work in the hands of poets, artists, satirists, novelwriters, and inaccurate historians, is, I believe, a book by Dr. Karl Schmidt, entitled Jus Prima Noctis. I have, I regret to say, never had an opportunity of seeing it. It was reviewed by Mr. W. E. A. Axon in the Academy of March 25, 1882. I gather from this notice that the author proves that this supposed custom never had any real existence.

A little consideration as to what manner of men the people of the Middle Ages were should, one would have thought, have convinced any one that the story is impossible. The Church was far too powerful to have permitted such a breach of the very foundation of moral order to have gone unrebuked. Had such a right ever existed, a hundred local councils would have fulminated censures against those who presumed to exercise it. EDWARD PEACOCK.

Bottesford Manor, Brigg.

BENI HIFAC CALPE (6th S. ix. 469).-The following quotations from Ford's Handbook for Spain may be of some assistance to MR. LACAITA in determining the origin of two of the words about which he inquires:

"Between Ronda and Gibraltar] we pass Moorish villages, built on heights, with Moorish names and halfMoorish peasantry, e. g., Atagate, Benanaba, Benadalid, Ben Alauria. These settlements of Beni-children, mark the isolating love of tribe which the Arabs brought with them from the East, implanting on a new and congenial soil the weakness of the nomade race of Ishmael, whose hand is against every man and against whom every hand is raised. These unamalgamating Beni, however, united against the French, who found in such robbers more than their match."-P. 267.

Calpe.-"The rock [Gibraltar] was well known to the ancients, but never inhabited, nor is there any mention of any town on it. The Phoenicians called it Alube. This the Greeks corrupted into Kaλvßŋ Kaλπη, Calpe, and then, defying nature as audaciously as etymology, they said it signified a bucket,' to which shape they compared the rock. Calpe has been interpreted Caalpe, the cavern of God, and as Cal-be, the watching at night. Col, Coll, Cala is, however, a common prefix to Iberian and Oriental terms of heights and fortress. Ayala derives Calpe from the Hebrew and the Phoenician Galph, Calph, a carved mountain. Calpe was the European, and Abyla the lofty' (the rock of Abel) the African pillar of Hercules, the ne plus ultra land and sea marks of jealous Phoenician monopoly."-P. 272. Hifac is not mentioned by Ford, but the word is, of course, like the others, of Moorish origin.

E. SIMPSON-BAIKIE.

one, benedict; while from Scott* I can recall no example. Other instances from English literature are braggadocio, euphuistic, lothario, utopian. Cervantes gives us dulcinea and rozinante as well as quixotic; and to the list may be added chauvinism, knickerbockers, and rodomontade. It might be considerably extended by examples from Greek and Latin writers. Has an exhaustive list ever been attempted of the English words derived from the proper names of real life? I believe I could give upwards of three hundred, from mausoleum and laconic to boycott and magenta. The terms introduced to meet the demands of science form an interesting group. Such are farad, oersted, ohm, | vernier, volt, weber. P. J. ANDERSON.

Bowdler gave to the world an edition of Shakespeare's plays, "in which nothing is added to the original text, but those words and expressions are omitted which cannot with propriety be read aloud in a family." When words, &c., are now eliminated from a book, the work is said to be "Bowd

lerized."

Freegrove Road, N.

HENRY G. HOPE.

KHEDIVE (6th S. ix. 449).—Mr. Edward Thomas, F.R.S. (in a paper on "Parthian and Indo-Sassanian Coins," printed in J. R. A.S., N.S., vol. xv., pt. 1), thinks the word Khedív or Khidév is found in the Persian Khudá, God, king, and the Pehlvi forms Hutef, Hutai, which he derives from the Zend qa-dáta, Sansk. swa-datta, self-given, self

created. It always struck me that the name God, or rather one of its oldest forms, Gutha, was connected with both the Persian Khudá, Khodá, and the title Khedive.

I was confirmed in this on comparing Gutha and the Gotho-Teutonic words Got, Gott, Godt, Kot, Gett, Gitt, Gat, Gud, Gudzf, and Gudszf, with the Tartar and other Oriental languages. In twelve Tartar dialects I found the word for God under seven different forms, viz., Khudai, Khodái, Khutái, Kutái, Kut, Kutkhai, Kutkha; in three Caucasian dialects, Khudai, Tzau-Khutsav, Khutzau, Khtzau; in the Kurdish Khudi; and in the language of the Buchari, Khudo.

