Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 7.djvu/502

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. VIL JUNE 22, 1901.

operation consists in covering grass land with long straw, coarse hay, or other fibrous matter, about 20 Ib. to the fall, &c. (See further Chambers^ Edin. Journ., 26 July, 1845.)

To harveyize or harvey. To fit or supply (a ship) with armour-plates treated by a process invented by H. A. Harvey, of New Jersey, U.S., and patented in England in 1888. The ' H.E.D.' has the following quota- tions with regard to the use of the word :

"The vessel is Harveyed to the water line"

(Daily News, 21 Aug., 1896). "The 'Harveyed' plates in the tests did not show any marked supe- riority over the St. Chamond plate" (Times, 12 July, 1894). " ' Harveyized ' steel plates will stop the heaviest cannon shot" (Times, 6 June, 1894).

To morganize or morganeer. These words, used after the manner of " organize " or " engi- neer," were coined from the name of the American multi-millionaire, whose colossal organizing of trusts in the United States is regarded with distrust in this country.

To yerk. A correspondent of the Daily Mail of 25 May writes :

"Mr. Yerkes has arrived to show us how to ' hustle,' and he is not going back till we have learnt. This is good ; but might he not, while he is getting ready to ' Yerk ' us to Hampstead, get his hand in and ' Yerk up' the L.C. and D.R., the ' Thames steamers,' ' the Cheapside 'bus,' ' the man in the street with the pick,' and ' Yerk ' the old air out of the Underground ; and when he is through, could we induce him to ' Yerk off' a few pro-Boers, Little Englanders, and other self-adver- tisers ? "

I am indebted chiefly for the foregoing to the Wandsworth librarian.

J. HOLDEN MACMlCHAEL.

If to this interesting collection nouns are added, a striking example is furnished by Johnson. Boswell, describing how the lexico- grapher "introduced his own opinions, and even prejudices, under general definitions of words," writes :

" Talking to me upon this subject when we were at Ashbourne in 1777, he mentioned a still stronger instance of the predominance of his private feelings in the composition of this work than any now to be found in it. 'You know, Sir, Lord Gower forsook the old Jacobite interest. When I came to the word Renegado, after telling that it meant " One who deserts to the enemy, a revolter," I added, Sometimes we say a GOWER. Thus it went to the press : but the printer had more wit than I, and struck it out.'"

In connexion with gerrymander, the correct derivation of which is given ante, p. 183 (though it might have been added that Elbridge Gerry was -subsequently Vice- President of the United States), Lord Salis- bury's fanciful, but erroneous description of its origin deserves to be noted. Speaking

at Reading on 30 October, 1883, the present Prime Minister observed :

"In America they have a plan of giving to every political idea some forcible name which remains fixed in the memory, and there is a process there called 'jerrymandering.' It was derived from a Jeremiah Mander, who was a great politician in his day."

This attempt at derivation recalls a portion of the conversation in the bar of the " Red Lion " at Milby, which opens George Eliot's story * Janet's Repentance' in 'Scenes from Clerical Life,' where lawyer Dempster, while consuming his third glass of brandy-and- water, defined the Presbyterians as a sect "founded in the reign of Charles I. by a man

named John Presbyter a miserable fanatic

who wore a suit of leather."

ALFRED F. ROBBINS.

To ballhornize. It is quite true that to republish a book or reproduce any work without alteration as original is in Ger- many known as ball-horning. Heine uses the term, and in the ' Jobsiade ' attention is called to the fact that cocks do not lay eggs, as might be inferred from the vignette or tailpiece in the Ballhorn primer. But this same picture of the cock and eggs, or egg, had served before in some such work as that of Aldrovandus or Paulus Jovius treating of marvels, where it was appropriated to the legend of the basilisk ; for it was generally believed, as may be read in detail, e.g., De Salgues (' Des Erreurs '), that when a cock in portentous times laid an egg, which was sat on by a serpent and a toad, there was hatched from it the dreadful basilisk, which in varied forms was the favourite monster in mediaeval sculpture. The Ballhorn picture as reproduced in the 'Jobsiade' resembles the rude cuts of the earlier editions of Sir John Mandeville's ' Travels.'

CHARLES GODFREY LELAND. Hotel Victoria, Florence.

To grahamize. Your correspondent has made a slight anachronism in regard to the date of the circumstances that gave rise to this name. The exposure occurred in 1844 and not in 1841, and great was the indigna- tion excited against Sir James Graham, who at that time was Home Secretary, though the system seems to have gone on unchallenged for many years. There is an account of the Secret Chamber in the Post Office in 'Posts and Telegraphs,' by William Tegg, F.R.H S. (1878), a former correspondent of ' N. & Q.' Periodicals like the Illustrated London News, the London Journal, and 'The Mysteries of London' of that date contained full accounts of the matter, illustrated by wood