Queries. WE must request correspondents desiring information on family matters of only private interest to affix their names and addresses to their queries, in order that answers may be sent to them direct. in AERIAL NAVIGATION.-I possess an eighteenth-century French engraving (aquafort) representing a "poisson aerostatique mid-air, driven by Dom Joseph Patinho, who on the 10th March, 1784, navigated it from Plazentia, in the mountains of Spain, GEORGE MILTON, SCRIVENER.-I have to Coria, situated on the "Rivière d'Arrarecently finished transcribing the Ilfracombe gon," covering the distance of twelve parish register, and I found that the portion leagues. This information is conveyed by an 1566-1602 was a copy of an older register inscription on the lower margin of my print, made by a writer who describes himself which was engraved in Paris by J. Chereau as G. Milton, scrivener. I should be glad in 1784. to know whether this George was any relation of John Milton, scrivener, of Bread Street, the father of the poet. The register records the marriage of George Milton to Alice Hertsell on 22 Jan., 1600; the baptism of his son George, 19 May, 1601; the burial of his wife, 10 Feb., 1602; and his marriage to "Richorde " Allen, 5 Aug., 1602. Milton would seem to have left the parish soon after this, as the name does not occur again in the register and the entries therein are in another hand. The writing is very good, and the first page tastefully illuminated in green and black. Barnstaple. THOS. WAINWRIGHT. DICKENS'S BASTILLE PRISONER. The accuracy with which Dickens was able to invent and depict characters and incidents is often noticed. A book just published gives another illustration. In 'Romances of the Revolution,' from the French of G. Lenotre, by F. Lees, is mention of a case singularly analogous to that of the old prisoner of the Bastille, so pathetically drawn in 'The Tale of Two Cities.' The Marquis de Saint P- in 1787, for some fancied slight upon the Queen, was imprisoned in a maison de santé. During the Terror his relatives left France without being What foundation of fact is there for this aerial flight? GEORGE A. SIMONSON. FIRE ENGINES.-I wish to consult a catalogue of an exhibition of fire engines held in London six or seven years ago. Where should I be likely to see one? I have tried at the British Museum, and at the different libraries at South Kensington. Unfortunately, I cannot remember where the exhibition was held. There was on show a large number of out-of-date engines from the provinces. W. D. SWEETING. Wallington. [We think the exhibition was at Earl's Court.] SURNAMES ENDING IN -NELL.-Can any reader explain the meaning of -nell at the end of surnames, as Dartnell, Bonell, &c. ? Was it used as a diminutive ? If so, can any one give an instance ? YORKSHIRE W. H. S. following cutting is from The Yorkshire Herald of 30 January last : : "The old custom of honouring the kill by drinking fox-flavoured liquor was (says a correspondent) huntsmen had broken up the fox a number of foot revived in a Yorkshire pack this week. After the followers rescued a portion of the carcase of the fox and hurried to the little inn near at hand. Here 10 S. XI. JAN. 2, 1909.] NOTES AND QUERIES. they had a huge jug filled with beer, and into this they put the hams of the fox, afterwards drinking the vulpine mixture, stirring their glasses with the pads of a fox, and proposing reynard's health in a peculiar doggerel which was at one time regularly employed. One old Nimrod even ate a part of the fox, and the whole scene was one remarkable in the extreme." Can any reader of N. & Q.' supply the words of the doggerel in which wishes for the welfare of the fox were embodied, and give a clue to the hunt in which the rite above mentioned was observed ? ST. SWITHIN. 9 AUTHORS OF QUOTATIONS WANTED.Lady Rosalind Northcote, in her charming HERALDRY.