292
NOTES AND QUERIES.
[9 th S. I. APRIL 9, '98.
(xx. 21, 25). The Revisers probably retained
it simply because it is a literal translation
of the original, meaning struck to the ground
in the battle, put (as we should say) hors
de combat, but not necessarily killed or
slaughtered, as the Douay version repre-
sents it. The Vulgate has in the former
verse " occiderunt," but in the latter "pro-
sternerent," which exactly expresses the
idea. The modern slang is, I believe, used
only in connexion with " suit "; we never
hear "it baffled" or "puzzled me down to
the ground." W. T. LYNN.
Blackheath.
An old variant of this phrase was " up and down." In John Day's 'He of Guls,' 1606 (p. 98 of Mr. Bullen's reprint), Mopsa says :
"But indeed I loue to haue a thing wel done, for, sales my mother, a thinge once wel done is twice done ; and I am in her mind for that, vp and downe."
And Mr. Davies, in his * Supplementary Glos- sary,' under 'Up and down,' gives from Detail's translation of Erasmus's 'Apoph- thegmes,' 1542 (p. 324 of 1877 reprint) :
"He [Phocion] was euen Socrates vp and downe in this pointe and behalfe, that no man euer sawe hym either laughe or weepe."
G. L. APPERSON.
Is it certain that the expression as em- ployed in Judges xx. 21, 25, is an example of the metaphorical use as we have it in the conversation of vulgar people now? Does not the "down to the ground" refer rather to the actual strewing of corpses r! rrjv yr}i/ (LXX.) ? A similar use occurs in Psalms cxliii. 3, cxlvii. 6, and other places, but with nothing of the " ground-floor " meaning.
EDWARD H. MARSHALL, M.A.
Hastings.
Our translators and their revisers might have chosen to omit " down " in Judges xx. 21, 25 ; but they could scarcely hesitate about "to the ground," seeing that the Hebrew artsah means precisely this.
0. B. MOUNT.
"STEED" (9 th S. i. 88). The 'Encyclopedic Dictionary' has " Stee, s. (A.-S. stigan = to mount), a ladder." The word is marked as provincial. In the 'Teesdale Glossary ' (1849) Miss PEACOCK will find stee = & ladder, de- rived from the A.-S. stceyer. Here also is a note to the effect that " the word ' stairs ' was originally spelt steyers, as in Chaucer." The ' Craven Glossary ' gives the form steigh. In the 'Westmoreland and Cumberland Glos- sary' (1839) and Willan's 'West Eiding Words,' Archceologia, vol. xvii. pp. 138, 167, the spelling is stey. In Lancashire steigh=&
ladder, also a stile (cf. Glossary, Bamford's
4 Tim Bobbin'). C. P. HALE.
' IN MEMORIAM,' LIV. (8 th S. xii. 387, 469 9 th S. i. 18, 110). I regard the following passage in Thomson's ' Seasons ' (' Spring ') as illustrative of Tennyson's meaning. After deploring the fate of sheep and oxen slaughtered as food for man, and thus merely " subserving another's gain," the poet adds :
Thus the feeling heart Would tenderly suggest : but 'tis enough, In this late age adventurous, to have touched Light on the numbers of the Samian
High Heaven forbids the bold presumptuous strain,
Whose wisest will has fix'd us in a state
That must not yet to pure perfection rise.
Besides, who knows how, raised to higher life,
From stage to stage the vital scale ascends?
I ask special attention to the last two lines. They were not consciously in my mind when I wrote the note ante, p. 18.
' In Memoriam,' Iv.
The wish that of the living whole No life may fail beyond the grave, Derives it not from what we have
The likest God within the soul ?
MR. C. L. FORD (ante, p. 110) seems to me to misinterpret this stanza when he says :
"The very words 'beyond the grave' seem to me to limit the wish to our own race a wish springing, as Tennyson says, from that which is Divine within us, man having been made in the image of God."
By
What we have The likest God within the soul,
I understand Tennyson to mean love. Love '\ prompts the wish that " no life may fail i beyond the grave," and love warrants the belief that by Him who made and loveth all ( " not one life shall be destroyed."
I cannot, with MR. FORD, see that the expression " beyond the grave " limits the wish to the human race :
"For that which befalleth the sons of men be- falleth beasts ; as the one dieth so dieth the other. All go unto one place ; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again." Ecclesiastes iii. 19, 20.
B. M. SPENCE, M.A.
Manse of Arbuthnott, N.B.
I
OXFORD UNDERGRADUATE GOWNS (9 th
i. 247). Mediaeval university costume is fully
dealt with by Prof. E. C. Clark in vol. 1. of
the Archaeological Journal. The two streamers
or liripipes which now adorn the commoner's
gown at Oxford may be survivals of the old
undergraduate hood, abandoned some time
before the sixteenth century. A long liripipe
was sewn on to the back of the undergraduate
