Replies.

THE LEGEND OF LAMECH—HEBREW ETYMOLOGY.

(Vol. vii., p. 363.)

Etymologists are a race who frequently need to be drawn up with a somewhat tight rein. Our Celtic fellow-subjects will not, perhaps, be much gratified by Mr. Crossley's tracing the first indications of their paternal tongue to the family of Cain; and as every branch of that family was destroyed by the deluge, they may marvel what account he can give of its reconstruction amongst their forefathers. But as his manner of expressing himself may lead some of your readers to imagine that he is explaining Cain, Lamech, Adah, Zillah, from acknowledged Hebrew meanings of any parts of those words, it may be as well to warn them that the Hebrew gives no support to any one of his interpretations. If fancy be ductile enough to agree with him in seeing a representation of a human arm holding a sling with a stone in it in the Hebrew letter called lamed, there would still be a broad hiatus between such a concession, and the conclusion he seems to wish the reader to draw from it, viz. that the word lamed must have something to do with slinging, and that consequently lamed must be a slinger. The Hebrew scholar knows that lamed indisputably signifies to teach; and though perhaps he may not feel sure that the Hebrew consonant l obtained its name from any connexion with that primary meaning of the root lamed, he will not think it improbable that as the letter l, when prefixed to a noun or verb, teaches the reader the construction of the sentence, that may have been the reason for its being so named.

As to a legend not traceable to within some thousand years of the facts with which it claims to be connected, those may take an interest in it who like so to do. But as far as we may regard Lamech's address to his wives in the light of a philological curiosity, it is interesting to observe how naturally the language of passion runs into poetry; and that this, the most ancient poetry in existence, is in strict unison with the peculiar character of subsequent Hebrew poetry; that peculiarity consisting of the repetition of clauses, containing either the same proposition in a slightly different form, or its antithesis; a rhyme of thoughts, if we may so say, instead of a rhyme of sounds, and consequently capable of being preserved by a literal translation.

And Lamech said unto his wives,—

The construction is more favourable to the belief that the man of line third is the same as the young man of the parallel clause, than that he had slain two; the word rendered hurt is properly a wheal, the effect of a severe strife or wound.

As to the etymologies of the names mentioned by Mr. Crossley, we gather from God's words that she called her first son Cain, an acquisition (the Latin peculium expresses it more exactly than any English word), because she had gotten (literally acquired, or obtained possession of) a man. As for Lamech, or more properly Lĕmĕch, its etymology must be confessed to be uncertain; but there is a curious and interesting explanation of the whole series of names of the patriarchs, Noah's forefathers, in which the name of the other Lemech, son of Methusaleh, is regarded as made up of Lĕ, the prefixed preposition, and of mech, taken for the participle Hophal of the verb to smite or bruise. Adah, אדה, is ornament; Zillah, צלה may mean the shade under which a person reposes; or if the doubling of the l is an indication that its root is צלל, it may mean a dancer.

H. Walter.

The word lamed signifies, in Hebrew, teaching; the word Talmud is from the same root. It is the same in Syriac and Chaldee. The original significant of these three languages is to be found in the Arabic Lamada: "Se submisit alicui; humiliter se gessit erga aliquem." (Freytag.) No argument can be drawn from the shape of the letter ל (lamed), because, although popularly so called, it is not a Hebrew letter, but a Chaldee one. The recent discoveries, published in Layard's last work, demonstrate this fact; Mr. Layard falls into the mistake of calling the basin inscriptions Hebrew, although Mr. Ellis, who had translated them, says expressly that the language is Chaldee (Nineveh and Babylon, p. 510.), one of them only being Syriac (p. 521.). Chaldee and Syriac, indeed, differ from each other as little as Chaucer's and Shakspeare's English, although the written characters are wholly distinct.