-I know a shield of arms, book on Devon, p. 141, quotes two rough in glass, apparently old, in a church window, but spirited stanzas from a ballad entitled and shall be glad to know whose it is. ItFarewell to Kingsbridge.' She does not consists of France ancient and England, name the author, or say where the whole quarterly, impaling Quarterly, 1 and 4, Or, ballad may be found. I give the first an eagle displayed sable (or vert ?); 2 and 3, stanza :Gules, a lion rampant arg. The impaled coats may conceivably be Monthermer and Mowbray, but, if so, I cannot trace the alliance represented by the shield. U. V. W. LORD MELBOURNE AND BALDOCK. - I should be glad to have some information as to the member of the Baldock_family referred to in 'Lord Melbourne's Papers,' edited by Lloyd C. Sanders. On p. 524 the Hon. Mrs. Norton, writing to Lord Melbourne on a variety of subjects, mentions some projected improvements, about which she accuses his lordship of disturbing himself unnecessarily, and then goes on to say: "I merely repeat the observations of others when I talk of Baldock and his triumphal entries." G. YARROW BALDOCK. SIR H. WALKER: BOYNE MAN-OF-WAR. I possess a memoir written by Lieut.-Col. 1700. 5, Linden Road, Bedford. Can SULHAMSTEAD RECTORY.-In 1749 the site of Sulhamstead Rectory, Berkshire, was moved from one end of the village to the other. Where can I find any documents on the subject? (Mrs.) HAUTENVILLE COPE. On the ninth day of November, at the dawning in the sky, Ere we sailed away to New York we at anchor here did lie; O'er the meadows fair of Kingsbridge then the mist We were bound against the rebels in the North To be "out on the Never Never" is a bit of Australian bush slang. A book descriptive of this part of Australia was published by Sampson Low & Co. in 1884 under the title of The Never Never Land.' It would be interesting to know something definite about the Canadian "Never Never Country," and whether the phrase is in common use among Canadians as descriptive of that portion of their Dominion. J. F. HOGAN. Royal Colonial Institute, Northumberland Avenue. 'VILLAGE BLACKSMITH' PARODIED.-I remember reading a very witty parody of The Village Blacksmith' some years ago in a paper or review, but forget where. Can a reader of 'N. & Q.' say where it may be found? It is not in a recently published 'Book of Parodies.' (Madame) CHRISTINE AIGUESPARSES. CUTHBERT SHIELDS.-Can any reader give information concerning Cuthbert Shields, whom I have seen described as a Oriental scholar," said to have been shipped as a god by the Druses"? He was further known under the name of 66 Robert Laing.' What books did he write? CHRISTINE AIGUESPARSES. 2A, Rue de Berlin, Brussels. [Shields was a Fellow of Corpus College, Oxford.] TRAVELLING UNDER HADRIAN.-How long would it have taken, in the reign of Hadrian, for a traveller, with every facility afforded him, to reach Britain from Rome ? The captain Rutherford, C.B., is made. 230, Navarino Mansions, Dalston, N.E. 66 West Chepe by Milk Street is said to have been in 1332 a tavern, and it is mentioned in Henry Rede's will, 1420 ('Calendar of Wills,' quoted in Topog. Record, vol. iv. p. 35). "BROKENSELDE."—" Le Brokenselde" in What was a Brokenselde ? J. HOLDEN MACMICHAEL. -Has any list come down to us of the ships SHIPS RENAMED AFTER THE RESTORATION. whose names were changed after that event? The Naseby became the Royal Charles, and there were several other changes following the return of Charles II. K. P. D. E. GOWER, A KENTISH HAMLET.-There is Sandwich), Kent. a hamlet called Gower in Eastry parish (in get this name? How did the hamlet What is its derivation? R. VAUGHAN GOWER. Ferndale Lodge, Tunbridge Wells. Replies. MEDITERRANEAN. (10 S. x. 308, 351, 376, 456, 495.) ONE of the contributors to this lengthy discussion, after drawing my attention to could be elucidated by some one acquainted it, inquired whether the points still in doubt with Modern and Medieval Greek. mitted that Classic Greek alone, stopping I adshort, as it does, at about the third century A.D., helps but little toward the solution of such apparent linguistic riddles. Perhaps I may state at the outset that 'Aoup (in Smith's 'Dict. of Ancient Geography') does not stand for any known Greek word, but is evidently a misprint for "Аσрη. This is the more or less colloquial Mediæval and Modern Greek adjective for λευκός= white. Ducange and others after him are inclined to seek its derivation in the Latin asper, because a diminutive Turkish coin, the third of a para, is known among Greeks as aσπрov* (being white 66 * Cf. Littré's French Dict. : " 'Blanc anciennequelqu'un au blanc, le ruiner, lui gagner tout ment, petite monnaie de cinq deniers. Mettre son argent." 