Notes and Queries, Number 27, May 4, 1850 - Various 2 стр.

has the additional fourth stanza,

Can any of your readers supply the name of the "young lady" who translated the story of Phoebus and Daphne?

EARLY ENGLISH AND EARLY GERMAN LITERATURE."NEWS" AND "NOISE."

I am anxious to put a question as to the communication that may have taken place between the English and German tongues previous to the sixteenth century. Possibly the materials for answering it may not exist; but it appears to me that it is of great importance, in an etymological point of view, that the extent of such communication, and the influence it has had upon our language, should be ascertained. In turning over the leaves of the Shakspeare Society's Papers, vol. i., some time ago, my attention was attracted by a "Song in praise of his Mistress," by John Heywood, the dramatist. I was immediately struck by the great resemblance it presented to another poem on the same subject by a German writer, whose real or assumed name, I do not know which, was "Muscanblüt," and which poem is to be found in Der Clara Hätzlerin Liederbuch, a collection made by a nun of Augsburg in 1471. The following are passages for comparison:

S.S. Papers, vol. i. p. 72

Clara Hätzlerin Liederbuch, p. 111.

In all this there is certainly nothing to warrant the conclusion that the German poem was the original of Heywood's song; but, considering that the latter was produced so near to the same age as the former, that is, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and considering that the older German poetical literature had already passed its culminating point, while ours was upon the ascending scale, there is likeness enough, both in manner and measure, to excite the suspicion of direct or indirect communication.

The etymology of the word "news," on which you have recently had some notes, is a case in illustration of the importance of this point. I have never had the least doubt that this word is derived immediately from the German. It is, in fact, "das Neue" in the genitive case; the German phrase "Was giebt's Neues?" giving the exact sense of our "What is the news?" This will appear even stronger if we go back to the date of the first use of the word in England. Possibly about the same time, or not much earlier, we find in his same collection of Clara Hätzlerin, the word spelt "new" and rhyming to "triu."

The genitive of this would be "newes," thus spelt and probably pronounced the same as in England. That the word is not derived from the English adjective "new"that it is not of English manufacture at allI feel well assured: in that case the "s" would be the sign of the plural: and we should have, as the Germans have, either extant or obsolete, also "the new." The English language, however, has never dealt in these abstractions, except in its higher poetry; though some recent translators from the German have disregarded the difference in this respect between the powers of the two languages. "News" is a noun singular, and as such must have been adopted bodily into the language; the form of the genitive case, commonly used in conversation, not being understood, but being taken for an integral part of the word, as formerly the Koran was called "The Alcoran."

"Noise," again, is evidently of the same derivation, though from a dialect from which the modern German pronunciation of the diphthong is derived. Richardson, in his English Dictionary, assumes it to be of the same derivation as "noxious" and "noisome;" but there is no process known to the English language by which it could be manufactured without making a plural noun of it. In short, the two words are identical; "news" retaining its primitive, and "noise" adopting a consequential meaning.

FOLK LORE

Charm for the Toothache.A reverend friend, very conversant in the popular customs and superstitions of Ireland, and who has seen the charm mentioned in pp. 293, 349, and 397, given by a Roman Catholic priest in the north-west of Ireland, has kindly furnished me with the genuine version, and the form in which it was written, which are as follows:

Charms.The Evil Eye.Going one day into a cottage in the village of Catterick, in Yorkshire, I observed hung up behind the door a ponderous necklace of "lucky stones," i.e. stones with a hole through them. On hinting an inquiry as to their use, I found the good lady of the house disposed to shuffle off any explanation; but by a little importunity I discovered that they had the credit of being able to preserve the house and its inhabitants from the baneful influence of the "evil eye." "Why, Nanny," said I, "you surely don't believe in witches now-a-days?" "No! I don't say 'at I do; but certainly i' former times there was wizzards an' buzzards, and them sort o' things." "Well," said I, laughing, "but you surely don't think there are any now?" "No! I don't say at ther' are; but I do believe in a yevil eye." After a little time I extracted from poor Nanny more particulars on the subject, as viz.:how that there was a woman in the village whom she strongly suspected of being able to look with an evil eye; how, further, a neighbour's daughter, against whom the old lady in question had a grudge owing to some love affair, had suddenly fallen into a sort of pining sickness, of which the doctors could make nothing at all; and how the poor thing fell away without any accountable cause, and finally died, nobody knew why; but how it was her (Nanny's) strong belief that she had pined away in consequence of a glance from the evil eye. Finally, I got from her an account of how any one who chose could themselves obtain the power of the evil eye, and the receipt was, as nearly as I can recollect, as follows:

"Ye gang out ov' a nightivery night, while ye find nine toadsan' when ye've gitten t' nine toads, ye hang 'em up ov' a string, an' ye make a hole and buries t' toads i't holeand as 't toads pines away, so 't person pines away 'at you've looked upon wiv a yevil eye, an' they pine and pine away while they die, without ony disease at all!"

I do not know if this is the orthodox creed respecting the mode of gaining the power of the evil eye, but it is at all events a genuine piece of Folk Lore.

The above will corroborate an old story rife in Yorkshire, of an ignorant person, who, being asked if he ever said his prayers, repeated as follows:

Ecclesfield, April 24. 1850.

