Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 7.djvu/477

 9* s. vii. JUNK is, loci.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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I am not, indeed, in a position to affirm that Hippocrates read that meaning into this termination. I possess neither copy nor crib of him ; but I believe that modern medical men do employ it in that sense, and, as before said, I want to know the reason the etymo- logical reason for their doing so.

PATRICK MAXWELL.

Bath.

[We imagine that the termination -itis was at first colourless and adjectival, and became specialized later to the meaning of inflammation. Thus, gas- tritis would originally mean a disease concerned with the yaarfip. The omission of the substantive (VOOOQ) in such a phrase occurs in classical Greek like that of Sophocles. See article -itis in ' H.E.D.']

PRISONERS OF WAR IN OUR LITERATURE. Has any list been attempted to be made of the mention of prisoners of war in our litera- ture? One might have thought that, writing with the memory of the great French war still active all round them, Thackeray and Dickens would have touched the theme; but, while the former gave us an echo of the Emigres in 'The Newcomes,' he did not deal with the prisoners of war who were for so long in England at the beginning of the nineteenth century many of them officers on parole who lived with private families. Dickens, I believe, has only one mention of these latter, and that a singular one, in 'Nicholas Nickleby' (chap. xvi.). Nicholas, it may be recalled, had agreed to "teach French to the little Kenwigses for five shillings a week," and their great-uncle, Mr. Lillyvick, the water-rate collector, wished to know of him whether he considered French " a cheerful language."

certainly.' 'It's very much changed since my time, then,' said the collector, 'very much.' 4 Was it a dismal one in your time?' asked Nicholas, scarcely able to repress a smile. 'Very,' replied Mr. Lillyvick, with some vehemence of manner. ' It 's the war time that I speak of ; the last war. It may be a cheerful language. I should be sorry to contradict anybody; but I can only say that I've heard the French prisoners, who were natives, and ought to know how to speak it, talking in such a dismal manner, that it made one miserable to hear them. Ay, that I have, fifty times, sir fifty times ! ' "
 * c ' Yes,' replied Nicholas, ' I should say it was,

Unfortunately, this flow of reminiscence was cut short, because "Mr. Lillyvick was waxing so cross that Mrs. Ken wigs thought it expedient to motion to Nicholas not to say anything " ; but I should be glad of any further references of the kind.

ALFRED F. BOBBINS.

A GAME OF BATTLEDORE. In a notice of Mr. C. S. Roundell's 'Village School Header,'

which appeared in the Grantham Journal a week or two ago, the critic gives his readers a thrilling peep into a schoolroom of sixty or seventy years ago :

" The old schoolroom was twelve feet square, and the education was reading, writing, grammar, and arithmetic, the master presiding over thecramraed- up covey of boys, who learned what he had to teach, or the contrary, and left school at the option of their parents. The master, in the writer's case, was cruel, and it was a blow and a word from him, his administration of punishment being, to the refractory, by a thick cane ; he revelled in punish- ment, but spared the rich man's son. If the boy had been before a fractious one, he was called up, and asked which he would have, Dr. Sharp or Dr. Easy. If he chose the former he would be laid across the master's knees, and a heavy wooden battledore applied to hii behind, with (say) six strokes, quickly laid on or, if he chose Dr. Easy, the application would be more slowly supplied, the battledore, by a Satanic humour, being inscribed on one side with * Dr. Sharp,' upon the other side with ' Dr. Easy.'

Drs. Sharp and Easy are strangers to me in this connexion. Was the " Satanic humour " which introduced them the private property of this particular pedagogue ; or was the jest common to the profession ? ST. SWITHIN.

" MAKAU," A PRECIOUS STONE. On 1 Sept., 1243, Edward, son of Odo, was ordered by

Henry III. "quod arestari faciat ad opus

Regis lapides preciosissimos tarn de makaus quam de aliis lapidibus pulcris et decentibus"; and on the 5th of the same month he was ordered to repair the cope called Capa Otueli,

and to have made for it "unum monile

quod valeat xxx. marcas, cum quodam magno makau, vel alio lapide precioso " (* R6les Gas- cons,' 1885, Nos. 1505, 1508). What was a makau ? Whence the name 1 Q. V.

BRONTE TOPOGRAPHY. Can any reader familiar with Brussels identify the house described by Charlotte Bronte in her novel 4 Villette' under the title of "La Terrasse"? The house is evidently sketched from an original. That the "Faubourg Clotilde" in the same novel was drawn from nature is less certain ; but if any suggestion can be made as to where it can, or could, be found I shall be grateful. H. E. W.

"THE BIBLE, CROWN, AND CONSTITUTION." I have an engraving which bears to have been " published by J. Asperne, at the Bible, Crown, and Constitution, Cornhill, 1 June, 1804." Has this sign disappeared ? W. S.

HAYDON FAMILY. Will you aid me in unravelling a genealogical tangle? I want to find the ancestors of William and John Haydon, who came to this state in 1630, on