uttering a word when we say, May you live, Sirs? The matter came to Buddha's ears. Priests, he said, the laity are the corner-stone of the church; when laymen say, May you live, Sirs, I give my sanction to your replying, Long life to you.' "EXCUMGENT."--I have not heard this Northumbrianism lately. I fancy it is rather slang than a provincialism. It is applied to a person or thing "got up" more smartly than usual. “Where are you going, you are quite excumgent? How do you like my new bonnet ?"-"Oh, it is quite excumgent." Extra gent(eel) is, presume, the etymology. It is among servants I have heard it used. I P. P. From this it appears that, in ancient Hindustan, it was customary, when a person sneezed, for the bystanders to exclaim, "May you live!" (jioa), and etiquette required that the sneezer should reply, "Long life to you!" (chiram jīvatha). The Jataka Book, from which this story is taken, is OLD FUNERAL CUSTOMS IN CAPE TOWN.-By part of the Buddhist Scriptures, and belongs to a an old colonial Dutch law, now almost forgotten, period far antecedent to the Christian Era. The when a man died in debt, leaving a widow and superstition with regard to sneezing is a very wide- family, the hearse was brought before the door in spread one. It would be interesting (if it has not the presence of a large concourse of friends and been already done) to bring together references to neighbours, the widow came forth, locked the door, it from the literatures of different countries. For and placed the key on the coffin, thus being reinstance, happening to look through Clodd's Child-leased from her husband's debts. The last record hood of the World the other day, I came upon the following passage :— "According to an old Jewish legend, the custom of saying God bless you' when a person sneezes dates from Jacob. The Rabbis say that before the time that Jacob lived men sneezed once, and that was the end of them; the shock slew them. This law was set aside on the prayer of Jacob, on condition that in all nations a sneeze should be hallowed by the words 'God bless you."" R. C. CHILDers. THE FLYING DUTCHMAN.-In the narrative of the voyages of H.M. ships "Leven" and "Barracouta," under Captain W. F. Owen, R.N., in the year 1823, the following curious story is published: "In the evening of the 6th of April, when off Port Danger, the Barracouta was seen about two miles to leeward. Struck with the singularity of her being so soon after us, we at first concluded that it could not be her; but the peculiarity of her rigging, and other circumstances, convinced us that we were not so mistaken. Nay, so distinctly was she seen, that many well-known faces could be observed on deck, looking towards our ship. After keeping thus for some time, we became surprised that she made no effort to join us; but, on the contrary, stood away. But being so near the port to which we were both destined, Captain Owen did not attach much importance to this proceeding, and we accordingly continued our course. At sunset it was observed that she hove to, and sent a boat away, apparently for the purpose of picking up a man overboard. During the night we could not perceive any light or other indication of her locality. The next morning we anchored in Simon's Bay, where, for a whole week, we were in anxious expectation of her arrival; but it afterwards appeared that at this very period the Barracouta must have been above three hundred miles from us, and no other vessel of the same class was ever seen about the Cape." The writer of the narrative disclaims any intention to excite the supernatural feelings of his readers. Accepting the story as true (and it is vouched for by an irresistible weight of authority), it is a startling fact that, out of all the ships sailing on the ocean, the one which the law of refraction should have conjured up in view of the "Leven" was that ship's own consort in a deadly and perilous F. W. CHESSON. Voyage. Lambeth Terrace. of this ceremony being performed is as far back as 1823. It was formerly the practice, when any respectable person was interred, to have white sand strewn in the street from the house door to the grave. This has of late years, in Cape Town at least, been discontinued, but may still exist in the more remote Dutch villages. At Dutch funerals, in olden days, two respectably dressed men (tropschluters), got up in cocked hats and black silk stockings, were generally engaged to form the last couple of mourners in the funeral procession. The popular opinion was that the last couple took all the ill luck supposed to wait on the last couple into and out of the churchyard, no friend liking to figure last at a funeral. Formerly no respectable family buried their dead until after dark, when each mourner was attended by his slave carrying a lighted lantern. The appearance of such a procession was very strange to meet in the narrow, and then unlighted, streets of Cape Town. Hatchments of the arms of the principal deceased officials of the old Dutch Government were formerly suspended in the "Oude Keerk" on the Heerengracht, and presented some very curious and interesting specimens of old Batavian heraldry. They are now, however, nearly all removed, and lie rotting in a lumber room in the vicinity of the church, in company, it is said, with a few valuable pictures of the Dutch school, long lost to the public eye. These and many other primitive Dutch customs habits of English domestic life have almost superare gradually disappearing, and the modes and seded the quaint and homely manners which prevailed in the City of Van Riebeck to a period as tury. I am indebted to an old friend and quondam late as the first three decades of the present cencorrespondent of " N. & Q." for some of the above interesting notes. Lavender Hill. H. HALL. "BONNIE DUNDEE."