406
NOTES AND QUERIES.
[9* h S. IL-Nov. 19, '98.
long before the reign of Edward I. In the
1851 edition of the 'Lives of the Queens of Eng-
land ' (vol. i. p. 447) a note is affixed in which
Malcolm is given as the authority for the
derivation in question, and he is said to be
" a practical matter-of-fact antiquarian, not
likely to give a romantic derivation"; but a
doubting remark is added, suggesting that
"the word 'Charing' simply meant to
express the ring or carriage drive where the
cars went round." What I wish now to point
out is that Miss Strickland must have totally
misunderstood Malcolm, who refers only the
" Cross," not the " Charing," to the time of
Queen Eleanor. " It is well known," he says
(' London Redivivum,' vol. iv. p. 309), " that
this vast triangular space was within the
village of Charing, originally detached from
London. The addition of ' Cross ' pro-
ceeded from the conjugal piety of Edward I.,
who commanded the erection of that solemn
type of Christianity to commemorate the
progress of his lamented Eleanor's remains to
the place of their interment." So that the
Chere Reine guess, " too funny," says PROF.
SKEAT. " to be pernicious." is not his.
W. T. LYNN.
"RUNNING AMUCK." The earliest quota- tion given in the 'Historical English Dictionary ' for the verb " to run amuck " is from Marvell, under date 1672 :
"Like a raging Indian he runs a mucke (as
they cal it there) stabbing every man he meets."
But according to Mr. Mason Jackson in his work ' The Pictorial Press ' (p. 50), there is extant an illustrated pamphlet, bearing the imprint, " London : Printed for T. Banks, July the 18, 1642," which contains a long and minute narrative of some murders on ship- board by a native of Java, who, immediately before the crime, "upon a sudden cries 'a Muck,' which in that language is I hazard or run my death "; and mention is made of what occurred "after the Muck."
ALFRED F. ROBBINS.
Right so, many prestes, prechoures, and prelates,
Ye aren enblaunched with bele paroles, and with
clothes also ;
i. e., the author has been referring to hypo- crites and whited sepulchres, and adds :
"Just so, many (of you) priests, preachers, and prelates, ye are whitened with fair words, and with (fair) clothes also."
It thus appears that bele paroles was a French phrase, which obviously means " fair words."
When Crowley printed three editions of ' Piers Plowman' in the year 1550 he was much exercised by this phrase. He took three shots at it, all different and all wrong.
It is clear that his MS. had " bele parolis," where the E. suffix -is was substituted for the French -es* and the p was written with a small stroke through the tail, which was the way of indicating " par " or " per " (indiffer- ently) by means of a contraction.
It must also be remembered that in many MSS. the letters e and o are very much alike. Hence in his first edition he printed " Belo- polis," where the second e was turned into o, and the stroke through the^> was ignored.
Whilst printing the second edition he again consulted his MS. This time he noticed the stroke, and took the contracted form to stand for " per." But he omitted the former o as needless. So this time it came out as " Belperolis."
In the third edition the printer seems to have been left to his own devices. Perhaps the word suggested to him " bell-ropes." At any rate he gave to the word the form " Bel- peropis."
And it is safe to conclude that Skinner's copy belonged to the third edition. In fact, he refers us to fol. 85 back.
WALTER W. SKEAT.
GHOST-WORDS. (See ante, p. 341.) 2. Bel-
jieropis. This astonishing word appears in
Skinner's 'Dictionary,' with a reference to
' Piers Plowman.' He takes it to mean " fine
ornaments," and in attempting to trace its
etymology derives it from the Latin bellus,
fair, and pyropus, a word used by Pliny to
.signify a kind of bronze. He is right as
regards bellus, but he had no chance of
explaining the rest of the word, as it arose
from a blunder, followed up by a misprint.
The right reading occurs in a singular passage in 'Piers Plowman,' B. xv. 113, where we find the following expression of opinion :
DESCENDANTS OF SIR JONAS MOORE, KNT.,
TEMP. CHARLES II. A query was inserted
some years ago in 'K & Q.' (2 nd S. ix. 363,
391), which was never satisfactorily answered,
as to the descendants of Sir Jonas Moore, the
Surveyor of Ordnance to Charles II., a founder
of the Greenwich Observatory, and a famous
mathematician and military engineer. The
' Dictionary of National Biography ' wrongly
gives his birthplace as Whittle. The correct
name is Whitelee, an old farm in the Forest
of Pendle, some few miles from Burnley,
Lanes. The Moores of Whitelee have been
settled there for some two hundred years, and
descendants are still living. The following
rough pedigree will be a brief way of show-
ing the descent: (1) Sir Jonas Moore, Knt.,
- Or, more probably, a contraction was
which signified either -eg or ..
use/d