Davis, in his Celtic Researches, has done all that was possible, taking a very limited view, however, in fixing upon certain linguistic resemblances in some ancient tongues to the Celtic; but a clear apprehension of the proper place which the Celtic language and its congeners hold in comparative philology, can only be learnt from such works as Adelung's Mithridates, and Adrien Balbi's Atlas Ethnographique du Globe.

T. J. Buckton.

The interpretation of Hessius (Geschichte der Patriarchen, i. 83.) is preferred by Rosenmüller:

"Ex hujus Doctissimi Viri sententia Lamechus sese jactat propter filios suos, qui artium adeo utilium essent inventores: Cainum progenitorem suum propter cædem non esse punitum, multo minus se posse puniri, si vel simile scelus commisisset. Verba enim non significant, cædam ab eo revera esse paratam, sed sunt verba hominis admodum insolentis et profani. Ceterum facile apparet, hæc verba a Mose ex quodam carmine antiquo inserta esse: tota enim oratio poeticam quandam sublimitatem spirat."

The sense of these two verses (Gen. iv. 23, 24.) is, according to Dathe:

"Si propter viri aut juvenis cædem vulnera et plagæ mihi intendantur, cum de Caino pœna septuplex statuta fuerit, in Lamecho id fiet septuagies septies."

Herder, in his Geist der ebräischen Poesie (i. 344.) says:

"Carmen hoc Lamechi laudes canere gladii a filio inventi, cujus usum et præstantiam contra hostiles aliorum insultus his verbis prædicet: Lamechi mulieres audite sermonem meum, percipite dicta mea: Occido jam virum, qui me vulneravit, juvenem, qui plagam mihi infligit. Si Cainus septies ulciscendus, in Lamecho id fiet septuagies septies."

T. J. Buckton.

Birmingham.

The legend of the shooting of Cain by Lamech is detailed in The Creation of the World, with Noah's Flood, a Cornish mystery, translated into English by John Keigwin, and edited by Davies Gilbert, Esq. The legend and translation, in parallel columns, are given also at pp. 15, 16. of Mr. Gilbert's "Collections and Translations respecting St. Neot," prefixed to descriptive account (in 4to., with sixteen coloured plates) of the windows of St. Neot's Church in Cornwall, by Mr. Hedgeland, who restored them, 1805-1829, at the expense of the Rev. Richard Gerveys Grylls, patron, and formerly incumbent of the living.

Joseph Rix.

St. Neot's, Huntingdonshire.

LORD COKE'S CHARGE TO THE JURY.

(Vol. vii., p. 376.)

Saltpetre-man.—An explanation of this title may be found in a proclamation of King Charles I. (1625):

"For the Maintaining and Increasing of the Saltpetre Mines of England, for the Necessary and Important Manufacture of Gunpowder."

This proclamation states:

"That our realm naturally yields sufficient mines of saltpetre without depending on foreign parts; wherefore, for the future, no dovehouse shall be paved with stones, bricks, nor boards, lime, sand, nor gravel, nor any other thing whereby the growth and increase of the mine and saltpetre may be hindered or impaired; but the proprietors shall suffer the ground or floors thereof, as also all stables where horses stand, to lie open with good and mellow earth, apt to breed increase of the said mine. And that none deny or hinder any saltpetre-man, lawfully deputed thereto, from digging, taking, or working any ground which by commission may be taken and wrought for saltpetre. Neither shall any constable, or other officer, neglect to furnish any such saltpetre-man with convenient carriages, that the King's service suffer not. None shall bribe any saltpetre-man for the sparing or forbearing of any ground fit to be wrought for saltpetre," &c.