Charms.I beg to represent to the correspondents of the "NOTES AND QUERIES," especially to the clergy and medical men resident in the country, that notices of the superstitious practices still prevalent, or recently prevalent, in different parts of the kingdom, for the cure of diseases, are highly instructive and even valuable, on many accounts. Independently of their archæological interest as illustrations of the mode of thinking and acting of past times, they become really valuable to the philosophical physician, as throwing light on the natural history of diseases. The prescribers and practisers of such "charms," as well as the lookers-on, have all unquestionable evidence of the efficacy of the prescriptions, in a great many cases: that is to say, the diseases for which the charms are prescribed are cured; and, according to the mode of reasoning prevalent with prescribers, orthodox and heterodox, they must be cured by them,post hoc ergo propter hoc. Unhappily for the scientific study of diseases, the universal interference of ART in an active form renders it difficult to meet with pure specimens of corporeal maladies; and, consequently, it is often difficult to say whether it is nature or art that must be credited for the event. This is a positive misfortune, in a scientific point of view. Now, as there can be no question as to the non-efficiency of charms in a material or physical point of view (their action through the imagination is a distinct and important subject of inquiry), it follows that every disease getting well in the practice of the charmer, is curable and cured by Nature. A faithful list of such cases could not fail to be most useful to the scientific inquirer, and to the progress of truth; and it is therefore that I am desirous of calling the attention of your correspondents to the subject. As a general rule, it will be found that the diseases in which charms have obtained most fame as curative are those of long duration, not dangerous, yet not at all, or very slightly, benefited by ordinary medicines. In such cases, of course, there is not room for the display of an imaginary agency:"For," as Crabbe says,and I hope your medical readers will pardon the irreverence

The notice in your last Number respecting the cure of hooping-cough, is a capital example of what has just been stated; and I doubt not but many of your correspondents could supply numerous prescriptions equally scientific and equally effective. On a future occasion, I will myself furnish you with some; but as I have already trespassed so far on your space, I will conclude by naming a few diseases in which the charmers may be expected to charm most wisely and well. They will all be found to come within the category of the diseases characterised above:Epilepsy, St. Vitus's Dance (Chorea), Hysteria, Toothache, Warts, Ague, Mild Skin-diseases, Tic Douloureux, Jaundice, Asthma, Bleeding from the Nose, St. Anthony's Fire or The Rose (Erysipelas), King's Evil (Scrofula), Mumps, Rheutmatic Pains, &c., &c.

April 25. 1850.

Roasted Mouse.I have often heard my father say, that when he had the measles, his nurse gave him a roasted mouse to cure him.

THE ANGLO-SAXON WORD "UNLAED."

A long etymological disquisition may seem a trifling matter; but what a clear insight into historic truth, into the manners, the customs, and the possessions of people of former ages, is sometimes obtained by the accurate definition of even a single word. A pertinent instance will be found in the true etymon of Brytenwealda, given by Mr. Kemble in his chapter "On the Growth of the kingly Power." (Saxons in Engl. B. II. c. 1.) Upon this consideration I must rest for this somewhat lengthy investigation.

The word UNLAED, as far as we at present know, occurs only five times in Anglo-Saxon; three of which are in the legend of Andreas in the Vercelli MS., which legend was first printed, under the auspices of the Record Commission, by Mr. Thorpe; but the Report to which the poetry of the Vercelli MS. was attached has, for reasons with which I am unacquainted, never been made public. In 1840, James Grimm, "feeling (as Mr. Kemble says) that this was a wrong done to the world of letters at large," published it at Cassell, together with the Legend of Elene, or the Finding of the Cross, with an Introduction and very copious notes. In 1844, it was printed for the Aelfric Society by Mr. Kemble, accompanied by a translation, in which the passages are thus given.

The fifth instance of the occurrence of the word is in a passage cited by Wanley, Catal. p. 134., from a homily occurring in a MS. in Corpus Christi College, s. 14.:

"Men ða leoçes can hep re3þ se hal3a se[~s] Io[~hs] þaep re Hael. eode ofen þone bupnan the Ledpoc hatte, on in[=e]n aenne p[.y]ptun. Tha piste se unlaesde iudas se þe hune to deaþe beleaped haefde."

In Grimm's Elucidations to Andreas he thus notices it:

"Unlaed, miser, improbus, infelix. (A. 142. 744. Judith, 134, 43.). A rare adjective never occurring in Beowulf, Coedmon, or the Cod. Exon., and belonging to those which only appear in conjunction with un. Thus, also, the Goth. unleds, pauper, miser; and the O.H.G. unlât (Graff, 2. 166.); we nowhere find a lêds, laed, lât, as an antithesis. It must have signified dives, felix; and its root is wholly obscure."

In all the Anglo-Saxon examples of unlaed, the sense appears to be wretched, miserable; in the Gothic it is uniformly poor1: but poverty and wretchedness are nearly allied. Lêd, or laed, would evidently therefore signify rich, and by inference happy. Now we have abundant examples of the use of the word ledes in old English; not only for people, but for riches, goods, movable property. Lond and lede, or ledes, or lith, frequently occur unequivocally in this latter sense, thus: