DEVONIANISMS
Miserable.Miserable is very commonly used in Devonshire in the signification of miserly, with strange effect until one becomes used to it. Hooker the Judicious, a Devonshire man, uses the word in this sense in the Eccl. Polity, book v. ch. lxv. p. 21.:
"By means whereof it cometh also to pass that the mean which is virtue seemeth in the eyes of each extreme an extremity; the liberal-hearted man is by the opinion of the prodigal miserable, and by the judgment of the miserable lavish."
Few.Speaking of broth, people in Devon say a few broth in place of a little, or some broth. I find a similar use of the word in a sermon preached in 1550, by Thomas Lever, Fellow of St. John's College, preserved by Strype (in his Eccles. Mem., ii. 422.). Speaking of the poor students of Cambridge, he says:
"At ten of the clock they go to dinner, whereas they be content with a penny piece of beef among four, having a few pottage made of the broth of the same beef, with salt and oatmeal, and nothing else."
Figs, Figgy.Most commonly raisins are called figs, and plum-pudding figgy pudding. So with plum-cake, as in the following rhymes:
"Rain, rain, go to Spain,
Never come again:
When I brew and when I bake,
I'll give you a figgy cake."
Against is used like the classical adversùm, in the sense of towards or meeting. I have heard, both in Devonshire and in Ireland, the expression to send against, that is, to send to meet, a person, &c.
The foregoing words and expressions are probably provincialisms rather than Devonianisms, good old English forms of expression; as are, indeed, many of the so-called Hibernicisms.
Pilm, Farroll.What is the derivation of pilm=dust, so frequently heard in Devon, and its derivatives, pilmy, dusty: it pilmeth? The cover of a book is there called the farroll; what is the derivation of this word?
J. M. B.Tunbridge Wells.
THE POEMS OF ROWLEY
The tests propounded by Mr. Keightley (Vol. vii. p. 160.) with reference to the authenticity of the poems of Rowley, namely the use of "its," and the absence of the feminine rhyme in e, furnish additional proof, if any were wanting, that Chatterton was the author of those extraordinary productions. Another test often insisted upon is the occurrence, in those poems, of borrowed thoughtsborrowed from poets of a date posterior to that of their pretended origin. Of this there is one instance which seems to have escaped the notice of Chatterton's numerous annotators. It occurs at the commencement of The Tournament, in the line,
"The worlde bie diffraunce ys ynn orderr founde."
It will be seen that this line, a very remarkable one, has been cleverly condensed from the following passage in Pope's Windsor Forest:
"But as the world, harmoniously confused,
Where order in variety we see;
And where, tho' all things differ, all agree."
This sentiment has been repeated by other modern writers. Pope himself has it in the Essay on Man, in this form,
"The lights and shades, whose well-accorded strife
Gives all the strength and colour of our life."
It occurs in one of Pascal's Pensées:
"J'écrirai ici mes pensées sans ordre, et non pas peut-être dans une confusion sans dessein: C'est le véritable ordre, et qui marquera toujours mon objet par le désordre même."
Butler has it in the line,
"For discords make the sweetest airs."
Bernardin de St. Pierre, in his Etudes de la Nature:
"C'est des contraires que résulte l'harmonie du monde."
And Burke, in nearly the same words, in his Reflections on the French Revolution:
"You had that action and counteraction, which, in the natural and in the political world, from the reciprocal struggle of discordant powers, draws out the harmony of the universe."
Nor does the sentiment belong exclusively to the moderns. I find it in Horace's twelfth Epistle:
"Nil parvum sapias, et adhuc sublimia cures,
· · · · · ·
Quid velit et possit rerum concordia discors."
Lucan, I think, has the same expression in his Pharsalia; and it forms the basis of Longinus's remark on the eloquence of Demosthenes:
"Οκον τν μν φσιν τν παναφορν κα συνδτων πντ φυλττει τ συνεχε μεταβολ· οτως ατ κα τξις τακτον, κα μπαλιν ταξια ποιν περιλαμβνει τξιν."
It may be said that, as Pope adopted the thought from Horace or Lucan, so a poet of the fifteenth century (such as the supposed Rowley) might have taken it from the same sources. But a comparison of the line in The Tournament with those in Windsor Forest will show that the borrowing embraces not only the thought, but the very words in which it is expressed.
Henry H. Breen.St. Lucia.
FOLK LORE
Legend of Llangefelach Tower.A different version of the legend also exists in the neighbourhood, viz. that the day's work on the tower being pulled down each night by the old gentleman, who was apparently apprehensive that the sound of the bells might keep away all evil spirits, a saint, of now forgotten name, told the people that if they would stand at the church door, and throw a stone, they would succeed in building the tower on the "spot where it fell," which accordingly came to pass.
Ceridwen.Wedding Divination.Being lately present on the occasion of a wedding at a town in the East Riding of Yorkshire, I was witness to the following custom, which seems to take rank as a genuine scrap of folk-lore. On the bride alighting from her carriage at her father's door, a plate covered with morsels of bride's cake was flung from a window of the second story upon the heads of the crowd congregated in the street below; and the divination, I was told, consists in observing the fate which attends its downfall. If it reach the ground in safety, without being broken, the omen is a most unfavourable one. If on the other hand, the plate be shattered to pieces (and the more the better), the auspices are looked upon as most happy.
Oxoniensis.SHAKSPEARE CORRESPONDENCE
Shakspearian Drawings.I have very recently become possessed of some curious drawings by Hollar; those relating to Shakspeare very interesting, evidently done for one Captain John Eyre, who could himself handle the pencil well.