It would appear that the saltpetre-man abused his authority, and that the people suffered a good deal of annoyance from the manner in which this absurd system was carried out; for two years afterwards we find that another proclamation was published by the King, notifying, "that the practice of making saltpetre in England by digging up the floors of dwelling-houses, &c. &c., tended too much to the grievance of his loving subjects ... that notwithstanding all the trouble, not one third part of the saltpetre required could be furnished." It proceeds to state that Sir John Brooke and Thomas Russell, Esq., had proposed a new method of manufacturing the article, and that an exclusive patent had been granted to them. The King then commands his subjects in London and Westminster, that after notice given, they "carefully keep in proper vessels all human urine throughout the year, and as much of that of beasts as can be saved." This appeared to fail; for at the end of the same year, the "stable" monarch proclaimed a return to the old method, giving a commission to the Duke of Buckingham, and some others, to "... break open ... and work for saltpetre," as might be found requisite; and in 1634, a further proclamation was issued renewing the old ones, but excepting the houses, stables, &c. of persons of quality.

During the Commonwealth the nuisance was finally got rid of; for an act was passed in 1656, directing that "none shall dig within the houses, &c. of any person without their leave first obtained."

Broctuna.

Bury, Lancashire.

J. O. treats The Lord Coke, his Speech and Charge, with a Discoverie of the Abuses and Corruptions of Officers, 8vo. London: N. Butter, 1607, as a genuine document; but it is not so; and, lest the error should gain ground, the following account of the book, from the Preface, by Lord Coke, to the seventh part of his Reports, is subjoined:

"And little do I esteem an uncharitable and malicious practice in publishing of an erroneous and ill-spelled pamphlet under the name Pricket, and dedicating it to my singular good lord and father-in-law, the Earl of Exeter, as a charge given at the assizes holden at the city of Norwich, 4th August, 1606, which I protest was not only published without my privity, but (beside the omission of divers principal matters) that there is no one period therein expressed in that sort and sense that I delivered: wherein it is worthy of observation, how their expectation (of scandalizing me) was wholly deceived; for behold the catastrophe! Such of the readers as were learned in the laws, finding not only gross errors and absurdities on law, but palpable mistakings in the very words of art, and the whole context of that rude and ragged style wholly dissonant (the subject being legal) from a lawyer's dialect, concluded that inimicus et iniquus homo superseminavit zizania in medio tritici, the other discreet and indifferent readers, out of sense and reason, found out the same conclusion, both in respect of the vanity of the phrase, and for that I, publishing about the same time one of my commentaries, would, if I had intended the publication of any such matter, have done it myself, and not to have suffered any of my works pass under the name of Pricket; and so unâ voce conclamaverunt omnes, that it was a shameful and shameless practice, and the author thereof to be a wicked and malicious falsary."

J. G.

Exon.

WHITE ROSES.

(Vol. vii., p. 329.)

The allusion is to the well-known Jacobite badge of the white rose, which was regularly worn on June 10, the anniversary of the Old Pretender's birthday, by his adherents. Fielding refers to the custom in his Amelia:

"On the lovely 10th of June, under a serene sky, the amorous Jacobite, kissing the odoriferous Zephyr's breath, gathers a nosegay of white roses to deck the whiter breast of Celia."—Amelia, edit. 1752, vol. i. p. 48.

The following lines are extracted from a collection of considerable merit, now become uncommon, the authors of the different papers in which were Dr. Deacon and Dr. Byrom, and which is entitled Manchester Vindicated (Chester, 1749, 12mo.). The occasion was on a soldier snatching a white rose from the bosom of a young lady on June 10, 1747:

Jas. Crossley.

BURIAL OF UNCLAIMED CORPSE.

(Vol. vii., pp. 262. 340.)

A tradition of similar character with that mentioned by E. G. R., and noticed by J. H. L., is reported to have occurred between the parishes of Shipdham and Saham Tony in Norfolk, of a corpse being found on the common pasture of Shipdham, which parish refused to bury it, and the parish of Saham Tony, therefore, was at the expense thereof, and claimed a considerable piece of the common pasture from Shipdham, in consequence of the neglect of the latter parish.

