466
NOTES AND QUERIES. [10* s. n. DEC. 10, 1904.
find no trace of the poet ever having had the
slightest knowledge of Spanish, nor any
editor hinting at even such a possibility.
Not long ago, however, there came into my
possession a rare little volume bearing this
title :
"A Dialogue Between Scipio and Bergansa, Two Dogs belonging to the City of Toledo. Giving an Account of their Lives and Adventures. With Their Reflections on the Lives, Humours, and Employments of the Masters they lived with. To which is annexed, The Comical History of Rincon and Cortado. Both Written by the Celebrated Author of Don Quixote ; And now first Translated From the Spanish Original. London : Printed for S. Bladon, in Pater-noster-Row. MDCCLXVII."
It is more than likely that Burns may have come into possession of this translation of the ' Colloquio ' ; for it is just such a book as the pedlars of his day would carry about with them for sale in the rural districts of the country. It will be remembered, as a case in point, that the famous Richard Baxter first became acquainted with the ' Bruised Reed' of Dr. Richard Sibbes in this way. "And about that time," says Baxter in his autobiography, "it pleased God that a poor Pedlar came to the door that had Ballads and some good Books : and my Father bought of him Dr. Sibbes's 'Bruised Reed.'" This 4 Dialogue ' is a very curious and a very interesting little book ; but it is only in idea that it can for a moment be mentioned in connexion with Burns's immortal poem. The copy before me is the only one I have ever seen or heard of. The Mitchell Library of Glasgow, which is singularly rich in Burnsi- ana, has not a copy in its fine collection. When the original of the ' Colloquio ' was first printed I have not been able to learn ; but the translation of 1767, referred to above, appears to be, so far as I can trace, the only one in English.
Since writing the foregoing, I have con- sulted Mr. Watts's 'Life of Cervantes/ 1895. Of the contents of the volume above men- tioned he gives a very favourable account (pp. 170-2), and there can be no doubt that they originally appeared in the collection of
- Novelas Exemplares,' 1613. A. S.
" GUITH " IN OLD WELSH. PROF. SKEAT, in his reply on ' Witham ' (ante, p. 333), asks where guith with the meaning of separation comes from, and the question is not easy to answer ; but the meaning referred to was assigned to this old word as late as the thir- teenth century. In the Sawley-Cambridge MS. of the 'Historia Brittonura,' which is denoted by letter C in Mommsen's edition in
- Chronica Minora,' vol. iii., there is a marginal
note which explains " Guith," which is the
Welsh name of Vecta, the Isle of Wight. We
are told (cap. viii. p. 148) that Britannia has
three islands " quarum una vergit contra
Armoricas et vocatur inis Gueith : quant, Bri-
tones insulam Gueid vel Guith [vacant], quod
Latine divorcium did potest." (The passage
italicized is written on the margin of the
Cambridge MS. and appears in a copy of it
made in the same century, namely, in Momm-
sen's L.)
The forms gueid and gueith reproduce, though not quite correctly, early methods of spelling the word guith. E, in all probabi- lity, is a misreading of o, the Welsh sounds gw having been spelt guo in the ninth cen- tury, when Nennius wrote ; while d in some early MSS. is used to represent the hard den- tal aspirate. For instance, it occurs in the Old-Welsh glosses written in a copy of Mar- cianus Capella in the eighth century, and it is also found in the concluding lines of the
- Book of Aneurin,' which was written in the
thirteenth. The true forms of the word, then, are Guoid, Guoith, and Guith. There is no representative of it in modern Welsh with the meaning of "divorcium."
A. ANSCOMBE.
WE must request correspondents desiring in-
formation on family matters of only private interest;
to affix their names and addresses to their queries,
in order that the answers may be addressed to them
direct.
VINCENT STUCKEY LEAN. In a recent number of your valued periodical this gentle- man's work, in 5 vols., ' Folk-lore Collections of all Nations,' was reviewed. It is stated in the memoir of his life (vol. i ) that his great-grandfather came from Lesmahagow, Lanark, early in the eighteenth century, and settled at Bridge water, Somerset. I notice in the third volume that a book-plate is inserted, showing his coat of arms and motto, which is that of the clan Maclean. I have never heard that the prefix Mac to a name was prohibited in Scotland except in the case of the clan Macgregor ; but I shall be glad to know if in Ireland at any time that prefix, as well as the prefix O, to surnames was pro- hibited. If such were the case, the probability is that in many instances it would not be resumed when families migrated to England. There was once a family named Lean in Cornwall, and Walford's 'County Families' of some thirty years back states that John Lean of that county resumed the prefix in 1843 ; he was long after well known as Sir
