Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 7.djvu/99

. vii. FEB. 2, i90i.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

91

A reversion to first principles will perhap justify the author by showing how the tradition of Helicon first arose. We { start with eAtVo-o), " to wind," so we get eAt/c "abounding with eddies," and Helicon, a winding stream like the Mseander ; the pre sumption follows that the favoured " peak ' was named from the river, not vice versa Helicon's " harmonious stream " is said to have furnished the source of two fountain or springs, including (among others) the Hippocrene, with its own separate and dis- cordant legend connected with Pegasus.

To analyze too closely is to destroy the charm, for the bouquet evaporates.

A. HALL.

Cowper, amongst others, confounds the mountain with the spring :

Not Brindley nor Bridgewater would essay To turn the course of Helicon that way.

'Table Talk.'

Milton, I think, only mentions Helicon once in his English poetry, and there he is ambiguous :

Here be tears of perfect moan Wept for thee in Helicon. 'Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester.'

One would have expected on rather than in. Helicon may be found in his Latin poetry, and appears to be a mountain there. As this matter has been discussed before, it is possible that I am saying nothing new.

E. YARDLEY.

COMPLETE VERSION OF LINES WANTED (9 th S. v. 396). The British Bookmaker for March, 1894, stated that the " poem " of which your correspondent MR. R. M. Ross desires the full text was from the pen of Mary Packard Rollins, and was published in an American periodical, Good Housekeeping. I send the lines as reproduced in the Bookmaker, though with a feeling of doubt whether the full text is worth all the space it demands :

Pray, what did T. Buchanan Read ?

And what did E. A. Poe ? What volumes did Elizur Wright ?

And where did E. P. Roe?

Is Thomas Hardy nowadays ?

Is Rider Haggard pale ? Is Minot Savage ? Oscar Wilde ?

And Edward Everett Hale ?

Was Laurence Sterne? was Hermann Grimm?

Was Edward Young?. John Gay ? Jonathan Swift ? and old John Bright ?

And why was Thomas Gray ?

Was John Brown ? and is J. R. Green ?

Chief Justice Taney quite ? Is William Black? R. D. Blackmore?

Mark Lemon? H. K. White?

Was Francis Bacon lean in streaks ?

John Suckling vealy ? Pray, Was Hogg much given to the pen ?

Are Lamb's Tales sold to-day ?

Did Mary Mapes Dodge just in time ?

DidC. D. Warner? How? At what did Andrew Marvell so?

Does Edward Whymper now ?

What goodies did Rose Terry Cooke ?

Or Richard Boyle beside ? What gave the wicked Thomas Paine,

And made Mark Akenside ?

Was Thomas Tickell-ish at all ?

Did Richard Steele, I ask? Tell me, has George A. Sala suit ?

Did William Ware a mask ?

Does Henry Cabot Lodge at home ?

John Home Tooke what and when ? Is Gordon Gumming? Has G. W. Cabled his friends again ?

ALEX. LEEPER. Trinity College, University of Melbourne.

Two OF A NAME IN ONE FAMILY (9 th S. vii. 5). This occurrence is not of extreme rarity. I have five daughters who have the same name viz., Angharad their full names being (1) Ruby Angharad Gertrude, (2) Irene Clare Angharad, (3) Phyllis Gwenllian An- gharad, (4) Rosamund Angharad Kathleen, and (5) Sybil Helen Angharad ; all being named after a literary relative. I have seen it stated in print that a noted sausage-maker in the City has three sons named William the first, William the second, and William the third ; which is very odd if true.

MAGISTRATE.

TRENTAL =" MONTH'S MIND" (>9 th S. vi. 104, 195, 295, 414)." Trental " was a common word in the pre-Reformation Scottish Church. In the ' Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland ' (published by authority of the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury, Edin., 1877) we find, amongst other entries of a similar character, the fol- owing :

A.D. 1496. " Item to the preistis of Striuelin to lay a trentale of messis for the King, xxs."

"Item (the xxvi day of Junii) to preistis to say
 * hree trentale of messis for the King, iijli."

" Item (the xviij day of March) to the preistis of Sanct Nicholas Kirk in Abirdene, to say a trentale f messis of Sanct Sebastiane for the King, xxs."

"Item that samyn day (the xxv day of Aprile) to Schir Andro to ger say a trentale of messis of Sanct rlenjane, xxs."

1497. "Item (the xxvii day of August) giffen to -he chanounis of Cambuskynneth to say iiij trentalis f messis for the King, be the Kingis command, '

The price of a trental of masses was twenty shillings ; of a single mass, eightpence.

A. G. REID. Auchterarder.