V.MARCH io. IMG.] NOTES AND QUERIES.
193:
it must be an infamous calumny, for I never shall
give credit to unnatural horrors. 3 ' Vol. i. p. 240.
At p. 358 in the same volume further re- ference to the same affair is made by the Princess in another letter.
It is no cause for surprise that the author or authors of the (so called) * Secret History of the Court of England J made the most of this matter, and that reference to the subject was also made in The Examiner, one of the organs of the extreme Radical party. Perhaps some further enlightenment could be ob- tained from the MS. note-books of Charles Molloy Westmacott, editor of The Age, which were sold after his death in 1868. Are these still in existence ? II. L. MORETON.
PEACOCK AS A CHRISTIAN SYMBOL (10 th S. v. 69, 130, 177). At the penultimate reference I confessed my ignorance of the meaning of " peacock enkakyll." The last word is a ghost- word, and what is meant is clearly a "peacock in hakyll," i.e., in fiackle. "Hackle" here evidently stands for feathers in general, and not merely for neck-feathers, though this wider meaning is not given in any dic- tionary I have seen. "Pekok in hakell " was the third dish of the second course at the marriage feast of King Henry VII. (Camden Soc., 1 S. xxxvii. 115). It may be of interest to mention that about that time a peacock was worth Is., a swan 3s. 4c?., a goose 5c , and a heron 4c?.; while chickens, woodcock, and teal cost a penny each, and you could get five snipe for 2d. and a dozen larks for 3d. (ibid., p. 96). JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT.
The peacock was used in church em- broidery in the reign of our first Danish king :
" Moreover, Cnut took a journey to the church of Glastonbury, that he might visit the remains of his brother Edmund, as he used to call him ; and having finished his prayers, he placed over his tomb a pall, interwoven, as it appeared, with parti-coloured figures of peacocks." ' The Church Historians of England,' vol. iii. part i., containing
- The History of the Kings of England, and of his
own Times, by William of Malmesbury,' p. 174.
M. P.
4 'SMITH" IN LATIN (10 th S. iv. 409, 457; v. 13, 73, 152). In Strype's 'Life of the Learned Sir Thomas Smith, Kt., Doctor of the Civil Law ; Principal Secretary of State to King Edward the Sixth, and Queen Eliza- beth' (London, 1698, p. 25), we find the following lines, composed by Gabriel Harvey after the death of that celebrated scholar and statesman in 1577 :
Quis primus Rhetor? Smithus. Quis maximus
Hermes Linguarum ? Smithus. Geometres ? Smithus et idem.
Summus Arithmetics? Smithus. Legumqueperitus^
Antealios? Smithus. Physicus celeberrimus ? One E
Smithus multiscius. Morum Vitreque Magister
Optimus? Et Smithus.
On p. 39 there is an "elegant Latin Epistle, which was drawn up by the exquisite Pen of Ascham their Orator," addressed to- Smith, in which he ("Clarissime Smithe ") is called upon to protect the interests of the- University of Cambridge by every tie of duty and gratitude. Dr. Byng, Regius Professor of the Civil Law in Cambridge, wrote an epitaph (p. 240) on the statesman's death, of which I give the first two lines :
Hie sistas celerem gradum, Viator,
Magno Funera dum Smitho parantur. Besides " Smithus," we have Smithius," which Leland employs in a poem in honour of Sir Thomas " while he flourisht in the Univer- sity " (p. 239), from which I quote a couplet r.
Doctorum celebras, Smithi, Monumenta Virorum.
Ardenti studio, et Dexteritate pari. This may be a printer's error, the i being, put instead of the e ; but if Leland did use- the form "Smithius," he is not to be- imitated, for all contemporary authority is- against him. Smith, therefore, should be- latinized as Smithus. JOHN T. CURRY.
DOUBTFUL PRONUNCIATIONS (10 th S. v. 147). The question raised herein is as old as the- hills, and promises to be as eternal. When I was a boy we looked to the clergy as- authorities in pronunciation. Yet in one- parish the parson would tell us to "Ack-tioW- edge and confess," and in the next parish we- were bidden to " ack-no-ledge and confess."" No. 1 would read his first lesson from Deuter- on omy ; No. 2 would announce it as from. Deutero-Tio-my ; while about half the clergy said "either" and the other half "eether." And there we were, and there we are ! A venerable story up here in the north makes a pit lad ask his father which is right,. " either " or "eether," and the father answers that "owther" will do. But is DR. SMYTHE-. PALMER sure that " troth " and " wroth " ara generally pronounced as riming with "froth"? In over sixty years' literary experience I have never once heard them- pronounced otherwise than as put by Byron in the * Episode of Nisus and Euryalus ' from- the'^Eneid':
Now, by my life ! my sire's most sacred oath
To thee I pledge my full, my firmest troth.
RICHD. WELFORD.
Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
Is tryst long or short 1 Is not troth stilt pronounced to rime with both? It surely is- in the marriage service, and it is not often-