-From a small volume which professes to teach boys the history of Scotland, I have extracted the following account of "A bloom upon the apple when the apples are ripe An old saw, though the couplet embodying it is Apart, however, from what has been said as to the possible reference of the whitethorn superstition in question, and others like it, to the ancient character of the thorn as a fire tree, and its consequent connexion with the solar festival of May, there is a numerous and well-known class of popular notions which throw light on the matter, namely, those which associate the ideas of the soul and death with various white objects, butterflies, moths, lilies, and (white) pigeons and other birds (Choice Notes, pp. 17 and 61; Dublin University Magazine, Oct. 1873, " Folk-Lore of the Lily"; and Long Ago, 1873, "Butterflies in Folk-Lore"). Some curious items of folk-lore in connexion with this tree would, I think, be found surviving in Ireland, where it is often found, as a monument bush," marking old places of sepulture, or planted about ancient raths. Any such scraps of old Celtic superstition, if got from the lips of the people themselves, and not from so-called treatises on the subject, would, I should think, be worthy of a place in "N. & Q.," where Irish folk-lore is not particularly well represented at present. DAVID FITZGERALD. Hammersmith. Pereira, in his Materia Medica (ed. 1849, p. 847), speaks a little more explicitly. He tells us that the term calomel . . . was first used by Sir Theodore Turquet de Mayenne (who died in 1655), in consequence, as some say, of his having had a favourite black servant who prepared it; or, according to others, because it was a good remedy for the black bile." But Hooper, in his Medical Dictionary, gives us what I conceive to be the true solution of the difficulty. His words are: "This name was We see, therefore, that it was really owing to a kind of joke or jeu de motst that the name of calomel beautiful (or good) black, became applied to a white powder; and confusion and error have been the result. Sydenham Hill. F. CHANCE. "LIVING ONE'S LIFE OVER AGAIN."- The following is from Franklin's Life :— "When I reflect, as I frequently do, upon the felicity I have enjoyed, I sometimes say to myself that, were the offer made true, I would engage to run again, from beginning to end, the same career of life. All I would ask should be the privilege of an author, to correct, in a second edition, certain errors of the first." reference to a very ancient superstition : "One day, Buddha, while seated in the midst of a CALOMEL.-All the lexicographers and etymologists who mention this word* seem agreed that it W. A. C. is derived from καλός, beautiful, and μέλας, SNEEZING.-I translate from the Pali text of black, but they are by no means agreed why it was called so. Mahn (in Webster) tells us it was the Gagga Jataka, published by Fausboll (Ten "in allusion to its properties and colour." Un-Jatakas, Trübner, 1872), the following curious fortunately, calomel, instead of being of a beautiful black, is pure white, so that it would seem as if Mahn had never seen calomel! Littré says cautiously, "ainsi nommé, dit-on, parce que le chimiste qui le découvrit, vit, dans la préparation, se changer une belle poudre noire en une poudre blanche." But is it the fact that such a change takes place? I expect not, but perhaps some one of the readers of "N. & Q." will tell us. Several etymologists, as Diez, Scheler, Brachet, Wedgwood, and Ed. Müller, omit the word altogether, either, I suppose, because it is a technical word, or because they had no satisfactory explanation to offer. Johnson, in speaking of the derivation, says nothing more than "calomelas, a chymical word." When impure, it is of a yellowish white, but it is never of any colour in the least degree approaching black. § When lime-water is added to calomel a blackish powder is thrown down, and the noted black wash is produced. But here the change is the converse of that noted by Littré, and the precipitate, so far from being of a beautiful black, is really rather of a dark grey colour (sub-oxide of mercury). large congregation of disciples, to whom he was preaching the Law, chanced to sneeze. Thereupon the priests, exclaiming May the Blessed Lord live, may the Welcome One live, made a loud noise and seriously interrupted the follows: Tell me, priests, when a person sneezes, if the discourse. Accordingly, Buddha addressed them as bystanders say, May you live, will he live the longer or die the sooner for it?-Certainly not, Lord.