Mr. Thomas adds that the title Khidév is common in the Shah Námah, and, in its Indian application, he finds Badaoní mentioning the Sultán Bahlol Lodi, A.d. 1451. R. S. CHARNOCK.

Khídív is a Persian word, and signifies a king, a great prince, a sovereign, as Khidív i Hind, King of India. The designation was bestowed by imperial firman in 1866. It conferred no additional power. The hereditary vice-royalty was guaranteed to the descendants of Mehemet Ali by the five great powers. R. W.

principally, if not exclusively, in those parts of England colonized by the Danes. In the Danelagh, north-east of the ancient Watling Street, it abounds, but the spelling is various, hoe, oe, o, and in the north of England how. In Bedfordshire, within a circle of a few miles, we find Sils-oe, Cain-hoe, Fald-o. In Bucks we have Mouls-oe and Iving-hoe, &c. In Norfolk we have Howe; in Lincolnshire, Hough on the hill; in Sussex, Hooe; in Westmoreland, How and Fox's How. In all these cases an eminence, generally comparatively slight, is indicated. The original is doubtless the Danish hoi, a hill. There is another Danish termination ö, an island, which is liable to be confounded with oe, but the English in this relation has adopted the older Norse term ey for its compounds, as Sels-ey, Wallas-ey, &c., very common in all the Danish settlements. J. A. PICTON. Sandyknowe, Wavertree.

PRESTER JOHN'S ARMS (6th S. ix. 470).-In the Booke and Register of Armes, done by Sir David Lindesay of the Mount, Lyone King-ofArms, Regn. Ja. V. (which seems to have been emblazoned about the year 1542, and is still preserved in the library of the Faculty of Advocates, Edinburgh), the second coat of arms depicted is that of "The Rycht potent prince preist Jhone, Emperour off the greit Ynde." It may be thus blazoned: Or, on a passion cross azure, rising out of a mount vert, and between two scourges paleways of the second cords outwards gules, the dead body of our Saviour proper, nimbed of the field and wreathed about the loins with a cloth argent shadowed of the second; on His head the crown of thorns, the blood flowing therefrom, and also from the wound in the dexter side, and from the hands and feet which are pierced with the nails, all proper; on the upper limb of the cross the scroll of the fifth, lettered I. N. R. I., sable. The particular form of cross known as the Cross of the Passion was, Guillim tells us, "bestowed on such as had performed, or at least undertaken, some service for Christ and Christian profession; and therefore, being duly conferred, I hold it the most honourable charge to be found in heraldry." P. J. ANDERSON.

Aberdeen.

SOME OBSOLETE WORDS, &c. (6th S. ix. 405, 478).-Rommaginge.-MR. WARD is mistaken in supposing that this is not a nautical term. The New World of English Words, 1658, has, "To Rumidge, in Navigation, is to remove goods or luggage out of a ship's howld, whence it is also used upon other occasions." The edition by J. Kersey, 1720, gives:

"To Rummage (Sea-Term), to remove any Goods or Luggage from one Place to another; especially to clear the Ship's Hold of any Goods, or Lading, in order to their being handsomely stowed and placed: Whence the

Word is used upon other Occasions, for to Rake into, or to search narrowly."

Cf. also the following passage from Hakluyt's Voyages, vol. i. p. 308:—

"And that the masters of the ships do looke wel to the romaging, for they might bring away a great deale more than they doe, if they would take paine in the romaging."

There can be little doubt that this word is connected with room, A.-S. rúm, space. I do not at all see why we should derive the word from Fr. remuer; remuage is not given by Cotgrave. F. C. BIRKBECK TERRY.

Cardiff.

"KNIGHT OF TOGGENBURG" (6th S. ix. 407, 457). -The book of ballads to which MR. CARMICHAEL refers was, I believe, originally published by Mr. James Burns. I think that it has passed through but one edition. If that be the case, the copy which I possess must be one of a remainder with a new title-page. It runs thus: "German Ballads, Songs, &c., comprising Translations from Schiller, Uhland, Burger, Goethe, Korner, Becker, Fouqué, Chamisso, &c. London, Edward Lumley." has no date. My impression is that I purchased it in Lumley's shop about thirty years ago; but of this I am not quite certain.

Bottesford Manor, Brigg.

EDWARD PEACOCK.

