Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 11.djvu/362

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [ii s. xi. MAY i, 1915.


traces of the heathen beliefs of our ancestors "being preserved in the names which they be- queathed to their properties, or even any traces of folk-lore ever having prevailed among them. Other counties may retain there Wednesburys and Thursfields ; but Mr. Roberts finds none of these interesting survivals of antiquity in Sussex. Mr Rudyard Kipling may scan his lists, and find, to his disgust, not a vestige left of Puck at Popk's Hill or anywhere else. We find it difficult to consent to this total obliteration of old beliefs, and rather think it argues a want of keenness of research on the part of the observer. Some story would seem to lie at the bottom of Halnaker if it tands, as it may, for halga-n-cecer, saint's land, though that meaning is completely effaced in its fourteenth-century folk-etymology, " Half naked." Another popular etymology, mentioned AS far back as in Leland's ' Itinerary ' (1535-63), is Fairlight, near Hastings, supposed to have been originally Fareley, the Ley of one Faer. It is characteristic of the recent researcher that he finds the personal element in place-names much more frequently than his predecessors did. On p. 135 nolvng is a misprint for rotung.

Five Articles on War. (New-Church Press, 6d.

MOST works on the War have some special interest, And in these articles, reprinted from The New- Church Magazine, we have the views of the Swedenborgians. The writers are Mr. Arthur E. Beilby, Mr. R. R. Rodgers, Mr. Joseph Deans, Mr. E. J. Pulsford, and Mr. James R. Rendell. The last-named quotes what Swedenborg wrote : " Wars that have as an end the defence of the country and the Church are not contrary to charity." Although Swedenborg had no personal experience of warfare, it will be remembered that he was interested in military appliances, for " in the ' Dsedalus Hyperboreus ' he provides us with a picture of a machine gun with eight barrels (machina sclopetaria ope cerw). To him also we owe the first suggestion for the construction of a eubmarine boat."

The Quarterly Review for April offers only two articles which fall entirely within the proper scope of ' N. & Q.' ; but these two are of un- common interest and importance. The first is the Rector of Exeter's criticism of ' The Golden Bough.' Dr. Farnell is competent, if any one is, to praise Sir James Frazer's colossal work as it should be praised, and he does not stint encomiums. But he renders to anthropological scholarship a much greater service by his shrewd, clear ex- position of the faults which lurk all too abund- antly under the brilliancy of this many-coloured web. Less experienced students have been aware of elements of fallacy and inaccuracy in ' The Golden Bough ' ; indeed, some of the con- jectures set down in it have an air of having started into life while the writer's pen was composing the previous paragraph, and it is not very diffi- cult to find passages which contradict one another. Again, old-fashionedness has already overtaken some of the conclusions and much of the method of the work. It is, then, very useful to have fluch an essay as this, which focusses, corrects, and informs with detail some of the critical im- pressions of the general reader. It is no small compliment to ' The Golden Bough ' to say that it is really worth while to have a true opinion


about it. Dr. Farnell is particularly good where he deals with the inadequacy of the psychology, and he might with advantage have gone a little further into this. The second paper is Mr. Laurence Binyon's ' Indian Art,' the graceful literary quality of which would alone ensure it readers. Indeed, we must confess that we enjoy Mr. Binyon's discussions of art chiefly from the literary point of view. They are persuasive, full of insight, well-informed ; but art in them is the subject of art as a love-story or a battle is the subject of a poem ; a poet's vision of the subject, that is, or his handling of it, occupies the attention almost to the exclusion of the subject in and for itself. Perhaps it rnay be suggested in passing that any other treatment of art in writing is rare, and that the power of absorbing his readers rather in the interest of works of art in themselves than in his view of them is the singular gift of Ruskin. Sir Charles Stanford's ' Music and the War ' is a noteworthy paper, and the four essays grouped together under 'the heading * German " Kultur " ' each by an authority on the subject considered are emphatically noteworthy too.

The Edinburgh Itevieiv also is almost entirely given over to questions of the day. The excep- tions are Mr. Algar Thorold's study of Verhaeren and the Dean of Durham's ' Magna Carta.' The 700th anniversary of the Great Charter is a year of even more tremendous significance than were the fifth and sixth centenaries. The Dean considers that years are but " an inadequate measure of the distance which separates the thir- teenth century from the twentieth " ; it might, we think, more appositely have been pointed out that the problem of liberty is before us once more in a form as crude as that presented to John and his Barons, and, essentially, more simple and less complicated by a vital civilization tha,n it then appeared. Mr. Thorold might, we think, have chosen his illustrations from Verhaeren more happily, and might have shortened his account of early development in favour of a less meagre discussion of the poet's principal work. This is, however, only to criticise mildly what is a read- able and intelligent appreciation.

Mr. David Hannay, in ' England's Tradition of Sea-Power,' gives us an able and lively historical dissertation, which partakes also of the nature of argument, well worth attention. Of the other articles all concerned with aspects of the present crisis we may mention Mr. H. F. Prevost Battersby's ' The New Mechanism of War ' which, with much learning and ingenuity, opens up a truly terrifying prospect for the future ot mankind.


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