Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 5.djvu/185

 9*s.v.MABCH3,igoo.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

177

extent be modifier] by the varying effects of refraction. I will, however, take the most simple case, when the station is at the equator and the sun is vertical over it, which he will be at the equinoxes, so that he rises in a vertical circle, and the effects of refrac- tion are very much smaller than they are in high latitudes (they are not great in Baby- lonia). Now the sun's apparent semi- diameter at the earth's mean distance is 16' 1"'18, so that his apparent diameter is 32' 2"'36. In the case supposed then, as he passes through the whole circuit of the heavens (360) in twenty-four hours, and 360 : 24 h : : 32' 2"'36 : 2 m 5 8 '92, the sun will, at that place and time, occupy 2 m 5 8< 92 in rising above the horizon. At all other places this duration will be somewhat longer. The Nautical Almanac gives the duration of passing the meridian of Greenwich for every day in the year. W. T. LYNN.

Blackheath.

PROVERBS IN HERBERT'S 'JACULA PRU- DENTUM ' (9 th S. v. 108). The proverb " After the house is finished leave it " probably refers to the same, superstition as the Italian " Finita la casa, entra la morte."

THORNFIELD.

" WOUND " FOR " WINDED " (9 th S. v. 4, 95). Entirely idle is the attempted vindication of Sir Walter Scott's " his horn he wound" which has been offered with such confidence, the world being informed that " herein he is unquestionably correct." In his wound we are bidden to behold "the real and regular past tense of the word wind"

But what reputable etymologist will now question that there are two distinct verbs wind, of which the one whose conjugation has been mistaken, the substantive wind rhematized, has, save by oversight, or worse, winded for its past tense ? Moreover, before the days of Scott, who, the like of Chatterton and Pennant excepted, has substituted wound for it 1 Of the wind under discussion, winded, either as past tense or as past participle, has the support of Shakespeare, Chapman, Drayton, and Dr. Johnson ; and ivound, in its stead, takes rank, in a general way, with Sir Walter's bartizan, both of them being spurio- sities. Of equal propriety, from the point of view of usage, are "one sticked and has sticked " peas or beans, and "one winded and has winded" a horse or a horn ; and who is known to say "I hid him" in place of "I hided him"? Between the two verbs wind there is no more affinity than there is between the two verbs cleave, the two verbs let, or the two verbs lie. For a long time many of the

best writers used overflown for overflowed, now alone accepted. Let it be hoped that henceforth, the example of Sir Walter Scott and Tennyson being declined as establish- ing a precedent, the classical " he winded his horn" may be reinstated in its rights.

F. H. Marlesford.

MR. BAYNE says that Scott is here "un- questionably correct." I refer to Skeat, ' Concise Etymological Diet.,' s.v. * Wind ' (1), and find the following : " Der. Wind, to blow a horn, pt. t. and pp. winded, ' Much Ado,' I. i. 243, often oddly corrupted to wound!" The note of exclamation is Prof. Skeat's.

CINDERELLA (9 th S. v. 86). The writer of the note at this reference does not mention his reason for reviving a question ex- haustively treated and convincingly answered so lately as in 8 th S. x. 331, 361. He quotes from a note in the * Reminiscences of an Old Bohemian,' "Vair is the word in Perrault's tales, not verre" But why go for one's Perrault to * Reminiscences of an Old Bohemian ' ? What Perrault himself says is, "Elle lui donna ensuite unepaire de pantoufles de verre, les plus jolies du monde." To consider this an absurd notion must arise from a failure to understand that the events recorded did not occur in the age of Charles Perrault, the age of Louis XIV., when, doubt- less, people did not go to balls in slippers of glass, even if they went in slippers of vair, and when pumpkins were not changed into gilt coaches, nor white mice into dapple-grey horses. They occurred in the age of the fairy godmother, an age which was that of Perrault only in the sense that it was created by him, and in which, therefore, he was at liberty to make his shoes, whether for use or ornament, of just whatever he pleased.

KILLIGREW.

The notion of a glass slipper is not absurd. The fairies had a habit of wearing glass shoes, which they sometimes lost, and were dis- consolate until they found them again. This is mentioned in Keightley's 'Fairy Mytho- logy 3 in a genuine folk -tale called 'The Little Glass Shoe.' Glass often figures in a marvellous way in the folk-tales. In some of the stories concerning Cinderella the shoes are of gold, not of glass. And gold must be as difficult to wear as glass. E. YARDLEY.

THE TAXES ON KNOWLEDGE (9 th S. v. 79, 83). I can remember when a boy, in 1844, the shop of John Cleave, 1, Shoe Lane, Fleet Street, and the proprietor, a short, stout man.