110
NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. vn. FEB. 9, 1901.
Portland Street in 1769, and " whose daughter
Mary married James Winder." Is this tomb
still in existence, or is there any lengthier
record of its inscription 1 Any information
which might lead to the identification of this
Thomas Butler, who took the name of Cole
without royal licence, will be valuable.
H. M. BATSON. Hoe Benham, Newbury.
HENRY VII. Wanted a history of this king and his followers before he ascended the throne of England. E. E. COPE.
" CLUBBING THE BATTALION." What is the earliest instance of this phrase, meaning a bungled movement on parade getting the men mixed 1 * Advice to Officers,' 1782, has the following :
" A good adjutant should be able to play as many tricks with a regiment, as Breslaw can with a pack of cards. There is one in particular that I would recommend, namely, that of dispersing and falling in again by the colours ; which you will find ex- tremely useful whenever you contrive to club, or otherwise to confuse, the battalion."
The 'Oxford English Dictionary' gives only a reference to a speech in Parliament by Mr. Windham in 1806, in which he alluded to the phrase as an expression well known in the army. W. S.
AUTHORS OF QUOTATIONS WANTED.
And snatching, as they [sc. the years] go, whole fragments of our being.
A. 0. PRICKARD.
Ubi libertas, ibi patria.
Lucis.
LEGHORN.
(9 th S. vii. 47.)
H. G. H. doubts the received opinion that Livorno has been corrupted into Leghorn by English sailors. In favour of the accepted view it may be stated that the form Leghorn is not French, German, or Italian, but exclusively English ; also that sailors are especially prone to make foreign names intelligible in their own language in fact, to originate folk-etymologies. A few in- stances may be given. Thus the old Greek name of Euripus, which became Nevripo, the narrow channel between the island and the mainland, was assimilated by Italian sailors into Negroponte, the " black bridge," which has been extended to be the modern desig- nation of the island of Eubcea. Arise des Cousins, the " Bay of Mosquitoes," has been turned by English sailors into Nancy Cousins
Bay. They have also changed Uii
Salang, the Malay name of an island oil the
Malay Peninsula, which means " Salang head-
land/' into Junk-Ceylon, converting the
meaningless vocables into syllables not
wholly unfamiliar. This is much the same
as has occurred in the case of Livorno. In
like manner As Desiertas, the appropriate
Portuguese name of some small uninhabited
isles near Madeira, has been corrupted into
The Deserters by English sailors, who have
also turned Rio dAngra, the "river of the
bay," in West Africa, into Danger River a
very appropriate name. Mombaim, the name
of a temple of Devi, the great mother, was
turned by the Portuguese into the more
intelligible sound Bombaim, and the English
in turn made it into Bombay. Galla, " the
stone," the Singalese name of a rocky cape in
Ceylon, was made by the Portuguese into
Point de Galle, the "cock cape," and the
town adopted a cock as its crest. By the
change of Setubal into St. Ubes English
sailors have canonized a new saint, and have
given a local habitation to an old one by
changing Hagenes, the Norse name of one
of the Scilly Isles, into St. Agnes. Another
Norse name, onguls eg, the " isle of the strait/'
afterwards became Anglesey, the " isle of the
Angles," which it never was. The Welsh
name Aber-maw, the " town at the mouth of
the Maw," was made intelligible to English
ears by being converted into Barmouth ; and
a well-known case is that of Burgh Walter,
so called because it was a castle of Walter of
Douay, which, when the bridge was built
over the Parret, became Bridgewater. Less
familiar, perhaps, is the case of Martin Win-
gaard, a Dutch sailor, whose name, given by
Adrian Block to an island off the coast of
Massachusetts, was afterwards turned by
English codfishers into Martha's Vineyard.
ISAAC TAYLOR.
This is certainly not a nautical corruption, Not only is the old French name Ligourne, but Ligorno formerly disputed the spelling with Livorno in Italian, as Ligurnus did with Liburnus or Liburnum in Latin. I find the following three items in. ' II Perfetto Dittio- nario ' (Italian and Latin), Venice, 1658 : P. 269, " Ligorno, porto di Toscana : Liburnum " ;
594, " Liburnum : Naue leggiera, & igorno " ; p. 595, " Ligurnus, portus : Liuorno, porto." (See also ' Diet, de Trevoux,' Hofmann's 'Lexicon Universale/ Cluvier's 'Introd. in Univ. Geographiam,' and Vene- roni's 'Diet. Ital. et Franc.') We have a familiar example of the, like consonantal mutation in the Italian pargolo ; and as to the epenthetic aspirate, our ancestors had a pro-
