Chapter C: H. Cooper

Cambridge.

At Macclesfield, in Cheshire, a large glove was, perhaps is, always suspended from the outside of the window of the town-hall during the holding of a fair; and as long as the glove was so suspended, every one was free from arrest within the {560} township, and, I have heard, while going and returning to and from the fair.

EDWARD HAWKINS.

At Free Mart, at Portsmouth, a glove used to be hung out of the town-hall window, and no one could be arrested during the fortnight that the fair lasted.

F. O. MARTIN.

_Arms--Battle-axe_ (Vol. vii., p. 407.).--The families which bore three Dane-axes or battle-axes in their coats armorial were very numerous in ancient times. It may chance to be of service to your Querist A.C. to be informed, that those of Devonshire which displayed these bearings were the following: Dennys, Batten, Gibbes, Ledenry, Wike, Wykes, and Urey.

J. D. S.

_Enough_ (Vol. vii., p. 455.).--In Staffordshire, and I believe in the other midland counties, this word is usually pronounced _enoo_, and written _enow_. In Richardson's _Dictionary_ it will be found "enough or enow;" and the etymology is evidently from the German _genug_, from the verb _genugen_, to suffice, to be enough, to content, to satisfy. The Anglo-Saxon is _genog_. I remember the burden of an old song which I frequently heard in my boyish days:

"I know not, I care not,
I cannot tell how to woo,
But I'll away to the merry green woods,
And there get nuts _enow_."

This evidently shows what the pronunciation was when it was written.

J. A. H.

_Enough_ is from the same root as the German _genug_, where the first _g_ has been lost, and the latter softened and almost lost in its old English pronunciation, _enow_. The modern pronunciation is founded, as that of many other words is, upon an affected style of speech, ridiculed by Holofernes.[4] The word _bread_, for example, is almost universally called _bred_; but in Chaucer's poetry and indeed now in Yorkshire, it is pronounced bre-aed, a dissyllable.

T. J. BUCKTON.

Birmingham.

[Footnote 4: The Euphuists are probably chargeable with this corruption.]

In Vol. vii., p. 455. there is an inquiry respecting the change in the pronunciation of the word _enough_, and quotations are given from Waller, where the word is used, rhyming with _bow_ and _plough_. But though spelt _enough_, is not the word, in both places, really _enow_? and is there not, in fact, a distinction between the two words? Does not _enough_ always refer to _quantity_, and _enow_ to _number_: the former, to what may be _measured_; the latter, to that which may be _counted_? In both quotations the word _enough_ refers to _numbers_?

S. S. S.

_Feelings of Age_ (Vol. vii., p. 429.).--A.C. asks if it "is not the general feeling, that man in advancing years would not like to begin life again?" I fear not. It is a wisdom above the average of what men possess that made the good Sir Thomas Browne say:

"Though I think no man can live well once, but he that could live
twice, yet for my own part I would not live over my hours past, or
begin again the thread of my dayes: not upon Cicero's ground--because I
have lived them well--but for fear I should live them worse. I find my
growing judgment daily instruct me how to be better, but my untamed
affections and confirmed vitiosity make me daily do worse. I find in my
confirmed age the same sins I discovered in my youth; I committed many
then, because I was a child, and, because I commit them still, I am yet
an infant. Therefore I perceive a man may be twice a child before the
days of dotage, and stand in need of AEson's bath before threescore."

The annotator refers to _Cic._, lib. xxiv. ep. 4.:

"Quod reliquum est, sustenta te, mea Terentia, ut potes, honestissime.
Viximus: floruimus: non vitium nostrum, sed virtus nostra, nos
afflixit. Peccatum est nullum, nisi quod non una animam cum ornamentis
amisimus."--Edit. Orell., vol. iii. part i. p. 335.

However, it seems probable that Sir Thomas meant that this sentiment is rather to be gathered from Cicero's writings,--not enunciated in a single sentence.

H. C. K.

---- Rectory, Hereford.

_Optical Query_ (Vol. vii., p. 430.).--In reply to the optical Query by H. H., I venture to suggest that a stronger gust of wind than usual might easily occasion the illusion in question, as I myself have frequently found in looking at the fans on the tops of chimneys. Or possibly the eyes may have been confused by gazing on the revolving blades, just as the tongue is frequently influenced in its accentuation by pronouncing a word of two syllables in rapid articulations.

F. F. S.

Oxford.

_Cross and Pile_ (Vol. vii., p.487.).--Here is another explanation at least as satisfactory as some of the previous ones:

"The word _coin_ itself is money struck on the _coin_ or head of the
flattened metal, by which word _coin_ or _head_ is to be understood the
_obverse_, the only side which in the infancy of coining bore the
stamp. Thence the Latin _cuneus_, from _cune_ or _kyn_, the head.

"This side was also called _pile_, in corruption from _poll_, a head,
not only from the side itself being the _coin_ or _head_, but from its
being impressed most commonly with some head in contradistinction to
the reverse, which, in latter times, was oftenest a cross. Thence the
vulgarism, _cross or pile, poll, head_."--Cleland's _Specimen of an
Etymological Vocabulary_, p. 157.

A. HOLT WHITE.

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_Capital Punishments_ (Vol. vii., pp. 52. 321.).--The authorities to which W. L. N. refers not being generally accessible, he would confer a very great obligation by giving the names and dates of execution of any of the individuals alluded to by him, who have undergone capital punishment in this country for exercising the Roman Catholic religion. Herein, it is almost needless to remark, I exclude such cases as those of Babington, Ballard, Parsons, Garnett, Campion, Oldcorne, and others, their fellows, who suffered, as every reader of history knows, for treasonable practices against the civil and christian policy and government of the realm.

COWGILL.

_Thomas Bonnell_ (Vol. vii., p. 305.).--In what year was this person, about whose published _Life_ J. S. B. inquires, Mayor of Norwich? His name, as such, does not occur in the lists of Nobbs, Blomefield, or Ewing.

COWGILL.

_Passage in the First Part of Faust_ (Vol. vii., p. 501.).--MR. W. FRASER will find good illustrations of the question he has raised in his second suggestion for the elucidation of this passage in _The Abbot_, chap. 15. _ad fin._ and _note_.

A few weeks after giving this reference, in answer to a question by EMDEE (see "N. & Q.," Vol. i., p. 262.; Vol. ii., p. 47.), I sent in English, for I am not a German scholar, as an additional reply to EMDEE, the very same passage that MR. FRASER has just forwarded, but it was not inserted, probably because its fitness as an illustration was not very evident.

My intention in sending that second reply was to show that, as in _Christabel_ and _The Abbot_, the voluntary and _sustained_ effort required to introduce the evil spirit was of a physical, so in _Faust_ it was of a mental character; and I confess that I am much pleased now to find my opinion supported by the accidental testimony of another correspondent.

It must, however, be allowed that the peculiar wording of the passage under consideration may make it difficult, if not impossible, to separate _earnest_ from the _magical_ form in which Faust's command to enter his room is given. Goethe's intention, probably, was to combine and illustrate both.

As proofs of the belief in the influence of the number _three_ in incantation, I may refer to Virg. _Ecl._ viii. 73--78.; to a passage in Apuleius, which describes the resuscitation of a corpse by Zachlas, the Egyptian sorcerer;

"Propheta, sic propitiatus, herbulam quampiam ter ob os corporis, et
aliam pectori ejus imponit."--Apul. _Metamorph._, lib. ii. sect. 39.
(Regent's Classics);

and to the rhyming spell that raised the White Lady of Avenel at the Corrie nan Shian. (See _The Monastery_, chaps. xi. and xvii.)