,
s. in. APRIL 22, m] NOTES AND QUERIES,
319
eu ry place he shall haue hame." Long home =
sr, ve, is first traced in R. Brunne, ' Handlyng
Sy me,' 1303. In 1300 the ' Cursor Mundi ' gives,
" A saac was not fra hame." An instance of Saxon
us of ham is given c. 1000. A quotation for " make
an honest woman " much earlier than any advanced
ma f be found in a translation by Dryden. Many
int jresting examples of the use of honeymoon are
giv ?n, with some of the less familiar, and now
ob? )lete, form honey-month. Attention is drawn
in :he prefatory note to the short article on the
___tentous word honorificabilitudinity, the materials
r or which are derived principally from Ducange.
seem to remember a use of the word in the
,r ier half of the century by one of our humourists qy Barham?). The origin of the much-disputed ahrase " to go the whole hog " seems supplied in a juotation from Cowper. An eminently interesting Explanation is given of the term hogen mogen, which 'signifies " their high mightinesses," the States ^ei eral of Holland. Those of our readers concerned n folk-lore will read with much pleasure the article ,in hogmanay. Dr. Murray discredits as a figment he alleged French cry Au gui menez, cited second- tand by Jamieson. The reason of the name hogs- ead, applied to a large cask=tonneau or muid, is aid to be uncertain. A full history is given of the |>hrase home-side, first heard in 1860. With the
ext double section, to appear 1 July, ./if will pass ito the category of letters that are done with.
[tstory of South America. By An American. Translated by Adnah D. Jones. (Swan Sonnen- schein & Co. )
OWAKDS the elucidation of the mystery as to who is
le American who is responsible for this ' History
' South America ' we have the knowledge that his
Litials are R. C. , that he is an ardent republican,
id that his work was originally written in Spanish.
|e is then, it may fairly be presumed, a denizen of
lie of the South American republics whose identity
lill scarcely be concealed from those familiar with
(ispano-American literature. Personally we are
lit curious on the subject. We credit him with an
jcurate and readable summary of the conquest and
velopment of the countries with which he deals
d with a sturdy and persistent strain after im-
rtiality. So little is generally known concerning
e countries with which he 'deals that he has
e field practically to himself. We have the
listoire de 1'Amerique du Sud ' of Deberle,
i '3 only work we know so comprehensive as this
'. aim, and books in plenty dealing with Peru,
!|azil, La Plata, Buenos Ayres, Chili, Ecuador,
ijip other places. So far as we are aware,
dkvever, we have no completed English work
crering the ground occupied by An American,
t mgh works on a much more extended scale are
ii progress. Not easy to deal with after any fashion
i i book so ambitious in scheme. Reading it is,
i some respects, like African travel. We come
!Um cities that have been or are important, and
v |U>n traces of ancient civilization that move our
ahmishinent, and then pass into saharas practi-
c y illimitable. A score pages serve to tell of the
dboveries of Columbus and his successors ; about
t'ce that space to describe the conquest of
S th America. On a commensurate scale is the
fc'bunt of the colonization and nationalities of
$' th America, with which the first part concludes.
T-fi leaves between two hundred and two hundred
ai fifty pages for the United States of Columbia,
the Empire of Brazil, and the varkms republics or
confederacies. If a little confusion is experienced,
it is attributable to the fact regrettable no doubt in
every respect that to the majority of us names such
as Uruguay and Paraguay convey few definite ideas.
R. C. gives us a fairly vivid panorama of the history
of the various states. On how limited a scale the
work necessarily is is shown in the fact that we
have but a solitary reference to Drake and two to
Raleigh, while there is no mention at all of Esque-
meling and the buccaneers. What is most to be ad-
mired is the vigour and impartiality with which our
author lashes the Spaniards and shows their cruelty
and treachery in their dealings with the natives. The
French come in also for censure, and we ourselves
are not spared. What are R. C.'s political views
are shown in the concluding words of the portion
of his work devoted to Guayana, in which he ex-
presses the hope that the South American states,
instead of quarrelling among themselves, will
combine to drive away all European powers, so that
only the flag of American states shall float in South
America. Pious enough is the wish, but we are
less sanguine than R. C. as to its fulfilment. It is,
at least, improbable that South America fara da se.
The Great Indian Epics : the Stories of the Rama- yana and the Mahabharata. By John Campbell Oman. (Bell & Sons.)'
To those who seek to know something all, perhaps, that is indispensable concerning the great Indian epics, this work of the Principal of the Khalsa College, Amritsar, which has been added to "Bohn's Standard Library," will be of high service. Mr. Oman, who is known by previous works on Indian subjects, claims to give, in a strictly limited space, the main incidents and most striking features of these two great Indian poems, which darken the mind as much by their length as by the endless crowds with which they deal. Abstracts enough are in existence. These are, for the most part, useless to European scholars. Mr. Oman has striven to give a presentment as accurate as possible of the works as a whole, and a just idea neither too high nor too low of their contents and their intellectual level. With the 'Ramayana,' or, at least, with some of its episodes, we had already some familiarity. We have perused in his book, with both pleasure and advantage, the account of the ' Mahabharata,' which is much the longer and the more complicated poem, extending to one hundred thousand versee. The pleasing task of perusal accomplished, we have placed the book among works of reference, and com- mend a similar process to those who have not time or capacity to obtain familiarity with the originals. Few indeed will be the Englishmen who will master the whole contents of the 'Mahabharata.' In the poetical passages of the ' Ramayana,' Mr. Oman uses the translation of Griffith, which if not inspired is fluent and melodious. Some illustrations one of them coloured, showing the great gambling match between the Kauravas and Pandavas, and serving as frontispiece lend attraction to a book the utility of which to a large section of students is beyonii question.
Desultory Notes on Jamieson' s 'Scottish Dictionary.' By J. B. Montgomerie - Fleming. (Glasgow, W. Hodge & Co.)
OUR friend and contributor Mr. Montgomerie- Fleming has joined in the crusade (for to this it amounts) against Jamieson's ' Scottish Dictionary.'