-Then, priests, if any one sneezes you are not to say to him, May you live; and if any of you shall say it, let him be guilty of a transgression. From that time forth, when the priests sneezed and the bystanders exclaimed, May you live, Sirs, the priests, fearful of transgressing, held their peace. People took offence at this: What, said they, do these priestly sons of Sakya mean by not * Pereira, as we have seen, calls this name Mayenne, but as in Brockhaus's Conversations-Lexicon (10th edition, 1851-1855), I also find the name given as Mayerne (with the date 1550 instead of 1655), I presume that this latter form is the correct one. Sir Theodore must have noticed the contrast between the whiteness of the powder and the blackness of his servant. uttering a word when we say, May you live, Sirs? The matter came to Buddha's ears. Priests, he said, the laity are the corner-stone of the church; when laymen say, May you live, Sirs, I give my sanction to your replying, Long life to you." The "EXCUMGENT."---I have not heard this Northumbrianism lately. I fancy it is rather slang than a provincialism. It is applied to a person or thing "got up" more smartly than usual. "Where are you going, you are quite excumgent?"-" How do you like my new bonnet ?"-"Oh, it is quite excumgent." Extra gent(eel) is, I presume, the etymology. It is among servants I have heard it used. P. P. From this it appears that, in ancient Hindustan, it was customary, when a person sneezed, for the bystanders to exclaim, "May you live!" (jioa), and etiquette required that the sneezer should reply, "Long life to you!" (chiram jīvatha). Jataka Book, from which this story is taken, is OLD FUNERAL CUSTOMS IN CAPE TOWN.-By part of the Buddhist Scriptures, and belongs to a an old colonial Dutch law, now almost forgotten, period far antecedent to the Christian Era. The when a man died in debt, leaving a widow and superstition with regard to sneezing is a very wide- family, the hearse was brought before the door in spread one. It would be interesting (if it has not the presence of a large concourse of friends and been already done) to bring together references to neighbours, the widow came forth, locked the door, it from the literatures of different countries. For and placed the key on the coffin, thus being reinstance, happening to look through Clodd's Child-leased from her husband's debts. The last record hood of the World the other day, I came upon the following passage :— "According to an old Jewish legend, the custom of saying God bless you' when a person sneezes dates from Jacob. The Rabbis say that before the time that Jacob lived men sneezed once, and that was the end of them; the shock slew them. This law was set aside on the prayer of Jacob, on condition that in all nations a sneeze should be hallowed by the words' God bless you."" R. C. CHILDERS. THE FLYING DUTCHMAN.-In the narrative of the voyages of H.M. ships "Leven" and "Barracouta," under Captain W. F. Owen, R.N., in the year 1823, the following curious story is published: "In the evening of the 6th of April, when off Port Danger, the Barracouta was seen about two miles to leeward. Struck with the singularity of her being so soon after us, we at first concluded that it could not be her; but the peculiarity of her rigging, and other circumstances, convinced us that we were not so mistaken. Nay, so distinctly was she seen, that many well-known faces could be observed on deck, looking towards our ship. After keeping thus for some time, we became surprised that she made no effort to join us; but, on the contrary, stood away. But being so near the port to which we were both destined, Captain Owen did not attach much importance to this proceeding, and we accordingly continued our course. At sunset it was observed that she hove to, and sent a boat away, apparently for the purpose of picking up a man overboard. During the night we could not perceive any light or other indication of her locality. The next morning we anchored in Simon's Bay, where, for a whole week, we were in anxious expectation of her arrival; but it afterwards appeared that at this very period the Barracouta must have been above three hundred miles from us, and no other vessel of the same class was ever seen about the Cape." The writer of the narrative disclaims any intention to excite the supernatural feelings of his readers. Accepting the story as true (and it is vouched for by an irresistible weight of authority), it is a startling fact that, out of all the ships sailing on the ocean, the one which the law of refraction should have conjured up in view of the "Leven" was that ship's own consort in a deadly and perilous voyage. F. W. CHESSON. Lambeth Terrace. of this ceremony being performed is as far back as 1823. It was formerly the practice, when any respectable person was interred, to have white sand strewn in the street from the house door to the grave. This has of late years, in Cape Town at least, been discontinued, but may still exist in the more remote Dutch villages. At Dutch funerals, in olden days, two respectably dressed men (tropschluters), got up in cocked hats and black silk stockings, were generally engaged to form the last couple of mourners in the funeral procession. The popular opinion was that the last couple took all the ill luck supposed to wait on the last couple into and out of the churchyard, no friend liking to figure last at a funeral. Formerly no respectable family buried their dead until after dark, when each mourner was attended by his slave carrying a lighted lantern. The appearance of such a procession was very strange to meet in the narrow, and then unlighted, streets of Cape Town. Hatchments of the arms of the principal deceased officials of the old Dutch Government were formerly suspended in the "Oude Keerk" on the Heerengracht, and presented some very curious and interesting specimens of old Batavian heraldry. They are now, however, nearly all removed, and lie rotting in a lumber room in the vicinity of the church, in company, it is said, with a few valuable pictures of the Dutch school, long lost to the public eye. These and many other primitive Dutch customs are gradually disappearing, and the modes and habits of English domestic life have almost superseded the quaint and homely manners which prevailed in the City of Van Riebeck to a period as late as the first three decades of the present century. I am indebted to an old friend and quondam correspondent of " N. & Q." for some of the above interesting notes. Lavender Hill. H. HALL. "BONNIE DUNDEE."