Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 1.djvu/140

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [n s. i. FEB. 12, 1910.


cognate with the Goth, jains and the Ger- jener. There is one most remarkable fact about the use of the word, viz., that, although it must have been a common word in Anglo-Saxon, it only occurs once ; and it is not in Bosworth's ' A.-S. Dictionary.' And yet when Dr. Sweet came to edit King Alfred's translation of Gregory's ' Pastoral Care, 2 there it is, at p. 443, used in the most natural way, and duly provided with the fern. dat. suffix -re : " Aris, and gong to geonre byrg " ; i.e., Arise, and go to yon city. WALTER W. SKEAT.

" Yon, ?i " yonder,' 5 are used here in the sense pointed out by MB. BAYNE that is, of a more or less distant object or person. " Wh'aat r s yon ? " is a very common expres- sion, also " ower yonder.' 1 R. B B.

South Shields. =iisi ^_

DBINKING TOBACCO (10 S. xii. 369, 454). The meaning of Accipitrinum Prandium, about which MB. PIEBPOINT asks a question, is explained by the following passage in Sir Thomas Browne :

" As for what Aristotle affirmeth, that hawks and birds of prey drink not ; although you know that it will not strictly hold, yet I kept an eagle two years, which fed upon cats, kitlings, whelps, and rats, without one drop of water."' Miscellany Tracts,' V. ad fin.

What Aristotle, however, says ('Hist. An., 1 viii. 3, 17,' and 18, 3) is that birds of prey, with some slight exceptions, do not drink at all. With respect to the claim of accipitrinus to a place in Latin dictionaries, accipitrina is now the received reading in Plautus, ' Bac- chides,' 274, where it may be the adjective. Accipitrina as the name of a plant is quoted by more than one authority from the fifth- (or fourth-) century ' De Herbarum Virtuti- bus J (Apuleius Barbarus).

The idiom of " drinking tobacco " is found in Latin versifiers of the seventeenth century. Bibere, haurire, and potare occur several times in Raphael Thorius's poem on the weed for instance, lib. i. 214,

Et simul alternis funium potare cicutis. But the best example is in Caspar Barlseus's ' ^Enigmata,' Tabacum, which begins :

Non bibor, et bibor, et populo sum potus, et haud

sum.

Mandor ab Occiduis, nee tamen esca fui. Horace's fumum bibere (' Odes,* III. viii. 11) is curiously anticipative.

EDWABD BENSLY.

To the replies that have already appeared I may add that in Persian they say huqqa or qdlydn kdshlddn = to " draw." the huqqa ;


and kdshldan is the word generally used of smoking. Of liquids they use nushlddn io drink, but more usually khiirddn = to eat ; thus chae khtirddn=to drink (eat) tea. In the Indian languages, including the Dravidian languages of South India, the word used is " drink " (plna, &c.). But it is noticeable that in Bengali they use khdwa, which means " to eat " ; thus chiirut khdwa = to smoke ; cha khdwa = to drink tea. In Hindi the phrase is tambaku plna = to smoke, while tambaku khdna = to chew tobacco.

V. CHATTOP!DHYAYA.

Chapman in his comedies has pointed references to tobacco. The following lines, from ' All Fools,* Act II. sc. i., leave no doubt as to how the Elizabethans described its use :

And for discourse in my fair mistress' presence

I did not, as you barren gallants do,

Fill my discourses up drinking tobacco.

W. B.

OSBALDISTONE : ITS PBONUNCIATION ( 1 1 S.

i. 85). This surname is frequently to be met with in Oxfordshire records. I have occasionally found it abbreviated into Osbaston, the second and third syllables being run into one, owing, perhaps, to rural pronunciation and phonetic spelling.

EDWABD R. MABSHALL.

FUNEBAL PLUMES (11 S. i. 10, 73). An earlier example of the use of plumes at a funeral occurs in the ' Obsequies of Certain of the Family of Blackett of Newcastle,' one of " Richardson's Reprints of Rare Tracts," Newcastle, 1843-8. Sir William Blackett the second, five times M.P. for Newcastle, died in London in the early part of December, 1705, and his body was brought, by a series of stately marches, to be interred in the parish church of his Northern home. Among the items of expense are :

" A Herse and Six horses for the Body, two Mourning Coaches to attend it, w th a Shafts Marine, each drawn by Six Horses, at 361. a piece, is 144Z.

"17 Plumes of Feathers for the Herse and Horses the Journey, 6Z."

While the body lay in London it had been proposed to have a rail round it, " covered w th velvet and Black plumes of feathers,"' at a cost of 3Z. ; but this was not accepted. RICHABD WELFOBD.

Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

The instances given by MB. DOUGLAS and W. S. at the latter reference are certainly interesting, as taking us further back than the date given in the ' H.E.D.' ; but still