Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 8.djvu/191

 9* s. viii. AUG. si, 1901.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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scurity of the rendering. This book attempts to give the sense, the one preferred sense, in current English. It thus fulfils in part the work of a commentary, e.g., John xv. 16, iva o TI av aiTi]O"r]T. TOV Trarepa ei/ TO> ovo/xart /*ou, So? vfjiiv, is rendered " So that the Father might' grant you whatever you ask as my followers." A high authority kindly showed me that this rendering, " as my followers," is inadequate, the corresponding Greek words here and the h Xptcrrw so frequent in St. Paul including a far greater depth of signi- ficance. Yet I venture to think this new translation is useful, the words in nomine Domini nostri J.C. being, I fear, too often repeated psittacistically.

I disagree with the new translators in using the plural you for the singular thou; this conforms to modern colloquial usage, but to dispense with thou is a damage to our grammar, and sometimes leads to obscurity, as Matt. xxvi. 32, 34, " I will go before you

into Galilee Believe me this very night,

before the cock crow, you will disown me three times." In John xvii., sometimes called the high-priestly prayer, the Twentieth-Cen- tury translators retain thou throughout.

Again, their way of interjecting " he said," " he exclaimed," &c., in the middle of a re- ported speech reminds me of the fashion of the eighteenth - century novels. The Greek order is simpler, familiar, and every way preferable.

It is in the rendering of St. Paul's epistles that the clarification of the meaning is most apparent. Take this as an example, Rom. xi. 28-31 :

" Regarded from the standpoint of the Good News, the Jews are God's enemies on your account. Yet from the standpoint of God's choice, they are dear to him on account of their ancestors. God never regrets his gifts or his Call. Just as you at one time were disobedient to him, but have now found mercy in the day of their disobedience ; so, too, they have now become disobedient in your day of mercy, in order that they also may find mercy and find it now."

The last three words are the rendering of vvv, not found in the A.V. or in the T.R., but inserted by Westcott and Hort, whose text this new company follows throughout.

T. WILSON.

AMERICAN WORDS. A trio of words that have escaped all dictionaries, so far as I know, may be worth anchoring here before they are wholly lost to memory. One of them is still in use in the farming sections of New England : it is snibel, meaning the pin that fastens the tongue of a cart to the body. This is obviously the Dutch snavel, German Schnabel, beak, point, hook. Proba-

bly the snibel was originally a hook. The word, of course, came through the Dutch.

Skipple, a three -peck measure. This is another Dutch importation, schejfel, bushel. The reduction of the meaning to three pecks indicates that the Dutch bushel was short measure.

Linkumfiddle, a visionary fool. I have heard my New England grandparents use this repeatedly ; but that it was not exclu- sively New England in use there is a curious proof. Washington Irving in his * Salma- gundi ' calls the imaginary pedant on whom he fathers absurdities "Linkum Fidelius," obviously a jocular Latinization of the fore- going. The word at first sight looks like a pure nonsensical coinage ; but the genesis seems to me very simple. There was a variant form ninkumfiddle, which is pretty clearly the original one, and carries us at once to nincompoop ; in truth it is the same word, with the unsavoury-sounding final syllable (dropped because it means in popular use merely "break- wind," and so was considered gross) replaced by a humorous verbal flourish. That flourish itself was no doubt chosen for its general significance of anything trifling, as in "fiddle-faddle," "fiddle-de-dee," or the common exclamation "Oh fiddle," for " fudge."

F. M.

Hartford, Conn.

WE must request correspondents desiring infor- mation on family matters of only private interest to affix their names and addresses to their queries, in order that the answers may be addressed to them direct.

MS. PLAYS BY WILLIAM PERCY, 1600. In his 'History of English Dramatic Poetry' (1831, vol. ii. p. 351, foot-note) Mr. J. Payne Collier deals briefly with a folio volume of six unprinted plays by William Percy, the author of * Sonnets to the Fairest Cselia,' published in 1594. It was then in the pos- session of Mr. Haslewood, of the Chapter House. I should be greatly obliged if any reader of ' N. & Q.' could inform me of its present whereabouts.

WILLIAM J. LAWRENCE.

Comber, County Down.

GOLD RING FOUND AT DORCHESTER. In Gough's edition of Camden's * Britannia ' there is an engraving and description of a gold ring -found in 1736 at Dorchester, Oxon, and bearing the date DCXXXVL, which suggested a connexion with St. Berin, who became bishop there in 635. It is set with (appa- rently) a Roman gem engraved with a meta,