-From a small volume which professes to teach boys the history of Scotland, I have extracted the following account of the death of Lord Dundee, written in a style nearly as stilted as that of the mendacious historian Wodrow : "Claverhouse never knew that he had won a victory. He fell at the beginning of the action pierced by a musket ball, which entered beneath his arm. When one in a pack of hungry wolves is killed, the rest turn upon him and eat him up. Claverhouse's own men, true to their savage instinct of plunder, stripped his body, and left it naked upon the field, where it was with difficulty distinguished from the other bodies of the fallen." -For a sable shroud Sheathed in his iron panoply," teen last week, has an offer; the man is a sail maker, 85 4 1 7 2 7 6 5 10 3 7 7 3 11 3 4 4 8 .3 12." 35 Lord Dundee, created a viscount in the second year of James II., did not die on the field of Killiecrankie. He was mortally wounded, but not in the beginning of the action, and was carried to the house of Old Blair, at that time the inn, This curious document, together with the prewhere, quite aware of the success of his master's ceding particulars regarding the detection of the troops, he sank the next morning, and was buried-writer, appears in the European Magazine, 1814, vol. lxvi. pp. 21, 22. The first column of figures indicates the words, and the second column the lines in the original letter. The words conveying the treasonable information are printed in italics, though of course in the original no words were underlined, or otherwise marked, the list of figures which followed the letter admirably serving the purpose. It will be observed that the information conveyed to the enemy in this letter was "There are seventeen sail of the line ready at Spithead. W. A. C. in a vault in the old church of Blair. Had the Highlanders, likened by the reverend historian to hungry wolves, "true to their savage nature," wished to treat with such brutal indignity the body of their venerated "Black John of the Battles," would they have put off time in doing so, when they had such a flock of runaway sheep (without a shepherd) as Mackay's army to fall upon? My friend Mr. Robertson, of Old Blair, has kindly furnished me with the following curious tradition : "My information regarding the circumstances of Claverhouse's death, was derived from an old man who died at Aldclune last winter, about the age of 70. 66 His story was that he had been told by an old woman who lived at Aldelune, and was, I think, his grand aunt, that her father, who was a boy at the time of the battle of Killiecrankie, lay concealed on the hill above Urrard (Rinrory) during the engagement, and that he followed the party who carried Claverhouse to the inn at Old Blair, and that Claverhouse died in the inn the following day." A. A. CURIOUS TREASONABLE LETTER.-The man who wrote the following letter had been long suspected of giving treasonable information to the enemy; and Government set a spy over him, by whose exertions they procured the letter directed to a house at Paris. At first they imagined they had hit on the wrong person, when a few days afterwards a second letter, directed by the same hand, to the same person, containing only the figures, as under it, was brought by the informant to Government; when, after a little consultation, they discovered it was a key to the first letter, and accordingly had the writer in close confinement till, at the earnest intercession of his friends, he was suffered to leave this country, under a promise of not returning during the war : 'London, April 6, 1798. Dear Friend,-As I find there is an opportunity, I write to say how we are; my daughter Mary, who was seven Howe commands." PARALLEL PASSAGES. "Dryden says prettily of Ben Jonson's many imitations of the ancients, you track him everywhere in their SNOW. Menage adds, that he intended to compile a regular treatise on the thefts and imitations of the poets. As his reading was very extensive, his work would, probably, have been very entertaining."