It

LAMB AND MINT SAUCE (6th S. ix. 448).— mint sauce was first started, or whether there is Though unable to say when the custom of taking any authority for the origin of the custom in the statement quoted from John Brady, Clavis Calendaria, respecting its introduction by the incorrect. The Jews had long before ceased to monks, the latter part of the extract is obviously partake of the paschal lamb, in obedience to the Pentateuchal laws which prohibited this and all

between them. The distance between words must be equal to the space which a letter would occupy. The division of sentences is regulated by the setumah and the petucha. The setumah (signifying close) is a space of three letters at least between two words written upon the same line. The petucha (signifying open) is the whole remaining space of a line left blank, and the following word commencing upon the next line. These regulations are rigidly adhered to by Hebrew scribes in producing MS. copies of the Law and Scriptures. To assign a definite period to these traditional laws is impossible. We find them fossilized and deposited in those heterogeneous strata of ancient lore the Talmud, without clue or index to their origin.

Respecting the five final letters, there is an opinion in the Talmud that these, as final letters, are of the same antiquity as the other characters, but they do not appear to have been used to express the hundreds beyond 400 until recent times. The Hebrew letters are used throughout the Talmud and Midrashaic works, not only as numerals in the ordinary sense, but as a means of giving the words of the Hebrew Scriptures a mystical and often a very beautiful meaning.

A. D.

TOMB OF THACKERAY'S PARENTS (6th S. ix. 446, 491). We shall, I fear, only get out of one set of inaccuracies into another if the mistakes into which MR. BENHAM and F. ST. J. T. have fallen be not speedily corrected. MR. BENHAM is in error, first, in giving the number of the children of Dr. Thackeray, Head Master of Harrow, as nineteen, instead of sixteen. William Makepeace, of Hadley, the grandfather of the novelist, was the head master's sixteenth and youngest child, as may be seen in the Pedigree of Thackeray which I have already cited. The second error in MR. BENHAM'S reply is the assertion that Mr. Crick, Public Orator at Cambridge, was a first cousin of the novelist. The true state of the case is that Frederick Thackeray, M.D., of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, a first cousin of Richmond Thackeray, the novelist's father, married, as his second wife, Mary, daughter of Rev. Thomas Crick, of Little Thurlow and sister of the President of St. John's, who was also Public Orator. I may add, on the authority of Graduati Cantabrigienses and the University Calendar, that there never was a Public Orator at Cambridge named "W. M. Crick." This is another error. It was the Rev. Thomas Crick, B.D., of St. John's, who was both President of that society - an office answering to the ViceMaster at Trinity — and Public Orator. Dr. Frederick Thackeray, I am informed in a letter from the Rev. H. Russell, Fellow of St. John's, kindly enclosed to me by the Master of St. John's, lived in a house belonging to that Society, on the east side of St. Andrew's Street, near Emmanuel Lane,

now occupied by Mr. Lucas. F. ST. J. T. makes Richmond Thackeray, the novelist's father, second instead of fifth son of William, of Hadley. He has thus passed over three sons of William, intermediate between William, the eldest, and Richmond, viz., Webb, Thomas, and St. John, who, it is true, died unmarried, but who do not for that reason seem to deserve to be erased from the family genealogy. The William Makepeace Thackeray of the Chester inscription given by MR. FITZPATRICK was second son of Thomas Thackeray, surgeon in Cambridge, who was elder brother of William, of Hadley, and whose representative is the present head of the family. The subject of the inscription was therefore a first cousin of Richmond Thackeray, the novelist's father. The Rev. Elias Thackeray, of Dundalk, was next younger brother of William, of Chester, and both were king's scholars at Eton. MR. BENHAM writes the name of the cradle of the novelist's stock "Hampthwaite." For this we should read Hampsthwaite. Three members of the family held the office of parish clerk there during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

The author of the Pedigree of Thackeray, whose information was strangely fragmentary on the maternal side of the novelist's ancestry, brought together a good many scattered notices of various Yorkshire Thackerays, under highly diversified forms of orthography, from the fourteenth century down to the date of his publication. Since that time I have no doubt that fresh instances have come to the surface, though they are awaiting collection in an accessible form. I happen myself to have noticed the occurrence of some of the Thackerays of Exilby in the first volume of the publications of the North Riding Record Society. I do not think that any connected scheme of descent could as yet be made out for the Thackerays of Hampsthwaite beyond the point to which "J. G. N." carried it, somewhat tentatively, in his Pedigree of Thackeray. But a Yorkshire society might be inclined to try and add something to the imperfect knowledge which we at present possess of the descent of their illustrious countryman, William Makepeace Thackeray. C. H. E. CARMICHAEL.