A fine continues to be paid by Shipdham to Saham to this time; and although many entries are made of such payments in the early parish accounts, beginning A.D. 1511, yet in no instance is it said the reason or cause of these payments being annually made. The said payments are not always of the same amount; they are sometimes paid in money and sometimes in kind, as the following instances show.

The first entry I meet with is in 1511:

Payd the halffe mark at Saham.

1512. Delyvyrd to same ij buschells of otts, viij^d; in sylv^r, ij^d.

1513. The same payment as in 1512.

1514. No entry of any payment.

1515. Payd for woots to Saham, vj^d, and ij^d of mony.

1516. Payd to y^e hallemarke, j^d (not said if to Saham or not).

This entry "to y^e hallemark" may be an error of the scribe for "y^e halffe mark," as in the first entry under 1511.

1517. Payd to y^e halffe mark, j^d (no doubt to Saham).

1518. No entry of payment to Saham.

1519. Payd to same for ij barssels of owte, vj^d; to same, ij^d ... viij^d

1520. Payd for ij busschellys of otte to same, viij^d; and a henne, ij^d ... x^d

1521. Payd to same for ij buschells of ots, xj^d, and ij^d in sylver ... xiij^d

1522. Payd for y^e half marke, j^d; payd for oots to same, vij^d ... viij^d

1523. Payd for y^e halff mark (no doubt to Saham) ... j^d

1524. Payd for otts to sam and wodlod ... viij^d

1525. Similar entry to the last.

1526. Payd for otts to same, viij^d; payd for wod led to same, j^d ... ix^d

1527. Payd the halffe mark, j^d; paid to the Comon, to (two) bussells otts, ix^d, and

a j^d in lieu of a henne ... xj^d

1541. Payd to Thomas Lubard, for ij bs. of otts to Saham ... viij^d

Payd to y^e seyd Thomas for j heyn (hen) to Saham ... ij^d

On looking through the town accounts of Shipdham, I find entries of—

The only entry in which I find anything at all apparently relative to the common is that under 1527. Whether the court books of Saham would throw any light on the subject, I know not. Should an opportunity offer for my searching them, I will do so.

G. H. I.

P.S.—Although I have given several entries of the customary payments to Saham, they are merely given to show the different modes of making those entries, and not in expectation of your giving all of them, unless you think any further light can be given on the subject. As before, perhaps the court books of the manor of Saham would assist.

It was an annual custom for Shipdham people to "Drive the common" (as it was called) once a year, in a night of an uncertain time, when all the cattle, &c. found within the limits or boundary of Shipdham were impounded in a farm-yard adjoining. Upon the common, all those belonging to owners residing in Shipdham and claimed were set at liberty, while those belonging to Saham had to be replevied by a small payment, which custom continued up to the period of the commons being inclosed. Perhaps this custom was by way of retaliation, by which means the charge of payment of oats and a hen was recovered by the money paid for replevying their cattle, &c. so impounded.

PSALMANAZAR.

(Vol. vii., p. 206.)

Your correspondent inquires as to the real name of this most penitent of impostors. I fear that there is now no likelihood of its being discovered. His most intimate friends appear to have been kept in the dark on this subject. With respect to his country, the most probable conclusion seems to be, that he was born in the south of Europe, in a city of Languedoc. A very near approximation seems to be made to the exact locality by a careful collation of the circumstances mentioned in his autobiography, in the excellent summary of his life in the Gentleman's Magazine, vols. xxxiv. and xxxv., which is much better worth consulting than the articles in Aikin or Chalmers; which are poor and superficial, and neither of which gives any list of his works, or notices the Essay on Miracles, by a Layman (London, 1753, 8vo.), which is one of them, though published anonymously. There is a very amusing account of conversations with him at Oxford, in the Gentleman's Magazine, vol. xxxv. p. 78., in which, before a large company of ladies and gentlemen who were curious as to the customs of Formosa, he gravely defended the practice which he said existed in that country, of cutting off the heads of their wives and eating them, in case of misconduct. "I think it is no sin," continued he, "to eat human flesh, but I must own it is a little unmannerly." He admitted that he once ate part of a black; but they being always kept to hard work, their flesh was tough and unsavoury. His grandfather, he said, lived to 117, and was as vigorous as a young man, in consequence of sucking the blood of a viper warm every morning; but they had been forced to kill him, he being attacked with a violent fit of the colic, and desiring them to stab him, which, in obedience to another "custom of the country," they had done. Splendidè mendax! was certainly, in his younger days, this much venerated friend of our great moralist. I should, however, feel inclined to forgive much of his extraordinary romancing for the admirable manner in which he settled that chattering twaddler, Bishop Burnet:

"He was one day with Dr. Burnet, Bishop of Sarum, who, after his warm manner, cried, 'Ay, you say so; but what proof can you give that you are not of China, Japan, or any other country?' 'The manner of my flight,' replied he, 'did not allow me to bring credentials: but suppose your lordship were in Formosa, and should say you are an Englishman, might not the Formosan as justly reply, You say you are an Englishman; but what proof can you give that you are not of any other country? for you look as like a Dutchman as any that ever traded to Formosa.' This silenced his lordship."

James Crossley.

GRAFTS AND THE PARENT TREE.

(Vol. vii., p. 365.)

I was surprised to find it stated as "a fact" by Mr. Ingleby, "that grafts, after some fifteen years, wear themselves out." A visit to one of the great orchard counties would assure him of the existence of tens of thousands of grafted apple and pear trees, still in a healthy state, and from forty to fifty years old, and more. There are grafted trees of various kinds in this country, which to my own knowledge are upwards of sixty years old; and I have little doubt but that there are some a good deal older.

The ancient Ribstone pippin, which stood in Ribstone Park, till it died in 1835, was believed to have been grafted. Such was the opinion of one of the gardeners there; and a writer in the Gardeners' Chronicle, 1845, p. 21., states that in 1830 he fell in with the Ribstone pippin in great abundance in Switzerland, in the valley of Sarnen; and he remarks that it is more probable this apple was introduced into England from that country, than the reverse. The question has not been conclusively settled.

Notwithstanding "the belief that the graft perishes when the parent tree decays" is pronounced by Mr. Ingleby to be a fond superstition, yet there are certain facts, well known to orchard growers, which give some warrant for it. Without committing myself altogether to this doctrine, I will state a few of them.

It is well known that no cider or perry fruit is so good, on first being introduced, as it is after fifteen or twenty years of cultivation. A certain period seems to be required to mature the new sort, and bring it to its full vigour (long after it is in full bearing) before it is at its best. The tree, with all its grafted progeny, will last, perhaps fifty, perhaps more than one hundred years, in a flourishing state, and then they will begin everywhere to decay; nor has any device yet been successful in arresting that general decay.

Witness the rise, progress, and fall of the Forest Stire of Gloucestershire, the Foxwhelp and Redstreak of Herefordshire, the Golden Pippin, and, more lately, the Ribstone Pippin, of which there is an increasing complaint, not to mention many others in the same condition. The first-named apple is very nearly extinct, and the small quantity of the fruit that is still to be had fetches enormous prices.

Whether this decay be owing to grafting, is a question which can be decided only by the future behaviour of the suckers from the original tree, several of which from the tree at Ribstone Park are now growing at Chiswick and elsewhere.

I am aware that Dr. Lindley combats very eagerly the doctrine that varieties of the apple and pear, or indeed of any tree, die naturally of old age; but the only incontrovertible fact which he adduces in support of his argument, is the existence of the French White Beurré pear, which has flourished from time immemorial. His denial of the decay of the Golden Pippin, the Golden Harvey, and the Nonpareil, will not, I think, be allowed to be just by the experience of your readers; the existence of the last-named apple for three centuries, supposing it to be true, has not secured it exemption from the general fate.

H. C. K.

—— Rectory, Hereford.