Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 4.djvu/439

 9th S. IV. Dec. 9, '99.] 475 NOTES AND QUERIES. guages—how was it that he chose Dickens tor the place of honour? — Dickens, whose writings "the learned" (more or less) even then stigmatized as "vulgar." "Very amusing, of course; but exceedingly vulgar," was the usual thing to say of Dickens, even when he had worked up to ' Dombey and Son '—with Cuttle, and Florence, and Walter Gay, and Sol. Gills, and Little Paul, and Pipchin, and Blimber, and Toots, and the rest ! Mr. Francis says it was a woman who sug- gested the motto to Mr. Thorns. Well, if so, God bless her, say I, whoever she was. But who was she ? Dickens and Thorns were working more or less together fully ten years before ' N. & Q.' was started, as I can show, but will not now, hecause I do not want to make this note too long for insertion. In this direction, therefore, the answer may be found. But, coining to 1849, when 'N. ifcQ.' was started, may not the Cuttle motto have come from Dickens's liouse? Dickens had then been married only a few years. May not the lady mentioned, out not named, by Mr. Francis have been Mrs. Dickens, or Miss Hogarth, Dickens's sister- in-law 1 And supposing Thorns on a visit, and with his head, of course, full of the question of what should be the motto for the new periodical—may not the suggestion have so come into his mind ? The lady's venture may have been half in jest; but that makes no difference. It is possible that the overhauling of Mr. Thoms's correspondence, <Src, which Mr. Francis wants Mr. M. A. Thorns to sanction, would throw more light upon this matter. But, anyhow, I, for one, should much like to get at the true history of Mr. Thoms's " happy thought" in supplying the Cuttle motto to 'N. &Q.' J. W. M. Gibbs. " Boiled " Butter. — In the Experiment Station Record,' vol. x. p. 891, " boiled" butter is described as being made from rancid and low-grade butter by a patent process in which the butter is reduced to its original oil, treated with alkali, freed from volatile oils, and churned with sour milk. It is also termed " process " butter. These terms have as yet not crossed the Atlantic, though the product they indicate may have done so. R. Hedcer Wallace. "Soy."—This word has been badly treated by all our dictionaries. The best is the 'Century,' where it is traced to "Japanese siyan, Chinese shiyu," but even that involves two errors. One is a misprint {"siyan" should be siynu); the other is that it accounts for only half the English word. To explain this, I must draw a distinction l>etween three kinds of Japanese. (1) In Japanese as written with the native character soy would be not siynu, but siyau-yu. (2) In the Romanized Japanese this is simplified to shoyu. (3) Col- loquially this is further reduced, by dropping the final vowel, to shoy or soy (sh in Tokio, s in some other dialects). Of this mono- syllable only the so represents the classical siyau; the final consonant (//) is a relic of the termination yu. Hence my remark that the 'Century ' accounts for only half the English word. The English word is derived from the Japanese, the latter from the Chinese. The Chinese form given by the 'Century' is Northern Mandarin. At Shanghai it becomes sze-yu, at Ainoy si-iu, at Canton shi-yau. The first element is defined by Williams, in his ' Dictionary,' p. 764, as "Salted beans, or other fruits, dried and used as condiments"; the second element merely means " oil " (Williams, p. 1111). James Platt, Jun. Cure for Warts.—A woman from Belton, near here, tells me that warts may be driven away by rubbing them with a piece of fat bacon and then throwing the bacon over the right shoulder at the first four cross roads you come to. I have frequently heard of rubbing them with beef and then burying the beef, but the bacon cure is new to me. C. C. B. Epworth. " Kisses in cups."—I have long known that a collection of minute bubbles on the surface of tea or coffee when sugar has been dropped in was supposed to indicate a kiss, but it is news to me, derived from an overheard con- versation between two girls, that if the bubbles touch the side of the cup the kiss is from a woman. Frank Rede Fowke. 24, Victoria Grove, Chelsea, S.W. Curiosities of Collaboration.—It would seem as if collaboration scarcely existed amongst the ancients. In English literature the first notable instance of collaboration'is that of Beaumont and Fletcher. Their plays exhibit a wonderful masculinity and in- dividuality which one might expect to find only in the work of a single mind. In epic and lyric poetry we find no cases of colla- boration. It has been surmised that Shake- speare collaborated with a brother-dramatist in the composition of ' The Two Noble Kins- men.' Certainly both in the drama and in fiction collaboration has worked well. Sir Walter Besant's collaboration with the late Mr. James Rice was remarkably successful. Robert Louis Stevenson collaborated with his wife in the composition of the ' New Arabian Nights,' and with his stepson, Mr. Lloyd