96
NOTES AND QUERIES. tn s. i. JAN. 29, 1910.
WALSH SURNAME (10 S. xii. 446; 11 S.
i. 53). At the latter reference an entirely
new subject is started. There is no need
for your correspondent to make up new
phonetic laws for the Aryan group of
languages, especially as we all of us know
that the Greek for " eight " does not contain
X, but has K. And the reason why Sanskrit
has h for gh in the word for " daughter " is
simply because the word once began with dh.
The work is already done to hand, without sentences such singular errors. The name of the book is Karl Brugmann's ' Gnmdriss der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogerman- ischen Sprachen.'- WALTER W. SKEAT.
I regret that in my reply the Greek words OKTW and /cAi'Tos were spelt with \ instead of K. I intended the ^-spellings to represent hypo- thetical forms. V. CHATTOPADHYAYA.
51, Ladbroke Road, W.
LADY \VORSLEY (10 S. xii. 409 ; 11 S. i. 14, 58). In answer to C. H. G. I beg to state that I copied the epitaph on the notorious Lady Worsley from the seventh edition of ' The Abbey of Kilkhampton,'- which bears the date of 1780. HORACE BLEACKLEY.
WORDS IN OLD AMERICAN NEWSPAPERS : "FRANKLIN" (10 S. xii. 107, 270, 370, 492). MR. MACMICHAEL has missed the signific- ance of Lowell's " shiver n and of the ad- jective in ' ' franklin clean." There is nothing about a stuffed bird that need cause a shiver. But a stove on a cold day, clean and polished bright, does cause a shiver, which is added to by the " bushed asparagus n in the place where there ought to be a fire.
My statement to which MR. MACMICHAEL takes exception namely, that "it is pretty safe to assume that such a use of the wore [i.e. " franklin ll for "godwit"] is unknown in this country " may be incorrect, but i was not made at random. Halliwell's exac words are : " Frankline. The bird godwit (Span.).' 2 Halliwell gives no example o the word ; it is not recognized in the ' N.E.D. in the ' E.D.D.,' in ' The Century Dictionary, or in ' Webster's International Dictionary 1 and it will be sought for in vain in Newton' 'Dictionary of Birds ? (1893-6), in Baird Brewer, and Ridgway's ' North American Birds'- (1884), in Ridgway's 'Manual t) North American Birds * (1887), and i Coues's ' Key to North American Birds (1892). As, therefore, our knowledge o: " frankline n begins and ends with Halliwel it will be admitted, I think, that my state- ment is not wanting in cautiousness. Halli- well's statement is evidence, but not proof,
of the existence of the word " frankline " ;
but the silence of lexicographers and of
ornithologists is ominous.
MR. MACMICHAEL states at the last refer- ence that he has found Mr. Roosevelt using the word " franklin n in Africa. Will he kindly specify the passage where this allusion occurs ? A hasty glance through Mr. Roose- velt's deluge of words fails to turn up the allusion ; but it does disclose these two
" Then there were bustards, great and small, and
nake-eating secretary birds, on the plains; and
rancolins, and African spurfowl with brilliant
aked throats, and sand grouse that flew in packs-
ttering guttural notes." Scribners Ma^ar.me f
November, 1909, xlvi. 516.
"On several occasions I saw francolins and purfowl cut dcwn on the wing by a throwing- stick urled from some unusually dexterous hand."- Ibid., p. 528.
If these are the passages MR. MACMICHAEL. lad in mind, it follows that he identifies Halliwell's " frankline " with Mr. Roosevelt's francolin.' 5 Passing over that identifica- tion for what it is worth, let us consider MR. VtAcMiCHAEL's statement about his being ed " to suppose that the distinguished sports- nan was familiar with ' franklin z as the name of a bird indigenous to his own country, viz., Scolopax fedoa, the American godwit." MR. MACMICHAEL is correct in thinking (as )he works cited above prove) that the godwit is well known in the United States, even though Hudson's Bay lies far to the north of this country ; but he is in error in sup- posing that the francolin is the Scolopax: fedoa. On this point he has been led astray by Halliwell and also by an extract in the N.E.D.' In his first reply (10 S. xii. 270), quoting the ' N.E.D., ? he says that " Per- civall, ~'Sp. Diet.' [1591], has francolin, a godwit." Sir James Murray, under " god wit, n where this extract is quoted, gives this note : "In 16-1 7th c. often used to render L. attagen, Sp. francolin." An exam ination of Spanish-English dictionaries show that this rendering continued until the close of the eighteenth - century, as in the 1794 edition of his ' Dictionary, Spanish and English,' Baretti has "Francolin, s.m., a bird called a godwit.' 4 But even as early as 1617 doubt was expressed, for Minsheu s ' Vocabularium Hispanico Latinum et Angli- cum copiosissimum J says : " Francolin. L. Attagen and Attagena. A. a bird called a god-wit, by others, a Pheasant poute, forti ita diet : quod e Francia primum in Hispaniam duceretur"- In Connelly's ' New Dictionary of the Spanish and English Lan- guages, 1 1798, we read : " Francolin, the
