Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 4.djvu/496

 524 NOTES AND QUERIES. ^s.rv.DEc.s.m thanking him for a copy of the work, which, lie says, does him great credit. Other letters to him appear on pp. 377, 378, 386. See also Knight's 'Life,' 1889, vol. iii. pp. 383, 416, 420. Mr. Peace was with Wordsworth in Bath on the seventieth birthday of the poet, 7 April, 1847, on which day my father received a visit from both, introduced by Mr. Empson, of Bath. C. Lawrence Ford, B.A. Bath. 'An Apology for Cathedral Service' was written by Mr. John Peace, librarian of the City Library, Bristol. It is a clever and amusing book, and did good in its day by rousing an interest in cathedral services, which then were at a very low ebb, and in many places were threatened with extinction. H. N. Ellacombe. The Devil and St. Dominic (9th S. iv. 418). —J. H. will find this legend related in Southey's ' Doctor.' J. Willcock. "Ce canaille de D—" (9th S. iv. 398, 446). —There is a rational explanation of this grammatical error. I have asked two French- men for an explanation. One was the librarian of the Lyons Libi -y, M. Aime Vingtrinier, aged eighty-eight, 1 stone deaf. One had to communicate wi him by writing. He had previously explai jd that he had suffered pecuniary loss in connexion with his position as an Officer of Public Instruction in conse- quence of the expression of a political opinion in one of his publications — not an active opinion,ashe pathetically put it, quite passive in fact. And so, in answer to my query, he turned the drift of the conversation by show- ing me a pamphlet that he was about to publish on Superstitions.' The other was a young man, who had not suffered politically, and had not been driven to the study of superstitions. He explained at once that the phrase is not French. It might, he said, have been written by an Italian or an Austrian —logically, one supposes, by a Frenchman desirous of hiding his nationality. There is no precedent in Littre for the use of the masculine with canaille. Arthur Mayall. Compare "Un drole de valet" and "Une drole d'idee"; " II m'est venu sur les levres je ne sais quelle bete de plaisanterie sur," ifcc. (' Froufrou'), and " Apres ce qu'on vous assure, ce bete dedepart.si brusquementresolu, doit avoir une raison " (Uchard, ' Blaisot'); "Son bete de fatalisme lui rnuruiurait a l'oreille " (Rabusson,' Roman d'un Fataliste '). The three examples last cited are taken from C. M. Robert, 'Questions de Grammaire,' <fec, pp. 41, 42. It is evident that in collo- quial French canaille ranks with such words as drole, bete, amour, <fcc, of which the gender is determined by that of the substantive following the preposition de. C. Stoffel. Canaille is a noun, but it is also an adjec- tive, hence "Ce canaille de D—." You might also say, " Ce drole de X," or " Cet animal de Z." This is, to me, the most rational ex- planation. Note that when we use a feminine noun " adjectively " we generally make the adjectif dimowstratif agree with it, as " Cette brute de Joseph." "Ce canaille de D—" was written by a foreigner, hence ce instead of the ceite which a Frenchman would have used. P. Villars. Bibury (9th S. iv. 108, 172, 295, 331).— Nothing is known of the area now called Bibury before it appears as a possession of Wilfrith. Bishop of Worcester, c. 740. And then, whatever local habitation there may have been, there was no name ; it was simply an estate of fifteen cassates by the river Cunuglae, or Colne, of which the bishop granted five cassates on a life lease to the Earl Leppa and his daughter Beaga. The document ('C. S.,' 166) is first found in Heming's 'Cartulary,' c. 1080. According to a Gloucester document of late date, which in its present form cannot be genuine ('C. S.,' 535), Aldred, Subregulus of the Huic- cians (757-780), gave his patrimony of sixty manentes at Enneglan (or Cuneglan) to St. Peter's Abbey. This would be Colne (St. Aldwyn), but again there is no specific place-name. In 855 Burgred, King of the Mercians, sold to Bishop Alhhun of Worcester the land of ten manentes " bi Cunelgan " " set Eadbaldingtune"; thus we see that the ten cassates which Bishop Wilfrith had not granted to Leppa had in some way passed into the king's bands, and that ten of the original cassates are now represented by Ablington and five by Bibury ('C. S.,' 487). In 899 Bishop Werefrid of Worcester granted the land of five manentes, " iuxtaCunelgnan," at Eadbaldingtun for two lives to his priest Werwulf on condition of his paying certain dues to the bishop at Beganbyrg (' C. S.,' 580). Both these documents are first found in Heming's ' Cartulary.' If we were sure that they are true copies of the original documents we should know that the place-names Bibury and Ablington existed before the end of the ninth century. But the first occurrence of the name Bibury in a contemporary dgcu- ment is in the Cottonian MS. Nero E. 1 (' C. S.,' 1320), a calendar of lands granted to