10 S. XI. JAN. 2, 1909.] NOTES AND QUERIES. by reason of its coating of tin), and hence 11 it proves to this day in the experience of all mariners, the Greeks had recourse to that system of euphemism whereby they sought to propitiate dreaded powers and avert unfavourable omens, and gave it what we may consider the coaxing_name of Eugeivos. So also Evμevides, the Furies, and evúvvμos, the left hand. To return now to the Mediterranean, the first to employ this name, as the distinctive geographical designation of a particular sea, was Isidorus (Origines,' xiii. 16, p. 181), who wrote in the seventh century. Before him Solinus makes use of it, but rather in the sense of a general description of landlocked seas, mediterranea maria (c. 18); With regard to the geographical point, for he still refers to the Mediterranean Аσπρη áλaσoa is an exact rendering of specially as nostrum mare (c. 23, § 13). This Ak Denghiz, the Turkish designation (which and Mare Internum, or Intestinum, were the occurs also as Bahri-Eliaz and Adalar-Arassi) designations usual with Roman writers; of that part of the Mediterranean which, while the Greeks knew the Mediterranean lying outside the Dardanelles, and between as ἡ ἔσω θάλασσα, ἡ ἐντὸς θάλασσα, ἡ ἐντὸς the shores of Greece, Asia Minor, and Egypt, τῶν Ηρακλείων στηλῶν θάλασσα, ἡ καθ' is studded with the innumerable Greek ἡμᾶς θάλασσα. The term μεσόγαιος was used islands, those of the Ægæan being included. by the Ancient Greeks in the sense of It was evidently so named by the Turks in contradistinction to the sea which is situated on the other side of the narrows, and which they called the Black Sea (Kara Denghiz also Bahri-Eswèd), owing to its sudden and violent storms, and principally, I should say, to the dense fogs which pervade it. From the Turks, the Russians also have so christened it, Czarne More; and among our Greek mariners it is usually known as Μαύρη θάλασσα. But the ancient appellation Εύξεινος Πόντος (or Εὔξεινον Πέλαγος, Mare Euxenum) is still in use in our literary style. Strabo (vii. pp. 298, 300-who uses also the designation Πέλαγος Ποντικόν, i. p. 21, &c.), citing Apollodorus and other earlier authors, states that it was originally known as "Aĝevos, “the inhospitable, owing to its dangerous navigation, and to the barbarous and cannibal habits of the surrounding tribes; but that after Greek colonies were established and commerce flourished, it was renamed the "hospitable sea." So says also the Scholiast of Apollonius Rhodius (ii. 550). Schymnus (734) terms it "Aĝevos. Herodotus, however, who speaks at length of the Euxine, makes no allusion to such later modification of its name; while Pindar refers to it both as ПóvTOS "Ageivos ('Pyth,' iv. 203) and as Evĝeivov Пéλayos (Nem.,' iv. 49). I am therefore inclined to think that the Black Sea being really "A§evos ab antiquo, such as 66 interior, inland, or midland country (cf. μevoyeía. Thuc. i. 100, 120; Demosth. 326, 9), exactly as the Latin loca mediterranea, and, indeed, the English mediterranean " (adj.) when applied to the central parts of a country which end without reaching the sea, or to as distinct from the sea-coast, or to rivers the inhabitants of an inland region, But the designation of the sea in question as Meσóyetos is of quite later times: when it first came into use with us I cannot state with any precision. Certain it is that we have now no other name for that sea*Ασπρη θάλασσα being a mere rendering of the Turkish term, to be heard sometimes among the sailors in those waters, which, as I have already said, are not to be considered as confined strictly to the Egæan Sea-the socalled Archipelago. This barbarous, but universally accepted term is one of the most curious examples of the distortion and transformation of the geographical nomenclature in