-Warton's Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope, p. 89. "Let us see how far we are got in this inquiry. We may say of the old Latin poets, that they all came out of the Greek schools. It is as true of the moderns in this part of the world that they, in general, have had their breeding in both the Greek and Latin. But when the question is of any particular writer, how far and in what instances, you may presume on his being a professed imitator, much will depend on the certain knowledge you have of his Age, Education, and Character. When all these circumstances meet in one man, as they have done in others, but in none perhaps so eminently as in Ben Jonson, wherever you find an acknowledged likeness, you will do him no injustice to call it imitation.". Bp. Hurd, On Poetical Imitation (Critical Works, ii.). Were these words of Dryden's an original thought, "You track him everywhere in their snow." or did he recollect "leporem venator," &c., in Horace, Sat. 2, lib. i.? Who has been supposed to have translated totidem verbis an epigram of Callimachus, a translation of which is subjoined from Dr. Wellesley's Anthologia Polyglotta, cxiii. On this question, see Fabricii Opuscula Literaria, p. 29; Tanaquilli Fabri Epistolæ, p. 229; J. J. Scaligeri Opuscula, p. 464; Horat. Delphini, a Valpy : “ Ωγρευτής, Επίκυδες, ἐν οὔρεσι,” &c. "THE CHACE. Mark, Epicydes, how the hunter bears Queries. [We must request correspondents desiring information on family matters of only private interest, to affix their names and addresses to their queries, in order that the answers may be addressed to them direct.] "BUILT HERE FOR HIS ENVY."-On a former occasion the correspondents of "N. & Q." gave me efficient help towards the interpretation and elucidation of "the Grim Feature" in the Ninth Book of Paradise Lost. I now submit to them a difficulty in the First Book, unnoticed by Todd. At 11. 258260 of first edition, we read— "Here at least We shall be free; th' Almighty hath not built Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:" If the reference be to the happy mansion built by the Almighty in Heaven, which might well be said to have been built for the envy of those who were excluded from it, one would expect the last line to run "Here for our envy," &c.; as it is, the envy is attributed to the party in possession, and not to the party ejected or excluded. An accomplished friend suggested to me that, in the above passage, built is a substantive, having the sense of σкоTÓя, i. e., a mark or target. Obviously, if built had such a sense, its use here would be most appropriate. But, unfortunately, I cannot find that the substantive built had any other meaning than build, which meant, and means, form or figure. My friend referred me to Dryden's Annus Mirabilis for an instance, but the passage proves nothing to the point : "And as the built, so different is the fight; Their mounting shot is on our sails designed." Certainly, if built be used here for mark or object, the sense is perfect; but it is so likewise if built means the build of the ship of war from which the shot proceeded. Another instance which he gave me, from Temple, "timber proper for this built,' is still more doubtful. Having collated a good many editions of Paradise Lost (including the first and second), I have not found a single variation in the passage in question; but an examination of various versions of the work has repaid the search. In William Hog's Paraphrasis Poetica, 1690, our passage is thus elegantly rendered : Now here, beyond doubt, we have the very sense suggested by my friend. There can be no doubt that materiam here means occasion or ground. It is so used in Suetonius, who, in his Life of Galba, conveys by that word the occasion of Nero's jealousy. I need not stay to insist on the value of Hog's translation as a contemporary evidence of Milton's meaning. In 1740, Paradise Lost was "Attempted in Rhime"; and the author of that absurd attempt thus renders our passage :-"here at least We shall be free; for here the Victor Prince, Built not for Envy, will not drive us hence," so he took Milton's built for the past participle of build. In 1745, a still more absurd version was published, viz., an English translation of Raymond de St. Maur's French version of Paradise Lost. The re-translator, "A Gentleman of Oxford," thus turns our passage : "At least here we shall be free, the Thunderer hath not built this Place for his Envy, he will not drive us out from hence," &c. so he took built in the same sense; but he does not remove the difficulty of the phrase "for his Envy," which his predecessor effected by omitting the possessive pronoun. We have, then, succeeded thus far only; we have proved that, in Milton's day, built was understood as a substantive, meaning occasion cr ground of the Almighty's envy; but we have not been able to prove that built was used (unless by Milton himself) in that sense. I shall be greatly obliged to any reader of this note who shall be able and willing to furnish me with evidence of such use. Athenæum Club. JABEZ. "UBLOGAHELL."-Would some of your Irish readers state the meaning and true spelling of this word, which occurs in Camden's Remaines? It seems probable that it is some strange attempt at giving, in English language and letters, the phonetic spelling of some Irish word, or words, in use at the time when Camden wrote. Just as in the State Papers of the time of Henry VIII. we find a word written "Allyiegs," and "oylegeags," for an Irish exaction, explained as a fee said to have been paid by each litigant party, both plaintiff and defendant, to the Brehon appointed by the Irish Chiefs, or by the Anglo-Irish Lords who had adopted Irish customs, for his judgment, the purport and etymology of which is to be found, as we are told, in the Irish words Oilegh, a Brehon or Judge, and eag, payment. The word printed "Allyiegs," at p. 558, vol. ii., of the State Papers, in a letter written by Ormond to Sir Anthony Sentleger, the Lord-Deputy, dated at Fethard, 12th March, 1538, and signed P. Or |