Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 8.djvu/528

 520

NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. vm. DEC. 28, 1901.

information is evidently drawn from the bes sources. From him I quote as follows : " Th Irishmen do most commonly powder thei tobacco, and snuff it up their nostrils, whicl some of our Englishmen do, and often chev and swallow it." At the foot of the page (30 there is a note, which runs thus : " Observi the original of that nauseous and unwhole some custom of taking snuff." These extract speak for themselves, I think. As one fonc of a pinch, 1 might take exception to the epithets applied to snuff-taking, and say tha they are much more suitable to the othei practices mentioned ; but I forbear. A; regards smoking, let King James himsel: speak in the most intelligible of his writings " A custome lothsome to the eye, hatefull to the Nose, harmfull to the braine, dangerous to the Lungs, and in the blacke stinking fume therof, neerest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomelesse.' The quality of tobacco and its mode oJ preparation must have greatly improved one would fancy, since this diatribe was penned. JOHN T. CURRY.

PETOSIRIS AND PTOLEMY. Pliny in his 'Nat. Hist.,' vii. 49, mentions the astrologer Petosiris, who appears to have been an Egyptian, and considered that human life might, if com- menced under a certain sign, be extended in Italy to 124 years. Juvenal, in his sixth satire, amongst the many kinds of women of whom he bids us beware, includes one who is constantly regulating her actions by astro- logy, and when ill will only take her food (line 581) at the hour prescribed by Petosiris. Dryden, perhaps because the name could not readily be brought into his verse, substitutes that of the great astronomer and geographer Ptolemy (who wrote after the time of Juvenal) in the lines

No nourishment receives in her disease

But what the stars and Ptolemy shall please.

f The translators of Pliny for " Bohn's Clas- sical Library" remark that "Juvenal seems to use his name [i.e., that of Petosiris] as a common term for an astrologer." But it is rather too bad, and exceeds poetical licence, to use that of Ptolemy in the same sense.

Pliny connects the name of Petosiris with that of Necepsos ("quam Petosiris ac Necepsos tradiderunt "), of whom nothing further ap- pears to be known. Julius Firmicus, the writer of the * Astronomicon ' (which we are told in the * Encyclopaedia Britannica' was not completed till 354 B.C. [sic for A.D.]), is said by the above translators to call him an emperor of Egypt, whatever that may mean

It does not, however, appear that Firmicus speaks of him as such. Like Pliny, he con- joins him with Petosiris : " illi divini viri, atque omni admiratione digni, Petosyris, Necepsoque" (' Matheseos,' lib. iii.). But Thomas Taylor, in his translation (1831) of that third book of Firmicus which is called ' Thema Mundi,' has the following note (p. 62) : " We are informed by Fabricius that Mersham in 'Canone Chron.,' p. 477, has eruditely collected many things pertaining to Petosiris and Necepso, King of Egypt, from the most ancient writers on judicial astrology. We likewise learn from Fabri- cius that Necepso, to whom Petosiris wrote, as being coeval with him, is believed to have flourished about the year 800 of the Attic era, i.e., about the beginning of the Olympiads."

What real king of Egypt is intended by Fabricius it would be difficult even to con- jecture. W. T. LYNN. Blackheath.

BLACK ARMLET AS A SIGN OF MOURNING. When a black band round the arm was first adopted as a symbol of mourning, and to what extent it has been used, might be difficult to say. In Kotzebue and Mehrern's

Almanach dramatischer Spiele' for 1826 there is a one-act Posse, by E. Lebrun, in which one of the characters is a knavish notary, who is in the first days of widower- hood. A coloured lithograph of this hypo- critical lawyer shows a well-made, middle- iged man in black shoes, white stockings, Dlue kneebreeches (with seals hanging from
 * he watch fob), white waistcoat, white neck-

Dlack armlet, and this is the only sign of nourning visible. Yet he is described as 'inTrauer"; and another character in the
 * ie, and brown coat. On the right arm is a
 * arce speaks of his desire to put on a black

m Hause zu seyn." ' Die Verstorbenen ' is an amusing little piece, with more humour
 * rock, "um nicht der einige Freudentrager
 * han probability. WILLIAM E. A. AXON.

Manchester.

"POOR SOUL," A DRINK. This term, once well known to seamen, is now presumably obsolete. The only form of it which I can ind in our dictionaries is poso, which the Encyclopaedic' defines as "a kind of beer made^of the fermented seeds of Zea Mays." p oso is short for Mexican-Spanish posole or wzole, which again is short for Aztec wcolatl, defined by Simeon, ' Dictionnaire de a Langue Nahuatl,' 1885, as " boiss9n faite vec du mais cuit." The characteristically English corruption " poor soul," a picturesque xample of popular etymology, is explained y Dampier in the second volume of his Voyages,' 1697, pp. 43, 113. He says, "Posole