Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 9.djvu/82

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. ix. JAN. 25, 1902.

stood. Here ifc was that Bunyan preached his last sermon, on Sunday, 19 August, 1688. This sermon was, I believe, eventu- ally printed, but I am at present unaware of its title. JOHN T. PAGE.

West Haddon, Northamptonshire.

GUINEA (9 th S. viii. 461). -The following epigram from 'Elegant Extracts,' 1790, vol. i. p. 838, if not taking up too much room in your columns, may prove amusing and interesting. The name of the author is not given :

As Quin and Foote, one day walk'd out

To view the country round, In merry mood, they 'chatting stood,

Hard by the village-pound. Foote from his poke, a shilling took,

And said, " I '11 bet a penny, In a short space, within this place,

I '11 make this piece a guinea." Upon the ground, within the pound

The shilling soon was thrown : " Behold," says Foote, " the thing 's made out, For there is one pound one."

" I wonder not," says Quin, " that thought, Should in your head be found,

Since that's the way, your debts you pay- One shilling in the pound."

What are called spade-ace guineas are fre- quently hung on watch-chains.

JOHN PICKFORD, M.A.

Newbourne Rectory, Woodbridge.

SHELLEY'S COTTAGE AT LYNMOUTH, DEVON (9 th S. viii. 523). Prof. Edward Dowden, in his life of the poet (1886), vol. i. p. 278, says in a foot-note :

"The house occupied by Shelley has been pulled down and aiiother is built on the site. The precise spot was pointed out by Mary Blackmore, adopted daughter of Shelley's landlady, to Miss Blind. ' It is,' Miss Blind writes, 'at Lynmouth, not Lynton, not touching the river, but some way back on the other side of the road.' Mrs. Blackmore had a vivid recollection of Shelley."

A. R. BAYLEY.

" HALSH" (9 th S. viii. 81, 255, 327, 411, 509, 529). Courtesy seems to require that I should acknowledge the communication at the last reference of the writer who signs Q. V. (If I knew that those letters were his initials it would save a seeming circumlocution.) 1 irstly, then, does not his instance show that i? ' 1 D u lcfclonar y ' is incorrect in indicating that > halch is obsolete, seeing that he cites it as in use 1 I cannot at the moment decide this question definitely, because I have not seen the paper mentioned. And, secondly, " halch " being conceded, "halsh" also should be re- corded as a main word. Moreover, " halsh " and 'halsh-band" should be given as sub- stantives, ARTHUR MAYALL.

"KNEVEL" (9 th S. ix. 9). This is certainly not " pure English." It is Low German and Dutch. The corresponding form in High German is Knebel, of which Dr. Kluge, in his 'Etymological German Dictionary,' 1891, re- marks that it is still doubtful whether in this sense, first recorded in modern High German, it is developed out of the O.H.G. knebil, "cross-beam, girder, cross-bar, cord, fetter, knuckle," or whether it is another word, con- nected with Anglo-Saxon cenep, Old Frisian kenep, Old Norse kampr, "moustache." Be this as it may, the lost English word for the hair on the upper lip is not knevel, but rather kemp, which is defined by Dr. Murray as now

meaning "coarse or stout hair occurring

in wool," but must once have had the force of the Anglo-Saxon cenep, from which it appears to be derived. JAS. PLATT, Jun.

Mackay's assertion that knevel is pure English is utterly erroneous. It is Dutch, and is more explicitly written knevelbaard, defined as " barba vestiens superius labrum, cornua superioris barbse" ('Kilianus Auctus,' 1642); "the Muschadoes on the upper-lipp " (Hexham, 1658). Knevel has other meanings, especially, e.g., those of a packer's-stick (paksiok) and a " korte dikke knuppel, dien men sommige dieren dwars door den bek doet " (i.e., a short thick stick put transversely through the muzzle of certain animals), whence probably the application of the word to the moustache.

The moustache, which we know from Julius Caesar was cultivated by the ancient Britons ("capilloque sunt promisso atque omni parte corporis rasa prseter caput et labrum superius," ' De Bello Gall.,' v. 14), was also retained by the Anglo-Saxons ("The Englysshemen, at those dayes," says Fabyan, " vsed the heer of theyr ouer lyppes shadde [i.e., parted] and nat shauen "), in whose tongue it was called cenep* Whether there was another word for it, my acquaintance with Old English is not sufficient to enable me to say. Cenep, however, appears to have no affinity with knevel.

Our word moustache was taken, not from the Spaniards, but from the French, who had borrowed it from the Italians, the earliest known use of the French word dating from the fifteenth century (" Grec portant la barbette moustache," Jean Le Maire, quoted in Hatzfeld's dictionary). The Old French

Chronicles,' an. 1056, ed. Thorpe, who hazards a wrong rendering ; and it is given with the meaning of bridle or bridle-bit (lupatum) in Wright- Wiilcker's ' Vocabularies ' (31, 4 ; 486, 16; cf. 430, 14),
 * I find this word in the plural in the ' A.-S.