Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 6.djvu/543

 9* s. vi. DEC. s, 1900.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 451 might have been used to describe all who re semble him by their foppery ? PALAMEDES. [See the Athewxum of 6, '13, 20 October, and 3 November.] "VIVA." (9th S. vi. 266, 311, 391.) WHAT OXONIAN calls the "clipping" process is always going on here, though I think it somewhat remarkable that the names of our colleges have suffered as little as they have at the hands— or the tongues— of irreverent youth. "New " and "John's" have to great extent superseded " New College " and " St. John's," as they were always called in my undergraduate days. Corpus Christi is "Corpus," Christ Church is, of course, the " House," University " Univ.," and Pembroke (not, however, on the lips of its own alumni] occasionally " Pemmy." Worcester was once " Botany Bay," but trains and bicycles have annihilated distance in Oxford, and Keble, besides, is more remote than Worcester ever was. It was the Halls (now all but one extinct) that suffered most from name-distortions. St. Edmund Hall was, and is, "Teddy"; St. Mary's, "Skimmery"; St. Alban's, "Slub- bins"; and New Inn, "The Tavern." Mr. Cox, a former Esquire Bedel, writing in 1868, de- plored the change of shout on the river bank (during the races) from "On, St. Edmund, on !" to "Go it, Teddy !" But did under- graduates ever cry "On, St. Edmund, on"? If so, it must have been in days prehistoric indeed. OSWALD HUNTER-BLAIR, O.S.B. Oxford. In the Oxford slang of the present day "bedder" means not a bedroom, but a bed"- maker ; "divinners" is now shortened to "divvers." "New" for New College is in common use. C. C. B. In my time at Oxford, 1885-8, New College was always thus correctly alluded to, and never called " New " by any but a " Fresher." I distinctly remember being told of this shortly after going up. BARBARICUS. You say in an editorial note on the subject of 'Viva' that OXONIAN had ample justifica- tion for his abbreviation "New" for New College, which ST. SWITHIN called in Ques- tion. Do you mind my saying that you nave been misinformed '. It is true that in my time at Balliol (forty years ago, alas !) we said " New," just as we said University," "Trinity," "Lincoln," &c.; but taking my son up to New College in October for the first time, I was told by everybody, dons as well as undergraduates, that the college in question nowadays is always called New College, offi- cially and unofficially, and that it was as great a solecism to talk about " New " as to say Christ Church College. H. S. VADE WALPOLE. [We do not speak without knowledge; we are aware that there is a strong movement in favour of saying " New College," but do not think " New " has yet gone out.] THE NATIONAL FLAG (9th S. v. 414, 440, 457, 478 ; Supplement, 30 June ; vi. 17, 31, 351).— I wrote to 'N. & Q.' on the publication of MR. ST. JOHN HOPE'S communication to sub- mit that the various suggested derivations of the word "jack" as applied to a flag were wrong, and that what for many years I have been satisfied is the origin of the name is quite different from the ordinary accepted derivations. My theory is that the word "jack "as applied to a flag is simply to de- note a small handy flag, in the same way that in the English language " jack " is so often applied. In nautical language we have jack- yard, jack-staff, the jack at the masthead, cross-jack-yard, and so on. This derivation being accepted, the explanation of the puzzle submitted by MR. WHITWELL is simple enough. The ensign the merchant ship was to fly was the Red Ensign ; the jack, or small flag which a ship flies on a jack-staff at her bows, was also to be a Red Ensign—being de- scribed as a jack, evidently a small one. At the present day a man-of-war flies a White Ensign at her stern, and a small Union flag or Union Jack at her bows on a jack-staff. The merchant vessel flies a Red Ensign astern, and her jack is the same as is flown by the man- of-war, but with a white border. H. G. K. H. "LoviOT" (9th S. vi. 149, 233, 338, 396).— With a protest against the retention in the beading of loviot, a misprint for which your own press is answerable, I proceed to observe that in my reply to MR. HOOPER it seemed to me more convenient to quote from Liddell and Scott than to write out the passages from correspondents I now transcribe Pliny'8 notice of the icterus (xxx. 11, or, as in the Tauchnitz edition, 28) :— " Avis icterus vocatur a colore, quse si spectetur, lanari id malum tradunt, et avem mori. Hanc puto .:>!!•!' vocari galgulum." 'liny, as we see, describes the bird by its 3reek name, and identifies it with the bird called in Latin galguliu, a variant of galbula
 * he Latin and Greek authors there referred
 * but for the satisfaction of one of your