Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 5.djvu/285

 9* s. V.APRIL 7, i9oo.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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years. My copy is lettered on the back "Sydney's 'History of England.'" _ Was it really written by Sydney in the first instance, and merely edited by Russell; or is the letter- press entirely different 1 JOHN T. PAGE. West Haddon, Northamptonshire.

"FEBRUARY FILL-DYKE" (9 th S. v. 188). Mr. Leader, for obvious reasons, omitted half of this saying, which, complete, runs on, " Whether it be black or white." I cannot recollect having come across the proverb in any old work of fiction, but, years before Mr. Leader's picture was painted, I can remember my mother, who loved old saws, quoting the words, with unfailing regularity, as each February came round. I do not know from whom she first learnt them ; probably from her grandmother, an old Scotchwoman, who lived till past ninety.

HERBERT B. CLAYTON.

39, Renfrew Road, Lower Kennington Lane.

In Ray's ' Collection ' this proverb appears as

February Fill- Dike, be it black or be it white ; But if it be white, it's the better to like.

This is the form in which I have always heard it. C. C. B.

In Thomas Tusser's ' Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry' the heading of 'Feb- ruary's Husbandry ' runs thus :

Feb, fill the dike

With what thou dost like.

The book was published in 1558.

C. S. TAYLOR. Banwell.

"AN END" (9 th S. v. 65, 137, 175). I can follow MR. RATCLIFFE all through his inter- esting note on wax-ends at the second refer- ence. Do not I go now almost every day of my life into a friendly cobbler's stall and watch with never varying interest the tricks of his trade 1 Amongst them pre-eminently stands the making of his wax-ends as already described (but J. T. F. is quite right in making his necessary correction, ante, p. 166). While saying this, I entirely agree with MR. F. ADAMS that MR. RATCLIFFE is wide of the mark as to the meaning of the expression quoted at the head hereof. It has really no connexion with the wax-end. In this county the word end is commonly pro- nounced eend. Miss Baker in her ' Glossary of Northamptonshire Phrases' gives "an- eend," and finishes her note thereon as follows : " With us it is also used in a collo- quial and singular sense to denote adherence to any particular line of conduct. 'I most qn-eend. do so-and-so,' i.e., generally. ' I most

an-eend call when I go that way.' " I remember the expression used in this sense here many years ago, but it is now by no means common, and I expect I may have to wait a long time before I hear it brought out again. JOHN T. PAGE.

West Haddon, Northamptonshire.

Is not an in "an end " = continually, a form of the well-known Teutonic (9.8., O.H.G., &c.) dno, ana (Gr. avev, Goth, inu, Mod. Germ.. ohne = without), in which for some reason the long a has escaped the usual shifting to o? I remember Otfrid's frequent use of "anaenti," without end. A phonetically quite correct modern form of this dno is the Northern Scottish preposition on, often spelt ohn (vide Jamieson, who, however, does not give its derivation).

Dr. G. Mac Donald writes in * Robert Fal- coner ' :

"Swear I sail hae her ohn demur. I never

kent pair o' shune gang ohn a pair o' feet i' the wame o' them. Canna ye help a body ohn angert an' sworn ? "

Notice the omission (not mentioned in Jamieson) of the auxiliary pres. part, having and being. I am afraid the cognate negative prefix on = un will soon replace ohn in these cases. Is it not already responsible for the scarcity of modern representatives of the once so common dno ? K. E. REINLE.

Ha wick, N.B.

" BYRE" (9 th S. v. 6). I hope I may not be annihilated by the scorn of keener critics if I venture to say that the Laureate's line

Welsh hearths and Scottish byres does not strike me as being either inappro- priate or ridiculous. He is setting forth the fact that all sorts and conditions of Britons are pressing forward to show their patriot- ism. Nobody can doubt that scores of good men, who have at home in Scotland found work among cattle, are now doing duty in the battle-field ; and we might just as well object that English hamlets are exalted above measure in the enumeration of the sources of our army recruits as that North British farmsteads are unduly set forward in the matter. There is surely some want of imagi- nation in the writer in the Aberdeen Evening Express, and his "humour" strikes me as being captious and niggling. Mr. Austin does not imply that Scotland's recruits are exclusively bucolic. ST. SWITHIN.

14 WOUND " FOR ** WINDED " (9 th S. v. 4, 95, 177). Presumably Sir Walter Scott, and most certainly his apologist in these columns, wrote in the belief that to wind a bugle horn is