APRIL 30,
NOTES AND QUERIES.
345
The spelling rhyme is never found till
a<K>ut A.D. 1550, and was due to the meddling
i ymologists of the Renaissance, who derived
} e word from the Latin rhythmus, regard-
ess of history. And now we must either
cllow suit or be laughed at, because the
tajority of Englishmen are quite as regard-
ess of historical facts as they were in the
lays of good Queen Bess. The Frenchman,
- he Italian, the Spaniard, and the Portuguese
all know better. WALTER W. SKEAT.
PORTUGUESE BOAT VOYAGE. Some little
- ime back there was in a daily paper a letter
igned " Caravel," in which the writer, refer- ring to a small-boat voyage then in contem- plation, said :
"There is one long voyage in a small boat on record which has never since been paralleled, either
- in fact or fiction. In the sixteenth century, when
Unio de Cunha was Viceroy of Portuguese India, 1 Dio was ceded to the King of Portugal by the ruler of Guzerat in return for De Cunha's promise of ! protection against the Great Mogul. There was in . Goa at this time one lago Botello, who had been banished from Portugal for some crime, and he con- i ceived the idea of being the first to carry to Lisbon i the news of the surrender of Dio (which had long resisted all Portuguese attempts to win it by force ' of arms), and in this way earn his pardon. Botello
- set sail from Goa, on the western coast of India, in
' a boat 16^ ft. long, 9ft. broad, and 4% ft. deep. I Besides himself, there were three Europeans and four natives on board; but when they found out , what their destination was to be a mutiny took place, and three or four of them perished in the I struggle which ensued. Botello held on his course 1 towards Africa, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, i coasted the whole of West Africa, and finally
- reached Lisbon. The king granted a pardon to the
1 daring navigator, it is true, but he gave orders that his boat should be burned and the whole incident i hushed up. His Majesty was in trepidation lest it should get noised abroad among other maritime nations that the Indian voyage was a comparatively easy affair, and thus induce their merchant adven- turers to invade a quarter of the world which was at that time a close preserve for the Portuguese."
Can any reader of 'N. <fe Q.' supply a further reference to this adventurous voyage ?
J. D. W. Temple.
SEA-HORSE. A correspondent has sent me the following newspaper cutting:
"Considerable consternation has been aroused amongst the inhabitants of Portmagee, a small fish- ing village situated on the brink of the Atlantic, about ten miles from here [Cahirciveen], through the appearance of what is called a sea-horse to the people of the neighbourhood. It appears that a man named Michael Malvey, who owns a piece of land situated near Portmagee, and quite adjacent to the ocean, saw what he con- sidered to be his neighbour's horse grazing on a held of his a few evenings ago. He was naturally angry at the trespass, and went to drive the
'horse' off. But to his great dismay the animal
rave a sudden bolt, flourished its tail in the air, and
bounded into the waters of the deep. The thing has
since been seen by several persons swimming about
amongst the rocks which albound on the coast near
Portmagee. Those who have seen him in the water
vouch that he has a horse's head, and Malvey, who
saw him on land, declares that the creature has all
the points of an ordinary horse, his colour being bay.
The older inhabitants of the district view the ap-
pearance of the ' sea-horse ' with much alarm. They
tear he has come as an ill omen. It is seventeen
years since a ' sea-horse ' has appeared on the coast
here, and consequently great curiosity is centred in
the spot where this one has been seen. The place
is visited daily by great numbers of people curious
to catch a glimpse of such a curious creature."
Cork Herald, 17 Nov., 1897.
The horses of streams, lakes, and the sea are well known to folk-lorists, but they are becoming rare now. This is a very late survival. K. P. D. E.
THE TERMINATION " -HALGH." The learned and accurate Maetzner, in his famous English grammar, says that gh takes the / sound only in the combinations augh and ough. This is altogether wrong, because not only should there be added to these the combina- tion eugh (as in the dialectical words cleugh and heugh), but gh can also be pronounced like/ when it is preceded by a consonant (in the combinations Igh, rgh). Thus I find from Hope that Hargham in Norfolk is pronounced Harfam, and ulgham in Northumberland Ulfarn. Examples are rare, but the most interesting of them is -halgh, which is found in numerous place and personal names in the north of England. Already in 'N. & Q.' (4 th S. v. 296, 570) the surname Ridehalgh has been treated of, and said to be pronounced Riddyhoff. Then there is Dunkenhalgh (in Lancashire), which I do not know how to pronounce. I shall therefore be glad if any reader can tell me what it is called locally. I shall be glad to hear of any other names in this termination, and to know how they are sounded. The most common of them all is undoubtedly Greenhalgh, a place-name and also a family name, of which there are several bearers in London. One of these I know always pronounces the terminal syllable soft, as if written -hedge. But I am informed from another quarter that the more usual pronunciation is -halch or -halsh (I could not quite catch which). I shall be glad to have these facts confirmed by any native of Lan- cashire who may chance to see these lines. If they are true, we have here a pronunciation of the digraph unparalleled in any other word, and which to my shame I must confess I am totally unable to explain philologically. If old, it is a phenomenon of unique interest.
