Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 7.djvu/24

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NOTES AND QUERIES. p* s. VIL JAN. 5, 1901.

the Low G.Duden-dop and Duden-kop a.* being fuller forms. The literal sense of Duden-kop is stupid or lazy head ; and duden is allied to the English dodder and dawdle, and (more remotely) to the verb to dote. It follows that the correct pronunciation of G. dude is dooda, riming (nearly) to intruder, the clipped form being pronounced as dood. But every reader who was unaware of its German origin would, of course, pronounce it like the English -dued in endued, for the simple reason that final -ude is commonly so pronounced, unless an r precedes it. Of. nude, exude, solitude. I think we may safely conclude that there never was a dandy with such a surname as Dude; neither is the sense of "dandy" the primary one. It was transferred from the thick-headed man to the empty-headed one. There is not much to choose between them. WALTER W. SKEAT.

Perhaps about 1880 it was the fashion among hew York dandies to say, u How dew you dew ? " If so, they may have been at first called deiv-deivs, which would soon be shortened into dewds. I first heard the word in 1887 from an American, who pronounced it to rime with imbued. M. N. G.

I have nothing new to say about this word itself, but the following may be interesting as to the pronunciation of dodo, which is referred to in PALAMEDES'S note. In Prof. Daubeny's amusing little posthumous volume of ' Fugitive Poems connected with Natural History and Physical Science' (1869) there are some verses on the ' Fate of the Dodo,' by Prof. Forbes, the first and last of which are as follows : Do-do, Vasco de Gama

Sailed from the Cape of Good Hope with a crammer, How he had met, in the Isle of Mauritius, A very queer bird what was not very vicious,

Called by the name of a Do-do, And all the world thought what he said was true.

Do-do ! alas there are left us

No more remains of the Didust inept tin ;

And so, on the progress of science, all prodigies

Must die, as the palm-trees will some day at

Loddiges' :

And like our wonderful Do-do lurn out not worth the hullabaloo.

This "ornithological romance" is followed by the first verse of a ditty intended to be sung in opposition to Prof. Forbes's verses on the Do-do at one of the dinners of the Red Lion at Oxford, 1847," which fixes the late, and shows that the pronunciation then varied '.

Of all the o.ueer birds that ever you'd see Fftronii * th ? queerest of Columbidte, '


 * or all her life long she ne'er sat on, a tree,

And when the Dutch came, away went she. Tee- wit, tee-woo, I 'd have you to know There ne'er was such a bird as our famed Do-do.

Anonymous.

If PALAMEDES would like to see the little book, and will send me a postcard with his address, I shall be happy to lend him my copy. J. P. OWEN.

72, Comeragh Road, W.

EARLY STEAM NAVIGATION (9 th S. vi. 368, 458)." Honour to whom honour is due " ; "Justice to Ireland." Your esteemed corre- spondent MR. GEORGE MARSHALL, of Liver- pool, claims the Royal William of Liverpool to have been probably the first real passenger steamer to have crossed the Atlantic without coaling. Now he has overlooked the fact that the Sirius of Cork, about 750 tons, sailed from that port on 4 April, 1838, and arrived at New York 22 April, and the Great Western, 1,600 tons, took her departure from Bristol 8 April, and reached New York on the 23rd, while the Royal William did not sail from this country till July 5 following.

The New York Weekly Herald of 28 April, 1838, reported the arrival of the Sirius in the following' terms :

" The Sirius ! The Sirius ! The Sirius ! Nothing is talked of in New York but about the Sirius. She is the first steam vessel that has arrived here

from England, and a glorious boat she is Lieut.

Roberts, R.N., Commander, is the first man that ever navigated a steam, ship from Europe to America."

EVERARD HOME COLEMAN.

71, Brecknock Road.

" OWL IN IVY BUSH " (9 th S. vi. 328, 396). In a fireside favourite of mine, Hain FriswelFs JVaria : Readings from Rare Books,' an owl in an ivy bush conventionally treated forms the quaint headpiece to two of the essays.

H. E. M.

St. Petersburg.

The phrase " to look like an owl in an ivy bush " is found on p. 65 of the 1813 edition of Ray's 'English Proverbs,' and can probably be traced through earlier editions of the same work. RICHARD H. THORNTON.

Portland, Oregon.

SIMON ERASER (8 th S. x. 156, 223 ; 9 th S. vi. 157, 338, 433). I feel sure that all corre- spondents of 'N. & Q.' will agree with GNOMON'S pithy sentence promulgated at the last reference, viz., " Strict accuracy in matters of historical detail, however appar- ently trivial the incident, is, 1 assume, essential to 'N. & Q.'"

In Hone's 'Table Book,' ed. 1866, at p. 119, is a portrait qf Simon, I^qrd Lovat, together