the Levant, consequent upon the irruptions in those parts of swarms of Venetian adventurers, * Our geographical manuals speak of a Дevky Oaλaσoa when they refer to the White Sea in the Arctic Ocean, the Myeloye More of the Russians. It is this sea, no doubt, that Queen Victoria had in her mind when (as your correspondent D., x. 376, points out) she playfully deprecated the proposal of the Turks in 1853 that the operations of the British fleet should not include the Black Sea. Genoese pirates, and that expedition of numerous island-habitations of the Greeks bandits humorously known as the "Fourth of the Ægean. Thus Arcipelago can only Crusade." Such distortions are the result, have been a hybrid compound of a Greek partly of what is known as popular ety-sea-term, and an italianized Greek prefix mology," and partly of that self-conceded (apy from ȧpxós, chief, leader) signifying licence whereby more or less illiterate superiority, priority, pre-eminence. It was mariners rechristen in a fanciful manner exactly in this manner that the Italians had the places they visit. In the present instance the Italian name Arcipelago (in English texts of the sixth and seventh centuries Archipelagus and Archipelage) has given rise to all kinds of fantastic etymologies. It is thought by some to be a corruption of "Ayiov IIéλayos, a name supposed to be given by Greeks to the sea near the holy Mount Athos. Others consider it a compound of arco and pelago, because the arches of the monasteries perched on that mountain can be seen from the sea! More reasonable appears the derivation from άpxy and réλayos, as signifying the sea of the kingdom. D'Anville (Analyse de la carte des côtes de la Grèce,' Paris, 1757) disposes of the question in a more off-hand manner :— 66 66 The term occurs (apparently for the first time) in a treaty between the Emperor Michael Palæologus and the Venetians, dated 30 June, 1268: Item, quod pertinet ad insulas de Arcipelago." It is then met with in Villani (c. 1345). But in a Venetian State paper of 1419 the medieval designation is adhered to, Ducatus Egeopelagi,' this being a rendering of the Greek Αἰγαιοπέλαγος, for Αἰγαῖον Πέλαγος (Mare Agæum). Πέλαγος in Greek signifies the high sea, the main, as distinct from the sea in general, and is further specialized when preceded by an epithet denoting the adjacent country, e.g., Μυρτῶον Πέλαγος, Κρητικὸν Iléλayos, &c.; as also in the case of Tóvтos, e.g., Ικάριος Πόντος, Θρηίκιος Πόντος. Now, as regards the Italian prefix arci (Fr. archi, Eng. arch), we are led, by analogy in language, to discern in it the difference which struck the early Venetian navigators, between the narrow lagoons and shallow ponds of their own island-home and the comparatively vast expanse and depth of the seas which separate the even more already in use the word Arciduca; and But this Now, as this sea is studded with islands, renowned for their number and beauty above those of any other sea, the word Archipelago soon came to be applied, by an water studded with numerous islands, and, extension of meaning, to any expanse of indeed, to any group of islands. was never the meaning of Αἰγαῖον Πέλαγος, and therefore I am all the more sorry to confess that some half-learned, slovenly, or slavish Modern Greek writers betray their ignorance, or their carelessness, by making use of such a grotesque word as 'Apx éλayos in the place of Aiyaîov IIéλayos, or, in respect to a group of islands, instead of IIoλúvnoos, or Νησοπέλαγος. Not that the But that Arcipelago is a mere corruption of the Greek Αἰγαῖον Πέλαγος is an impossible supposition, on the face of it. Venetians were incapable of even that enormity. They have left firmly rooted in Western languages such linguistic tours de force as Negroponte from Evрios. They heard the Greeks journeying there say: (ei)'s TηN "Eyрinov (vernacular for Evρirov); and there is a bridge (ponte) over the narrow strait. By a similar process they transformed Mount Hymettus into Monte Matto, the "mad mountain," thus associating the sound of its Greek name with the physical characteristic of Hymettus-the sudden storms that come from over it. |