Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 8.djvu/425

 9 s. vm. NOV. -a, IDOL] NOTES AND QUERIES.

417

LONDON, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER S3, 1901.

CONTENTS. No. 204.

NOTES : Sorrow's 'Romany Rye,' 417 Seventeenth-Cen- tury Poem, 418 Halfpenny Periodical Post "Mate" Marriage saving from Execution, 419 "Pillage, Stallage, and Toll" Scott on Conscience "Ycleping " the Church Edward Truelove "Electrocute," 420 Wishaw, co. Warwick Quaker Centenarian Modest Epitaphs ' Names of Streets in London ' " Gone to Wellingborough Fair," 421 Napoleon's Last Years, 422.

QUERIES : Havre de Grace "God speed you and the beadle" Legh of Boothes Paris Catacombs "Coats turned," 422 Armada Quotation Kynaston : Rhytterch

Sathalia "There is a day in spring" Jones and Ellington" Soul above buttons "'Castle of Kilgobben ' Isabel Adams "Gentle shepherd, tell me where," 423

" Sawe " Orchestra Renzo Tramaglino Blantyre " Engiven " Solomon de Ross Fairy Tales Pomeroys of Devon Manx James Simpson, 424 Rotherhithe, 425.

REPLIES: 'Le Bon Roi Dagobert' Royal Standard, 425 Dickensiana Birthplace of Beaconsfield Archbishop Howley, 426 Harvest Bell Reginald Heber Forage Caps Author Wanted " Politician" Uses of Grindstones, 427 Cartwright Dickens and Tong "Blood is thicker than water" Dublin Booksellers Pews annexed to Houses Kingsley : Christmas Carol, 428 Shakespeare Queries Pennington, Lord Mayor of London, 429 Buck- worth : Hyde : Bygo Motto on Bell" You might ride to Romford on it" Macaulay's Essays, 430 " Nang Nails " : " Nubbocks " "Went " Newcastle (Staffs) Families, 431 "Lungete" Sturgeon. Chamberlain of London Transfer of Land by "Church Gift "Author- ship of ' British Apollo,' 432 Comic Dialogue Sermon "Obelisk" R. Shirley Crossing Knives and Forks, 433.

NOTES ON BOOKS: 'The New English Dictionary' Book -Prices Current' - Garnett's 'Essays of an Ex- Librarian '" Miniature Series of Painters " Michell's Rugby School Register ' ' Recollections of the Old Foreign Office'' Illustrated Catalogue of Rare Books.'

BORROWS ' ROMANY RYE.' MR. KNAPP'S notes to the new edition of this work are not always correct. First of all, he is at total variance with the Hungarians with regard to the proper use of accents in their mother tongue. His rule evidently is to put an accent on a vowel whenever the Magyars omit it, and to omit it when they use one. The presence or absence of accents is not so unimportant a matter as, for in- stance, the author of the maps of Hungary in Dr. Poole's 'Historical Atlas' seems to think, ^is an accent changes the sound of the vowel, and thereby the meaning of the word. Thus "his price " and " bride," " dust " and "peasant," "period "and "disease," are expressed by the same letters of the alphabet in Magyar, but differ in the accent.

The editor's next rule is to write a zs when- ever the Magyars themselves spell the word with an 52, and vice versd. The result is again confusion, as, e.g., rozs means " barley," and rosz is the- equivalent for " bad."

Then we are told " Batory " is a mere epithet, and means " the valiant." Nothing of the sort. The princes of Transylvania of that dynasty spelt their name "Bathory,"after " Bathor," a place-name, their original home.

Of " Florentius of Buda," the author of a " rare " book, we are told that he " flourished 1790-1805." He died on 28 October, 1802, and his posthumous work was published by his brother Ezsaias.

The " poor Hungarian nobleman" at Horn- castle Fair is, of course, a purely mythical personage. Moreover, considering the large sum he could afford for a single horse, he could not have been so very poor after all. He could have bought a whole herd of them for the same sum in his own country in those days.

The editor does not make any comment upon the following exclamation of the Hun- garian (p. 236) : "Oh, young man of Horn- castle! why does your Government always send fools to represent it at Vienna?" Many more such uncomplimentary remarks follow on the next page. One of the representatives of the British Government whom the Hungarian had in his mind was no doubt Viscount Ponsonby. Thus we see Borrow's estimate of him widely differed from that of Lord Augustus Loftus, according to whose judgment the viscount was a keen diplomatist and a shrewd ob- server, with a sharp insight into character : a man of large views, of a strong and decided will, and one who courageously and firmly maintained his opinions. On this it may be remarked that Ponsonby was an Irishman, and, like many of his race, he was no doubt very obstinate when he had once formed an opinion ; but, on the other hand, it does not speak very highly for his shrewdness arid sharp insight into character that he was so easily gulled by the statesmen of Vienna about the true position of Hungarian affairs during the war of independence in 1848-9. His reports to the English Foreign Office made him the laughing-stock of the diplo- matists of Europe. One of his contemporaries writes about him :

" Having first caused the Hungarian troops to go over to [their arch-enemy] the Ban [of Croatia], he then made the latter a week after his [igno- minious] flight, assume a ' strong position ' on the mountains of Buda, outlawing, amid these events, Count L[ouis] Batthany [who was Prime Minister of the 'Rebel' Government, and was subsequently shot by the Austrians], along with many other nobles, by a decree of the [Hungarian] Diet [his own partisans], and sending, moreover, Madame Kossuth and her children to Trlamburg." ' Hungary Past and Present,' by Emeric Szabad, p. 319.

The viscount was evidently satisfied with any "old women's tales" he could pick up in the streets, and having diluted these with translations of manifestoes, decrees, ulti- matums, "war news," &c., culled from the