Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 6.djvu/238

 196 vi. SBPT. s, 1900. NOTES AND QUERIES. Similar words are "annual," " biennal," " triennal," " quiennal," which were arrange- ments for the saying of masses for one, two, three, or five years. " The most common word of this description was trental, which meant the saying of thirty masses for the dead," tfec. See my note to 'P. Plowman,' Text C, Pass. x. 1. 320, where I refer to the curious poem entitled ' St. Gregory's Trental,' and refer to Rock, ' Church of our Fathers.' ii. 504 (note), which should be consulted. The words "biennal" and "triennal" both occur in the line hero commented on. But few people seem to know that ' Piers Plow- man has been annotated. WALTER W. SKEAT. "Trental" signifies thirty masses said for the dead. The following references may be of service : Rock,' Church of our Fathers,' vol. ii. pp. 319, 504: Skeat, 'Notes to Piers Plowman,' p. 199; Bridgett, ' History of the Holy Eucharist in Great Britain,' vol. ii. p. 150. There are several references to " trentals " in Gough's ' General Index to the Publications of the Parker Society.' EDWARD PEACOCK. This is hardly explained adequately as "a service held a month after death for the repose of a deceased's soul." An office for the dead in the Roman Church, it is, besides being a mass on the thirtieth day only, also a devotional act consisting of thirty masses said successively for thirty days (Ital. trenta, i.e., triginta; Fr. trentale), when the sacrifice of the mass is offered in a more than usually solemn manner, especially on the third, seventh, and thirtieth days after the person's death. It is also called " a monthly mind "— " mind " being used in the old sense of memory of recalling to mind, or reviving the memory, as in the provincial usage, " Do you mind the day when we did so-and-so ?" A year's mine is a similar service on the anniversary of a person's death. Hence we have the phrase to have a month's mind to " a thing, i.e., an earnest desire, a strong inclination :— Luc. Yet here they [papers] shall not lie, for catch ing cold. Jul. I see you have a month's mind to them. ' Two Gentlemen of Verona,' I. ii. 137. J. HOLDEN MAcMlCHAEL. Wimbledon Park Road. "To LUG THE COIF" (9th S. vi. 87).— Thi seems to me to be equivalent to pulling 01 tearing the cap, which one has heard men tioned as a mode of assault practised bj "jarring females" in days when women ha! their heads covered out of church as well a in. ST. SWITHIN. This is, in other words, to pull the cap. ?or pulling of caps, in the sense of feminine fisticuffs, see 'N.E.D.,' 'Cap,' «6. 9. ALDENHAM. I take this to be identical with the phrase 'to pull caps," and to have been fabricated )y West as an emergency rime, albeit a loose one. The meaning of " pulling caps " is given, with several examples, in the H.E.D.'; but, if my conjecture be right, this latter phrase must >e older than Dr. Murray's earliest example '1785), unless we suppose Wolcot to have id anted his expression from West's book, published in 1780—which is unlikely. It is needless, I presume, to remind MR. MAYHEW that cap-pulling was literally applicable to brawling women in days_when a cap was a regular article of feminine attire. At the present time—when bonnets, too, are out of fashion except among certain religious sec- tions of the community—women go some- times, in street quarrels, for each other's hat. F. ADAMS. GOAT IN FOLK-LORE (9th S. v. 248, 359, 521 ; vi. 132).—Although Shelley translated Bock as " ram," doubtless he knew the other mean- ings of the word, and also knew that the in- cubus was supposed to assume sometimes the form of an animal. What was the chief ser- vice of the incubus to the witch is clear from its name. But it may also have carried her to the Sabbath in the form of a goat. There is a story of Charlemagne that he was carried by a devil in the shape of a black horse from Spain to Paris. 1 insisted, perhaps somewhat unnecessarily, on writing " Typhoeus " instead of Typhaeiu. Horace certainly meant to write Typhoeus, for his verse could not be scanned satisfac- torily if he had used the other word. So did Ovid in the following line of the ' Metamor- phoses ':— ^thereas ausum sperare Typhoea sedea. Book v. 1. 348. Although Virgil and Ovid sometimes use the Greek form, there are passages in them where the word is printed Typhceus. And Milton, in his Latin poetry, has this verse :— Effiat tabifico monstrosua ab ore Tiphceus. But perhaps the printer is responsible for the diphthong. E. YARDLBY. PICTS AND SCOTS (9th S. v. 261, 418, 482 ; vi. 90).—Few controverted subjects have given rise to a keener discussion than the question whether the Scots were the indigenous in- habitants of Britain or merely emigrants from Ireland ; and in connexion with the matter I venture to quote the following from