Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 9.djvu/473

 9*8. IX. JUNE 14, 1902.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

465

THE SONGSTRESSES OF SCOTLAND. A writer in a London literary journal, referring to a new book entitled ' The Spindle Side of Scottish Song,' expresses the belief that Scottish poetesses have not hitherto received special and separate treatment. The subject, he says, "has not yet, I believe, had a volume all to itself." For the information of those interested in the subject, it may here be said that a work of two volumes bound in one, entitled * The Songstresses of Scotland,' and written conjointly by Miss Sarah Tytler and Miss Jane L. Watson, was published by Messrs. Strahan & Co. in 1871. It is not satisfactory in all respects, needing revision in various minutice, as is customary with works on a large and comprehensive scale ; but it dis- plays biographical skill, taste in the art of selection, and a measure of critical accom- plishment. It comprises an account of the life and writings of ten ladies, viz., Lady Grisell Baillie, Jean Adams, Mrs. Cock burn, Jean Elliot, Susanna Blamire, Jean Glover, Elizabeth Hamilton, Lady Anne Barnard, Lady Nairne, and Joanna Baillie. Had the writers included Lady Wardlaw, Isobel Pagan, Mrs. Grant of Carron, and Mrs. Grant of Laggan, their record would have been fairly complete. All are adequately represented in Mr. Grant Wilson's * Poets and Poetr}' of Scotland,' 1877, and Mr. J. Ross's ' Book of Scottish Poems,' 1878. Prof. Veitch includes those that suit his purpose in his admirable THOMAS BAYNE.
 * Feeling for Nature in Scottish Poetry/ 1887.

DEATH OF THE TRUMPET-MAJOR AT BALA- CLAVA. The death of Trumpet-Major Thomas Monks, of the Inniskilling Dragoons, who sounded the " charge " for the Heavy Brigade at Balaclava, may be worth recording in trumpet- major of the Shropshire Yeomanry, his total military service amounting to half a century. His death took place at Shrews- bury on 25 May.
 * N. & Q.' For twenty years he had been

FREDERICK T. HIBGAME.

1, Rodney Place, Clifton, Bristol.

"CARIBOU." This is the Canadian word for the reindeer. The 'N.E.D.' gives, as its earliest occurrence in English, a quotation dated 1774, but I find the term in use more than a century earlier, in Josselyn's ' New England's Rarities,' 1672, p. 20, as "the Macarib or Caribo, a kind of Deer, as big as a Stag." Popular etymology derives it, I need hardly say incorrectly, from "carre boeuf." The 'N.E D.' describes it vaguely as "probably of native American origin." I have traced it to the Micmac, an aboriginal

tongue of the group known as Eastern Algonquin. Elizabeth Frame, in her interest- ing booklet * Micmac Names of Nova Scotia,' 1892, p. 8, gives the Micmac spelling as kaleboo, and states that it means "the shoveller, because they shovel up the snow with their broad feet in digging down for the moss on which they feed." These references should be of value if a supplement is pro- jected of Dr. Murray's great work.

JAS. PLATT, Jun.

THE NEW HOURS OF BUSINESS IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. There was noted in *N. & Q.,' 7 th S. v. 205, the fact that the House of Com- mons entered on 27 February, 1888, upon a new phase of its career, the Speaker taking the chair at 3 P.M. and public business begin- ning at 3.30. This may now fairly be supple- mented by the fact that on 5 May last, according to the Times of the following day,

"in the House of Commons the sitting was the first held under the new rule, which fixes 2 o'clock as the hour for meeting. The questions on the notice paper were all disposed of at 10 minutes to 3, and the debate on the Education Bill was begun before the hour struck."

ALFRED F. BOBBINS.

" TIDAL WAVE." The accounts of the terrible disasters in the West Indies have brought this expression again to the front. There is a very wide and almost universal misuse of the term. A wave in the sea created by an earthquake or volcanic action is an "ocean wave," a "sea wave," or a " volcanic wave," but is not a tidal wave. A tidal wave is the wave, and its complementary at the Antipodes, that daily travels round the earth from east to west, caused by the attraction of the moon. To call anything else a tidal wave exhibits a want of scien- tific information in the user. If I dump a boulder from the top of a cliff into the sea, I should be as much justified in calling the commotion thereby created a tidal wave as that made by the shock of an earthquake, &c. The difference is only one of degree, whereas the true tidal wave comes from a cause that is radically and totally distinct. The reason of the misapplication seems to arise from the confusion of the terms sea and tide. In conversation one often hears tide being used where sea is meant.

J. S. MI-TEAR.

" GIRAFFINE." In the number of the//arw- ivorth London Magazine for December, 1901. Sir H. H. Johnston, K.C.B., discoverer of the much-discussed okapi, writing upon jus discovery, used the expression " the giramne family." Girajfid might have been more