Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 7.djvu/278

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NOTES AND QUERIES, p* s. vn. AFML 6, 1901.

tershire, was in the seventeenth century located at Chelsea. The pedigrees of "both are entered in the Visitation of Middlesex, 1663, from which we learn that they bore arms similar to those of the Collets of Wen- dover, Bucks, the ancestors of Dean Colet. In what way were they all related 1

W. D. PINK. Lowton, Newton-le- Willows, Lancashire.

Qtglh*.

THE LATE MRS. EVERETT-GREEN. (9 th S. vii. 8.)

MY attention has been called to a question asked at the above reference by MR. W. D. PINK, of Lancashire, as to an apparent error in the notice of my late mother, Mrs. Everett- Green, which appears (under her maiden name of Wood) in the ' Dictionary of National Biography.' It is there stated that her father was the Rev. Robert Wood and her grand- father the Rev. James Wood. This is quite correct. But the identification of this Rev. James Wood (whose dates are 1751-1840) with a Presbyterian minister of the same name, generally known as " General Jemmy Woods," who was born seventy-nine years before (in 1672), is erroneous. The mistake is not embodied in Dr. Ward's text of the life of Mrs. Everett -Green, but has been introduced by the insertion of two brackets after the name of James Wood, viz., "(1672- 1759) [q.v.]" which refer to the life of " General " Woods given a few pages earlier, and credit him with being Mrs. Everett- Green's grandfather, in spite of the dis- crepancy in dates pointed out by ME. PINK.

The editor regrets these errors as much as any one : they had already been noticed, and stand corrected against' the appearance of a new edition of the ' Dictionary.'

MR. PINK is right in thinking that Mrs. Everett-Green traced her pedigree back to the thirteenth century. It was privately printed some twenty years ago for the use of the family. C. EVERETT-GREEN.

" S ARSON STONES " (9 th S. vii. 149, 234). I b is much to be desired that * N. & Q.' shall continue to be worthy of its name, and not become a vehicle of fibs and twaddle. A correspondent dealing with the origin of the Sarson stones, on which he appears to have some actual knowledge, unfortunately runs off into twaddle as to the origin of the name, about which he has no knowledge whatever. He says, " The most satisfactory derivation of the name Sarsens or Sassens is

from the Anglo-Saxon word for a rock or stone, ses, pi. sesen or sesans" One would like to know to whom this precious piece of bosh is " most satisfactory," seeing that its false- hood is not merety barefaced, but positively ludicrous, showing that Anglo-Saxon voca- bulary and grammar are alike unknown to the writer. There is no Anglo-Saxon word ses, nor anything like it, meaning rock or stone. There is, indeed, no Anglo-Saxon word in s with any such meaning, except the word stdn itself, the ancestral form of stone. And if there were a word ses, it could not by any possibility have a plural sesen or sesans (save the mark !). One might think from the way in which charlatans produce "Anglo-Saxon" words toorder, with impossible plurals for them, that we were still dealing with George Psalrnanasar and his language of Formosa, and not with the language of our own forefathers, which is now studied in every college and in many a high school. If a correspondent of 'N. & Q.' has not an Anglo-Saxon dictionary (he can buy Dr. Sweet's for a few shillings), and is quite ignorant of its grammatical inflexions, surely he can find an educated schoolgirl in his neighbourhood to whom he can apply for information, and who might keep him from venting his folly at large. Further on we are told that Prof. T. R. Jones propounds the remark that " perhaps the word sarsens is no other than the Anglo-Saxon word for rock properly pronounced." Now I have no doubt that Prof. Jones is, as another corre- spondent assures us, " the authority on the subject" of "the full geological history "of these stones " ; but one is sorry to see him imperil his scientific reputation by flounder- ing in a science of which he evidently knows nothing, and so making himself a vehicle of unscientific error. I wonder what Prof. Jones would think if an etymologist, who knew nothing of geology, were to round off his etymology of chalk by suggesting that "perhaps after all chalk is a derivative of cheese, and that coal is no other than cheese properly charred." This would be nearly as sapient as his " Anglo-Saxon word for rock properly pronounced."

To stop the squirt of bogus " Anglo-Saxon " with which your pages are from time to time besmirched, would it not be desirable to require from every contributor professing to supply Anglo-Saxon etymologies a certifi- cate that he had actually found the words in an Anglo Saxon dictionary 1 I arn sure I should gladly submit to such a rule ; and so, I do not doubt, would my friend PROF. SKEAT. J. A. H. MURRAY.