Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 6.djvu/441

 9»s. vi. Nor. io, i9oo.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 365 geniver," or "ingener" means contriver by inffenuity. maker, invtntor (of praises). Since the perfections of Desdeinoria are not compassed by any existing forms of descrip- tion— A maid That paragon* description and wild fame; One that excels the quirki of blazoning pens— she imposes upon the author of adequate praises the task of actual creation—does tire (clothe) the ingener (inventor) in the essential (real) vesture of creation. E. MERTON DEY. NOTE ON A PASSAGE IN CHAUCER'S ' PRO- LOGUE."—No satisfactory meaning of " recche- lees" in the following passage has >been given :— Ne that a monk when he is recchelees Is likned to a fish that is waterlees; This is to seyn a monk out of his cloister. Nor is the alternative reading " cloisterlees' satisfactory, since the monk is spoken of as having a cell where he did not keep strict rules, and " cloisterlees " hardly means simply being away from his cloister for a time. Also the monk is described as a different character from the friar, and one great distinction is that the monk has a settled residence. Hraegelees (from A.-S. hrcegel, a cloth, robe, garment, gown), gownless, has nearly the same sound as " recchelees," and gives a fairly appropriate meaning to the line. It also account!) for Chaucer explaining the word as being obsolete, whereas " cloisterlees" no more needs an explanation than " waterlees." Hraegelhus means a house for storing sacer- dotal garments, and "cloth" is used at the present day for sacerdotal dress in the phrase 11A parson worthy, of his cloth." In this expression " cloth " also stands for the office of clergyman, and a "clothless" parson would represent one incapable of fulfilling his duties; a gownless monk a disqualified one. If hrcpr/elees be the correct word Chaucer's explanation is not a literal one, but would indicate that a monk not in his gown was as little able to perform his religious duties as a monk not in his cloister. The monk in ques- tion is described as being dressed very differently to what is his proper dress ; and no doubt in his favourite pursuit of hunting the ordinary gown would not be appropriate. If one were to be asked what was meant by a disrobed barrister one would naturally say it meant one who could no longer practise at the Bar; one who cannot get to the Bar, like a fish that cannot get into the water. The explanation would be more satisfactory if hrceyel could be restricted to mean the shabbier indoor and working dress of a monk as described in 1. 259 of ' Prologue':— For there he was not like a cloisterer With a thredbare cope. Possibly the older word might be used for the worse dress, in which case a hrcegelees, or "indoor-gownless," monk would mean one in his better or travelling dress,and consequently one out of his cloister. The meaning of the line then will be a monk who is in the habit of spending the whole day in his out- door dress. A. C. W. "SAi," "SAIMIRI," "SAJOU."—The 'Century Dictionary' gives no etymology of these zoological terms, but remarks that they are "native names of South American monkeys, now become inextricably confounded by the different usages of authors, if indeed they had originally specific meanings." This is very wefi, so far as it goes ; but an investigation of the origin of these terms proves that they had at first three shades of meaning. In the first place they all belong to the Tupi language 01 Brazil. Sai is the word for " monkey "; sai-miri is its diminutive, from , miri, meaning " little." Sajou, on the contrary, is a French corruption of sajouassou, as Buffon spells it, or sai-uastit, as it should be written, where the termination -uastu is augmenta- tive. We thus arrive at a species of three degrees of comparison irresistibly reminding us of the Three Bears of nursery legend— sai-miri is the little monkey; mi is the middle - sized monkey ; sajov is the big monkey. JAS. PLATT, Jun. THE ETYMOLOGY OF "GARLAND."—On read- ing the second volume of the ' Hundred Rolls' I have come across the following passages : 1. "Willelmua Graundyn tenet j mesuagium et unma croftum pro uim garlonda floris per cartam " (561 a). 2. "Johannes le Gysors tenet cle domino J. de Akyni in mesuagio j rodam et unam acram torre per servicium xij garlondarum feniculi" (574 b). In the first passage " una garlonda floris " seems to mean " a whorl of a flower," and in the second " xij garlondarum feniculi" seems to mean " twelve whorls of fennel." Fennel is an umbelliferous plant with a tiny flower, so that a small bunch of such flowers might well have been offered. These nominal pay- ments are consistent with such acknowledg- ments as a rose, a clove, a peppercorn, &c., and on that ground, if on no other, I think that a payment of twelve wreaths of fennel would be unlikely. Accordingly, I would suggest that the first part of the word may be connected with E. whorl or wharl, a disc