Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 6.djvu/235

 9*s.VL8«pT.8,i9oo.) NOTES AND QUERIES. 193 reign of James I. I may also add that this is the only form given in the index to Stieler's ' Hand-Atlas,' p. 168. Whether Spalatro or Spalato, I contend that it should have, if regarded as an Italian word, the accent on the second syllable, and that is accordingly the pronunciation given in the ' Nuovo Vocabolario della Lingua Italiana,' by Profs. Longhi and Menini. The Greek name for the place, Aspalathos or Aspalathon, would seem to tell in favour of MR. PLAIT'S assertion, but 1 take it simply as an adapta- tion, suited to the language, of the " ancient Spalatum." JOHN T. CURRY. Is it not still the case that in the House of Commons and the Law Courts revenue is stressed on the penult? A few years ago counsel stressing it on the antepenult would have been brought up sharp with a judicial "I beg your pardon, Mr. ." I used to be tola, by way of contrast, that old Parlia- mentary hands always spoke of "my honour- able op'ponent," with stress on the antepenult. Does this use still prevail ? Q. V. LORD ALDENHAM'S objection to the pro- nunciation demonstrate seems to me to apply with equal force to the pronunciation m'- undate. In the latter as much as in the former, the accent is driven back from the root word. While in a former note I pro- tested against dem'onttrate&a hideous, cutting off as it does a letter from the root and adding it to the prefix, demonstrate has more to say for itself than has in'undate, inasmuch as the de in demanstro is long, while the in in inundo is short. R. M. SPENCE, D.D. Manse of Arbuthnott, N.B. UNICORNS (9th S. v. 314,427; vi. 10,74).—Is it not improbable that there is any ancient classical authority for what would appear to be a latter-day misrepresentation or falsi- fication of the original unicorn myth ' But it would be interesting to know whence Spenser and Shakespeare obtained their version of it. Topsell, in his ' History of Four-Footed Beasts ' (1658, p. 557), says :— " The Unicorn is an enemy to the Lion, wherefore, aa soon as a Lion seeth a Unicorn, he runneth to a tree for succour, that so when the Unicorn in the Swiftness of his course runneth against the tree, wherin his sharp horn sticketh fast, then when the Lion seeth the Unicorn fastened by the horn, without all danger he falleth upon him, and killeth him. These things are reported by the King of Ethiopia in a Hebrew Epistle unto the Bishop of Rome." By whatever Bishop of Rome this "Epistle" was received the myth would there seem to have been altered by the Ethiopian Nimrod (who evidently had, as a mighty lion hunter, no very high opinion of the king of beasts' courage) to fit into some legend of the lion. Or the misconception perhaps arose from the fact of the unicorn being in so many instances of archaic art represented in a "regardant" attitude towards, and in close proximity to, a tree, this tree being evidently a more or less modified form of the Tree of Life—so close indeed that the horn might easily be imagined to have been by a mis- directed thrust caught in the tree trunk, though if it was a " bush " it is somewhat difficult to see how the legendary straight horn of the animal could nave become en- tangled. In representations of the Assyrian unicorn the mythical animal's head almost touches the tree, towards which it is invariably turned (see Robert Brown,' The Unicorn, a Mythological Investigation,' 1881); and the design of the carving on the Horn of Ulphus, preserved in York Minster, exhibits in its generally Oriental aspect the unicorn with its head thus disposed towards a threadbare modification of the sacred tree. The unicorn, because of his strength, is said to have been adopted by the early Christians as a type of the " strength of Israel," personified in Christ, and Biblical commentators so recognize allu- sions thereto in the Scriptures. The ancients seem to have had as confused a conception of the structure of the animal's body as our- selves, for they must have recognized the rhinoceros as the true unicorn to nave made the poison-antidotal drinking-cup out of his horn, when they must have neen well aware that the unicorn of legend and art was emphatically unfurnished with a horn out of which a drinking vessel could be fashioned. J. H. MACMlCHAEL. Wimbledon Park Road. THE PLACE-NAME OXFORD (9th S. iii. 44, 309, 389 ; iv. 70, 130, 382, 479; v. 69, 249, 517 ; vi. 108).—MR. STEVENSON'S explanation of the name Oxford is substantially correct. The " ford," however, in this case is not a passage over a river, but a "road" or "outgang" along which oxen were driven to the common pastures, and it is possible that this " ford " came in the end to designate the pastures themselves, so that the meaning would be something like that of "frith" or "firth." The word forth means " road" in the following extract from a record* of the year 1365 :— p. 41. The word/oro/a seems to be the late Latin equivalent of forth.
 * 'Durham Halmote Rolls' (Surtees Society),