434
NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s. i. MAY 27, me.
name "Pinkie" is, F apparently, merely a
variant of Penge, which by virtue of the
Northern dialect has kept nearer to the
original form.
The occurrence of the form Penceat in the charter of 1067 is, doubtless,
- attributable to the attempt of a Norman
scribe to express the Saxon pronunciation of Penge, for in the charter of King Edwy of V 957, quoted in McClure's '* British Place- Names,' the locality in question is alluded to ^as " se wude the hatte Pcenge" (the wood Tmown as Penge), which instance might have served to direct Mr. McClure to the earlier spelling of the name. The following quota- tion from a monograph by Messrs. A. Giraud Brown and R. E. G. Kirk, ' The Harly History of Battersea ' (Surrey Archaeo- logical Collections, 1891), is here useful as indicating the liberties which Norman eccle- .siastics often took with the orthography of . Saxon names :
" First of all, it is doubtful if the Commissioners -were authorised in spelling the name [Battersea] with a P. The name had been written with a B for nearly four centuries previously, and has generally been so written ever since Domesday -was compiled ; but it has been seen that the letter P is occasionally used in charters of the Norman period. It may be that the Normans, not under- standing the name, attempted to identify it with a name they did know, Patrick ; but their attempt to -alter the spelling finally failed."
See also my own remarks re ' Hocktide,' a word whose derivation had not been previously accounted for, at 10 S. xii. 514.
N. W. HILL.
Dogmatic statements will not help us in the elucidation of a difficult name like Penge, which probably goes back to the -earliest period of the Anglo-Saxon settle- ment. The reference in the charter of the year 957 to Pcenge shows that the origin of the name had by then become obscure. Your correspondent says : " The tenth- -century form should be *Psenga (gen. pi.). The etymon of that is *Pseging-a, i.e., be- longing to the Paegingas or sons of Pago." Our ancestors did not put personal names in the genitive plural unless they were followed by a local name ; and Pago is not an Anglo- Saxon form at all.
In charters and other deeds written in Old English (as distinguished from Latin) the normal method of dealing with personal place-names ending (nominatively) with the '" sons " suffix -ingas was to put them in the dative plural, -ingum. Thus in King JElf red's Will we have " aet Beadingum and .-.set Beadinga-hamme " which illustrates
both regular formations. It is the same
with the earliest recorded form of Pang-
bourne, which occurs in a (presumably
genuine) charter dated A.D. 844 as "at
Peginga-burnan " and " Pcegeinga-burnan."
In my opinion the original form of Penge was
probably not certainly cet Pengingum,
i.e., " at (the estate of) the Peng(a Family,"
the personal name in that case doubtless
being a nickname from the normal Old
Kentish form, *pengan, of A.-S. pyngan or
pingan, to prick. An inflective form of
this verb, by the way, in all probability is
the real origin of the substantive " pang."
HY. HARBISON.
HYMN-TUNE ' LYDIA ' (12 S. i. 309, 377). Perhaps it may be possible for an expert to supplement what has been said of this tune with some account of another or, perhaps, the same revised entitled ' New Lydia.' In days when the rural parish churches of Scotland had no instruments to support the service of praise, the precentor in the lateran, having matters largely at his own disposal, occasionally liked to give his congregation a genuine taste of his quality by drawing upon his sovereign resources. One performer of this class once or twice a year chose ' New Lydia ' for his solo, giving it forth with extraordinary vigour and obvious appreciation of its musical value. The recollections from a somewhat remote boyhood are to the effect that the tune was rather florid, full of slurs, grace notes, and so forth, while the last line of each stanza was sung twice with a varia- tion of movement. A full account of this picturesque composition would be welcome. THOMAS BAYNE.
THE KING'S OWN SCOTTISH BOBDERERS (12 S. i. 248, 314, 356). I am obliged by the answers to my query, but I am not mistaking the King's Own Scottish Borderers for the Lancashire Fusiliers. The K.O.S.B. keep Minden day, and wear roses in their caps on the anniversary. What I wished to know was whether the red tuft on their caps was granted in memory of the rose gardens. They are the only Scottish Minden regiment, and shared in the advance through the gardens. S.
ENGLISH PBISONEBS IN FBANCE IN 1811 (US. xi. 66, 116). Thomas Rainsford, who had held commissions in the 8th Regiment of Foot and also in the 2nd Regiment of Life Guards, was a prisoner in France for eleven years. He was in 1816 appointed Provost Marshal at St. Helena, where he died, April 6, 1817. F. V. R.
