Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 4.djvu/422

 462 [9th S. IV. Dec. 2, '99. NOTES AND QUERIES. house-and-waiter theory will not hold water unless it can be proved that the word " tip>" going about at present apparently without any approved etymological origin, is, after all, derived from the three letters "T.I P." But who ever heard of such a box being placed outside coffee-houses, except at Button's, in which case it was to receive lite- rary contributions ? If such a box had been in use, would it not have been labelled "vails," the current term for "douceurs" and " pourboires" ; and were such gifts made on entering or leaving the coffee-house 1 That to "tip" meant to "give" is clear in the connexion of " tipping the traveller," mean- ing to humbug a guest at an inn, <fec, with travellers' yarns; to " tip the double," to decamp; to "tip the grampus," an old sea- faring phrase for ducking a skulker for being asleep on his watch ; to " tip a stave," to sing ; to " tip one's rags a gallop " (thieves' slang), to run away. Then there is the slang or sporting expression " the straight tip," i.e., the bond fide gift of information regarding the prospects of success of a horse in a race. J. Holden MacMichael. Prior's' Chaste Florimel,' perhaps, is earlier than the quotation from Swift, and supplies the line Oh ! tip me but another crown. Edward H. Marshall, M.A. Hastings. " Misegun beans " (0th 8. iv. 328).—Surely we have all heard of Mexican beans—though this writer is unable to name the precise variety. There is a garden bean that used to be known as Mexican, long before we knew anything about the jumping sort. F. T. Elworthy. This is evidently for Mazagan bean. This is the earliest sort of broad bean, usually sown in autumn. The name is from Mazagan, a Portuguese settlement on the African coast. J. G. Wallace-James, M.B. Haddington. The gardener should have said Mazagan (Maz(ghan) beans, to be correct. Mazagan is on the coast of Morocco, and the beans, a small and early variety of Faba vulgaris, are so called because such beans grow wild near the town. See the ' Imperial Dictionary.' Arthur Mayall. Manchester. "God's first creature, which was lioht" (9th S. iv. 398).—I suppose the reference to be to a saying of Bacon's in his 'Essay on Truth': " The first creature of God, in the works of the Days, was the Light of the Sense ; the last was the Light of Reason." C. Lawrence Ford, B.A. Bath. If these words are not quoted directly from Bacon, they express the opening or 'The Writer's Prayer': "Thou, O Father, who gavest the. visible light as the first-born of Thy creatures." Edward H. Marshall, M.A. Hastings. Trade = Road (9th S. iv. 186, 256, 312).— J. G. Kohl, ' Austria' (London, Chapman <fc Hall, 1843), says, s.v. 'Galicia,' �roslav, p. 476 :— " We met large herds of oxen on the road to Lanzut, a castle and village belonging to the Potockis where a cattle-market was about to be held. The cattle consisted chiefly of the gray oxen of the steppes. Thousands of these patient animals have wandered through the Carpathians every year for centuries, to nourish with their flesh Vienna and the countries through which they pass. We traced them the whole way from Bukovina to the capital, in the regular and peculiar furrows which they have drawn across every road, by the uniform tread, each treading in the footsteps of his pre- decessor." This ancient cattle-trade road is nearer the capital called the " Butchers' Road." Thomas J. Jeakes. Earl Marshal's Court (9th S. iv. 381).— The books called "Earl Marshal's Books" from the time of Queen Elizabeth are kept at the Heralds' College, Queen Victoria Street, E.G. Everard Home Coleman. 71. Brecknock Road. "Polder": "Loophole" (9th S. iv. 347).- Palamedes's guess is most charming. Littre" was on the right track, for he wrote (s.v. ' Polder') " se rapport a l'anglais/woJ, allemand Pfuhl, marais, et probaolement au latin palus." It may be amusing to quote in this connexion the etymology given in Carl Sachs's German - French dictionary, a deserving work from other points of view: " Vom lateinisehen prdlarium, Hiihner- behalter." Polder explained as "hen-roost"! In French, jmulailles is a familiar synonym of fxiradis, viz., the upper gallery of a theatre. H. Gaidoz. 22, Rue Bervandoni, Paris. No such adjective as jxtludarius occurs eitherin ancient or in mediseval Latin—at least. I failed to find it in White and Riddle, ana in Ducange. According to Kilian's Dutch- Latin dictionary (Utrecht, 1777) the word polder, and the supposed Latin poldrus, i.e.,