Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 4.djvu/524

 548 NOTES AND QUERIES. [9^s.iv.DEC.3o,m well-known Border story into his service to supply an argument in support of his theory of the influence of Gaelic speech. Moreover, he spoils the story in fitting it upon a High- land woman ; it was not 'ool, which no Scot, Highland or Lowland, was ever heard to say, but W? "Ou aye, 'oo." "A* 'ooT "Ou aye, a' 'oo'." " A' ae W ?" (All one wool ? i. e., unmixed). "Ou aye, a' ae'oo'." No High- lander would say 'oo'; but it is the common form for wool in the most Saxon district of Scotland, the eastern Marches. Herbert Maxwell. Thompson Family (9th S. iv. 419).—The Hon. Charles Roberts, second son of the sixth Earl of Balcarres and (de jure) twenty-third Earl of Crawford, collector of customs at Agra, married, 12 Feb., 1814, Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas William Thompson, Esq. She died 8 Nov., 1852, having had, with other issue, a son and two daughters. Elizabeth Keith, the earl's eldest daughter, married, 1815, R. E. Heathcote, Esq., of Longton Hall, co. Stafford; his second daughter, Anne, married, 1811, - Robert Wardlie, Esq., of Balgarvie, co. Fjfe. The earl had no other daughters. H. B. C. I cannot find that a daughter of the Earl of Crawford and Balcarres mentioned in the query married a Thompson, but the Hon. Charles Robert, brother of James, (twenty- fourth) Earl of Crawford andj(seventh) Bal- carres, collector of customs at Agra, married, in 1814, Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas William Thompson. John Radcliffe. Palm Wine (9th S. iv. 497). — Mr. Watts- Dunton evidently describes the most expen- sive of the three forms of embalmment mentioned by Herodotus (ii. 86) as being used by the Egyptians. In this process, said (' Encyclopaedia Britannica,' viii. 168) to cost 243£. 15«., the abdomen was cleansed with palm wine after the intestines had been removed. Arthur Mayall. JpsswIIatttmis NOTES ON BOOKS, &o. The Gods of Old and the Story that they Tell. By the Rev. J. A. Fitz Simon and Vincent A. Fitz Simon, M.D. (Fisher Unwin.) This is an attempt to prove that the conclusions of modern science as to the forces of the universe were known to the Greeks and Romans, and expressed by them in the names of their gods and neroes. The authors' scheme is prodigious, their method beyond conception. They consider, for instance, that the multiplication of names alone (of gods and heroes, and people like the gay folk consoled in Horace's lighter odes) " is a very strong proof that the [aforesaid] names related to scientific know- ledge." One might prove rabbits and big towns highly scientific by the same process of reasoning. Portions of Hesiod, Homer, Ovid, Ac, are quoted, and fitted out with scientific meanings and theories by the aid of an etymology which is of the slightest possible interest to trained scholars. The authors are ready, one would guess, to derive anything at sight; a letter more or less does not matter, a wrong quantity causes no doubts nor fears. The particle pi) in this conjectural region rejoices in the present indicative, and coalesces with avidity the wrong way round. To offer three derivations for the simple Greek word for night and four for Erebus i8, perhaps, too liberal a display not to arouse envy and suspicion. All of these can hardly be equally plausible. Indifference generally to the genius of. the Greek language is shown. Hesiod gives a deri- vation for the Titans, not bad for a Greek : this the authors quote, and correct into one quite innocent of the ordinary Greek processes exhibited in the school paradigms of the verbs and other more ad- vanced works. The genitive of the Greek for milk makes it unnecessary for a believer in that lan- guage to introduce any suggestion of alia (" worth") into a " galaxy." We merely note this for our own pleasure. " 2*6roc," we read, " if it be susceptible of derivation, would be okiA jric, ' the shadow of substance.'" Here we fancy the shadow of a com- punction expressed by the authors at the fertility of their etymological gift; but what is " 8r«c " ? We have only shadowy ideas ; it is certainly not Greek. Hesiod seems to agree with certain foolish moderns in opining that it is love that makes the world go round. Not a bit of it. His " Eros " is not " love," but " force." Both " Eros " and " force " come from <pipm, a revelation which is hard on the Low Latin fortia, Prof. Skeat, and, in fact, all trained philo- logists. Homer says the Cyclopes ruled their own wives and children. It is not obvious who else could have done it; but he really means, it appears, to refer to the behaviour of atoms in chemical react ions. The Cyclops in Ovid (we cannot call him "The Cyclop") offered Galatea two cubs of the shaggy she-bear {villosce urea). This means: Chemical Force offered Elementary Matter Magnetism and Electricity. Their derivation of Cyclops as "a stealer of embryos," the authors say, " will suit all time"; it will not do, we fear, for us. Villorus usually means "shaggy"; here Ovid rises to the occasion and makes it mean "white," and so "polar," and so "polar bears" intimate electric forces. Ovid's advance on the knowledge Lucretius possessed of the magnet and his avowal of electricity are so striking that it occurs to us that his extra- ordinary scientific attainments may have led to his hitherto ill-explained banishment from the Roman Court. If this is so, one can, at any rate, not entirely sympathize with him when he says Barbarus hie ego sum quia non intelligor ulli. How could the people of Tomi realize references to electricity couched in such unusual phraseology? Horace wrote a small satire, we always thought, to exploit a small jest which Cicero also thought it worth while to make a boast about. But we now learn that "a cursory examination" proves all the names and places he mentioned fictitious. This is a short way with towns like Clazomente and people like the Brutus who murdered Cassar. There is no index to this remarkable work— remarkable if only as considering Greek science