Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 5.djvu/533

 9<s. V.JUNE so, i9oo.] NOTES AND QUEKIES.

521

which the house stood, is the "mother" of the arable laDd (acker). Now, it' the proposition that the house was a measure of the arable land is true; if, as I contend, it admits of mathematical proof; if, in England at any rate, the area of the house was to the area of the arable land as 1 to 1089, a very strong presumption arises that the word " messuage '' is connected with mensura, and refers to measurement or mensuration. In English records, such as the * Domesday of ISt. Paul's,' it occurs as mas-agium, reminding us of mas- ura, mes-ura, mens-ura. And is it not written in my critic's own ' Dictionary ' that E. men- suration is akin to measure ?

The following extract from the Black Book of Peterborough of A.D. 1125-28 (' (Jhronicon Petroburgense,' p. 165) ought to settle this question for ever :

" In Stanfort sunt xlii. homines habentes domes ad terrain adjacentem domibus non mensuratam, et xvii. homines non haberites terras piaster man- suras."

The place referred to is Stamford in Lin- colnshire, and we learn from this early record that there were forty-two men in that town who had houses on unmeasured land adjoin- ing houses in the town. Now it appears from the lirst passage quoted from Du (Jange that, at the place mentioned, a burgess could not have common rights in land unless he first acquired a mensura, or measure, in his town. At {Stamford a similar rule had been broken or varied. There were also seven- teen men in {Stamford who had no lands but their mansurce (i.e., mensurce), or tofts. The building- plot, like the house, was a "measure/' and therefore "messuage" is derived from metim, to measure, and not from manere, to dwell. 8. O. ADDY.

LORD ROBERTS AND SUWARROW (9 th S. v. 454). May I be allowed to slightly amend the lines of the famous Russian general, as given by MR. JOHN HEBB They should read :

Slaya Bogu, slava Vam,

Kriepost vziata, i ya tarn.

Vziata is the feminine past participle of vziat, to take, and qualities the feminine sub- stantive kriepost, while vziala is the third person feminine preterite, and would give the result " the fortress took/' not " is taken," as iSuwarrow wrote. Passim, this Germanized rendering of his name conveys no idea of the original, which is pronounced " Soovorov."

The despatches of our illustrious Field- Marshal from South Africa bear the impress of his modest, noble character, from which anything like unctuousness is absent. It will

not be forgotten how Mr. Punch mercilessly satirized the despatches of a great royal soldier, a religiously minded man, in words like these :

By the blessing of God, my dear Augusta, We 'ye had again an awful buster. Ten thousand Frenchmen sent below : Praise God f torn whom all blessings now !

FRANCIS P. MARCHANT. Brixton Hill.

COSTUME, 1569 : PORTRAIT OF QUEEN MARY I. AT BERKELEY CASTLE (9 th S. v. 455). 'N. & Q.,' 6 th S. i. 493, gives par- ticulars of the armour and costume worn in the year 1588. There is also a very long article entitled ' Mundus Muliebris ' in 5 th S. i. 201-5, in which the costume during the reign of Elizabeth (1558-1603) is fully described. Fairholt also, in his 'Costume in England' (1860), enters very fully into the dresses of both courtiers and peasants, with the various changes of fashion during her long reign of forty -four years. In 1690 a poem also bearing the title of ' Mundus Muliebris' was issued. It will be found in the 'Satirical Songs and Poems of Costume from the Thirteenth to the Nineteenth Century,' published by the Percy Society in 1869, in which a minute description is given of the various articles of dress.

EVERARD HOME COLEMAN. 71, Brecknock Road.

GOAT IN FOLK-LORE (9 th S. v. 248, 359). Goats and pigs shared with broomsticks the task of conveying witches to their weird Sabbath assemblies, although not generally credited with powers of flying ; and goats are frequently mentioned in the hideous Wal- purgisnacht scene in Goethe's 'Faust.' Owing probably to the fact that the dictionary gives ram as well as he-goat as an equivalent for Bock, Shelley uniformly uses ram in his translation of the Walpurgis Night scene. Mephistopheles. I wish I had a good stout ram to

ride.

The latter of Shelley's two lines- Key over stock, and hey over stone, 'Twixt witches and incubi, what shall be done? does not represent the original, where the word Bock occurs. (The German is obscure, perhaps unpresentable.) At all events, a Bock is not an incubus.

Our poet makes a gratuitous addition in the next two lines. The original reads : Die alte Baubo kommt allein, Sie reitet auf einem Mutterschwein,

which he renders

Upon a sow-swine, whose farrows were nine, Old Baubo cometh alone.