ivif, a female ale-seller, ore. Tentouris. — May this not be for linen cloth and packthread to make a covering for the chasuble when hanging on the hook or tenter in the aumrie or closet, or chasublier, as the French term the press where the vest- ments of a church are kept? Many ladies still keep their dresses from dust in this manner by covering them with sheets when hanging in their wardrobes. Mars Black.—This is named not from the place of manufacture, but from the material used in dyeing. Mars in alchemy means iron ; an old term for sulphate of iron or green copperas is martial vitriol, which with galls form a black dye—in fact, ink. The following Act of Queen Elizabeth, an. 23 (1581), will, I think, strengthen this opinion: "An Act for abolishing of certain deceitful Stuff used in Dyeing of Cloth ":— " And where clothes, kersies, and hoxtn have been dyed with a colour which is commonly called a (jailed and mathered [madder] black, or with a colour commonly called a shoomake and mathered black, although they carry a shew of a good, true, and perfect colour of woaded and mathered black," &c. " Provided always that it shall and may be lawful to dye all manner of galled-black, shoomake black alias Plain-black wherein no mather shall be used, as heretofore lawfully hath been used." J. G. Wallace-James, M.B. Haddington, N.B. "Marsouin" (9th S. iv. 205, 257).—While thanking Prof. Skeat for his comments upon the inquiry, one would like to ask how one may know with any real certainty that the A.-S. mere (lake) was pronounced like the English word meiiy. Is rime in verse the test; and, if so, is that a fully reliable test for) A.-S. prose sounds also ? In any case, is there not at least something of conjecture here'! May the question also be put, What does account for the Mar in Margate and Marton, &c, if mere, written also mar (Webster), does not ? The inquiry was not, Did not the French mer most accurately give the Latin sound of mare? because it seemed a matter more or less of conjecture what that sound would precisely be. And if mer (the French) be more of a borrowed word than mare (the Italian word) is, would not, Eossibly, the ancient sound of mare (Latin) e even better preserved to modern times in the country of its adoption than in the living, and thus altering, language of the land whence it had by France been borrowed 1 If " mar- souin is not a French compound at all," but is borrowed bodily already compounded from a Teutonic source, is it not possible that another word, which was discussed in ' N. & Q.' some time ago, heronceau, has a similar origin 1 It is easy to say that heron- sew comes from heronceau, but can it be proved that it is not the other way about, and that heronceau also is not borrowed bodily from Teutonic sources 1 May we put boulingrin in the same category 1 It is noticeable that in marsouin, as in boulin- grin, the French have not borrowed the spelling bodily, so one would not have to look for a precise following of it in heronceau either in the above case. Several writers have told us that ceau of heronceau is a diminutive, as in lionceau, and simply means "young or little heron." To this one may reply that old and modern dictionaries give heronneau for "young or little heron," and not heron-ceau. Surely, then, after the ex- ample of marsouin, there is room for some conjecture in the above direction, though it is disliked by some of the writers in ' N. & Q.' Boscombrosa. A Rimino Warnino to Book-Borrowers (9th S.i. 366, 512; ii. 115,376; iv. 153).—Here is one from the days of black-letter printing:— Hee that lends to all and none deneys Shows himself more kinde than wyse; But who deneys all and lends to none Hath a heart as hard as stone. This is written on the margin of a folio black-letter Chaucer in my possession, the title-page of which is missing. C. Masters. Elmsleigh, St. Albans, Herts. I find the following remarks on book- borrowing in a newspaper. Sir Walter Scott once lent a book to a friend, and as he gave it him begged that he would not fail to re- turn it, adding good-humouredly, "Although