10 s. x. OCT. s, 1908.] NOTES AND QUERIES.
265
here as " hooligans." I place this on record
as during the last five years the class has
leapt into prominence, and justified the em-
ployment of two city magistrates. At any
rate, the term should be of interest to philolo-
gists and lexicographers. " Santapee " is
the Creole pronunciation of " centipede."
The " centipede " has been defined as a
youth (say) under thirty years of age who
" pursues the occupation of idleness with an
interminable industry." A gang of " centi-
pedes " for a consideration will waylay and
assault and beat any one. There is a street
ditty which says that
Man santapee bad, but
Oman santapee ivussa bad,
i.e., the female " centipede " is worse than the male. JAMES PLATT, Jun.
SNAKES DRINKING MILK. In the preface to ' Vikram and the Vampire,' Sir Richard Burton said, in 1870, " The learned and still living Mgr. Gaume ( ' Traite du Saint- Esprit,' p. 81) joins Camerarius in the belief that serpents bite women rather than men." I cannot at present either hunt up the theological treatise or find out which of the learned Camerarius family Mgr. Gaume quoted with approval. Perhaps some reader of ' N. & Q.' may be able and inclined to do so ; for the fables (the ancient ones at least) about snakes are an interesting department of folk-lore, and they are often worth recording. For instance, a very intelligent elderly Provencal peasant, on my asking him whether he had ever known snakes to suck milch cattle, assured me not only that they did so, but also that they would rob women of their milk if they got the opportunity. He knew of a woman whose infant was failing for want of the maternal milk, and the lack of it was ex- plained when one of the household, rising very early one morning, saw a large snake coming down a vine-stock which reached to the open window of the woman's bed- room. The snake was killed, and dis- covered to be gorged with milk. I found that this idea of snakes sucking nursing- mothers is commonly believed in Provence.
The modern Anglo-Indian stories of cobras, when about to bite Englishmen, being enticed from their intended victims by a proffered saucer of milk are perfect fables mere stories for griffins and sensa- tional magazines. I have often offered milk to snakes, Indian and English ; but it has always been refused, though some- times the snake was so thirsty as to drink
water eagerly when offered immediately
afterwards. The idea that snakes are
- ond of milk arose probably from the custom,
of Indians to put some milk or other such, offering near a hol^ in their garden where a cobra lives. This snake is respected ; it is useful, as it lives principally on rats ; it never molests folk ; and it is most rare for any accident to occur from it. The milk is put as an offering, and it is no more expected that the cobra will drink it than, that the rice and other food brought by pious Burmans to a pagoda, and placed an one of the altars round it, will be eaten. by Buddha or the Nats.
Much snake - lore has doubtless been brought from the East by gipsies, originally an Indian tribe. George Borrow probably- heard many snake-stories from his gipsy friends, and this may have led him to say ('Lavengro,' chap, iv.) that when a boy he was in the habit of feeding a viper with milk, whence he got the name of Sapengro (cf. Indian " Serpendren," snake-man). Per- haps he thought he had done so.
EDWARD NICHOLSON.
[Sir Conan Doyle in * The Speckled Band,' one of the Sherlock Holmes series, represents a snake as- attracted by milk.]
SHERLOCK : THE NAME. As to the origin. of this name, Canon Bardsley, in his 'History of Surnames,' suggests, with a query, " with shorn locks " ; but the rare word sherlokked occurs in Wright- Wiilcker's ' Vocabularies,' 586/20, as the equivalent of M. Lat. Gerlinus r with the addition " et dicitur de equo." I have not present access to Du Cange for the exact definition of " Gerlinus."
H. P. L.
. " MOTTE " : " MOT." This American word for a clump of trees is thought by the editors of the ' N.E.D.' to be apparently a special use of the French motte, a mound. This seems very improbable. It is, I submit, the same word as mote, Old Eng. mot, a spot, speck, or blemish a clump of trees being regarded as a dark patch or stain on the face of the landscape. The ' Guide to the Lakes,' 1780, notes that " a single tree often looks like a blot, and a plantation like a daub ' y (p. 274). A perfect analogy is presented by the Italian macchia, a wood, Corsican maquis, a clump of bushes or thicket (see P. Merimee, ' Colomba,' chap, ii.), both from Lat. macula, a spot. Florio gives :
" Macchia, any kind of spot, speckle, staine or blemish. Also a brake of briers, a firzie place, a- thicket of brambles or briers, a place full of bushes- or shrubs."
