Chapter III: Act IV: Scene 1., (noticed by Steevens)

"But always resolute in most extremes."

Thus the change of a single syllable is sufficient to make good English, good sense, and good metre of a passage which is otherwise defective in these three particulars. It retains the _s_ in "labours," keeps the comma in its place, and provides that antecedent for "it," which was justly considered necessary by MR. SINGER.

JOHN TAYLOR.

30. Upper Gower Street.

_Meaning of Waste-book_ (Vol. iii., pp. 118, 195.).--Richard Dafforne, of Northampton, in his very curious

"Merchant's Mirrour, or Directions for the Perfect Ordering and Keeping
of his Accounts; framed by way of Debitor and Creditor after the (so
tearmed) Italian Manner, containing 250 rare Questions, with their
Answers in the form of a Dialogue; as likewise a Waste Book, with a
complete Journal and Ledger thereunto appertaining;"

annexed to Malyne's _Consuetudo vel Lex Mercatoria_, edit. 1636, folio, gives rather a different explanation of the origin of the term "waste-book" to that contained in the answer of your last correspondent. "WASTE-BOOK," he observes,

"So called, because, when the Matter is written into the Journall, then
is this Book void, and of no esteeme, especially in Holland; where the
buying people firme not the Waste-book, as here our nation doe in
England."

JAS. CROSSLEY.

_Arthur's Seat and Salisbury Craigs_ (Vol. iii., p. 119.).--L. M. M. R. is informed that there is a tradition of King Arthur having defeated the Saxons in the neighbourhood of this hill, to the top of which he ascended for the purpose of viewing the country.

In the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ we have another explanation also (_sub voce_), as follows:--

"Arthur's Seat is said to be derived, or rather corrupted, from A'rd
Seir, a 'place or field of arrows,' where people shot at a mark: and
this not improperly; for, among these cliffs is a dell, or recluse
valley, where the wind can scarcely reach, now called the Hunter's Bog,
the bottom of it being a morass."

The article concludes thus:

"The adjacent crags are supposed to have taken their name from the Earl
of Salisbury; who, in the reign of Edward III., accompanied that prince
in an expedition against the Scots."

But query "a height of earth;" "earthes" (an old form of the genitive), or "airthes height," not unnaturally corrupted to "Arthur's Seat."

W. T. M.

Edinburgh.

_Salisbury Craigs._--Craiglockhart Hill and Craigmillar Castle, both in the neighbourhood of the Craigs, are all so called from the Henry de Craigmillar, who built the castle (now in ruins) in the twelfth century. There is a charter in the reign of Alexander II., in 1212, by William, son of Henry de Craigmillar, to the monastery of Dunfermline, which is the earliest record of the castle.

BLOWEN.

_Meaning of "Harrisers"_ (Vol. ii., p. 376.).--I am told that the practice which CLERICUS RUSTICUS {252} speaks of, holds in Yorkshire, but not the name.

In Devon a corn-field, which has been cut and cleared, is called an "arrish." A vacant stubblefield is so called during the whole of the autumn months.

Your correspondent suggests "arista;" can he support this historically? If not, it is surely far-fetched. Let me draw attention to a word in our English Bible, which has been misunderstood before now by readers who were quite at home in the original languages: "_earing nor harvest_" (Genesis). Without some acquaintance with the earlier forms of our mother tongue, one is liable to take _earing_ to mean the same as "harvest," from the association of _ears_ of corn. But it is the substantive from the Anglo-Saxon verb _erian_, to plough, to till: so that "earing nor harvest" = "sowing nor reaping." From _erian_ we may pass on to _arare_, and from that to _arista_: in the long pedigree of language they are scarcely unconnected: but the Anglo-Saxon is not _derived_ from the Latin; they are, each in its own language, genuine and independent forms. But it is curious to see what an attraction these distant cousins have for one another, let them only come within each other's sphere of gravitation.

In, Yorkshire the verb _to earland_ is still a _living_ expression; and a Yorkshireman, who has more Saxon than Latin in him, will not write "arable land," but "_ear_able land." A Yorkshire clergyman tells me that this orthography has been perpetuated in a local act of parliament of no very ancient date.

Putting all these facts together, I am inclined to think that "arrish" must first mean "land for tillage;" and that the connexion of the word with "gleaning" or "gleaners" is the effect of association, and therefore of later date.

But it must be observed, there is a difference between "arrish" and "harrisers." Can it be shown that Dorset-men are given to aspirating their words? Besides this, there is a great difference between "arri_ss_ers" and "arri_sh_ers" for counties so near as Dorset and Devon. And again, while I am quite familiar with the word "arrish," I never heard "arrishers," and I believe it is unknown in Devonshire.

J. E.

Oxford.

_Harrisers or Arrishers._--Doubtless, by this time, some dozen Devonshire correspondents will have informed you, for the benefit of CLERICUS RUSTICUS, that _arrishers_ is the term prevailing in that county for "stubble." The Dorset harrisers are therefore, perhaps, the second set of gleaners, who are admitted to the fields to pick up from the stubble, or _arrishes_, the little left behind by the reapers' families. A third set of gleaners has been admitted from time immemorial, namely, the _Anser stipularis_, which feeds itself into plump condition for Michaelmas by picking up, from between the stubble, the corns which fell from the ears during reaping and sheaving. The Devonshire designation for this excellent sort of poultry--known elsewhere as "stubble geese"--is "arrish geese."

The derivation of the word must be left to a better provinial philologist than

W. H. W.

_Chaucer's "Fifty Wekes"_ (Vol. iii., p. 202.).--A. E. B.'s natural and ingeniously-argued conjecture, that Chaucer, by the "_fifty wekes_" of the _Knightes Tale_, "meant to imply the interval of _a solar year_,"--whether we shall rest in accepting the poet's measure of time loosely and poetically, or (which I would gladly feel myself authorised to do) find in it, with your correspondent, an astronomical and historical reason,--is fully secured by the comparison with Chaucer's original.

The _Theseus_ of Boccaccio says, appointing the listed fight:

"E TERMINE vi sia a ciò donato
D'UN ANNO INTERO."

To which the poet subjoins:

"E così fu ordinato."

See TESEIDE, v. 98.

A. L. X.

_The Almond Tree, &c._ (Vol. iii., p. 203.).--The allusions in Hall's poem, stanzas iii. & v., refer to the fine allegorical description of human decrepitude in _Ecclesiastes_, xii. 5, 6., when

"'The almond tree shall flourish' (_white hairs_), and 'the silver cord
shall be loosed,' and 'the golden bowl broken,' and 'the mourners shall
go about the streets.'"

The pertinence of these solemn figures has been sufficiently explained by biblical commentators. It is to be presumed that the reference to a source so well known as the Bible would have occurred at once to the Querist, had not the allusions, in the preceding stanza, to the _heathen_ fable of Medea, diverted his thoughts from that more familiar channel.

V.

Belgravia.

[Similar explanations have been kindly furnished by S. C., HERMES,
P. K., R. P., J. F. M., J. D. A., and also by W. (2), who refers to
Mead's _Medica Sacra_ for an explanation of the whole passage.]

_St. Thomas's Onions_ (Vol. iii., p. 187.).--In reference to the Query, Why is St. Thomas frequently mentioned in connexion with onions? I fancy the reason to be this. There is a variety of the onion tribe commonly called _potato_ or _multiplying onion_. It is the rule to _plant_ this onion on St. Thomas's day. From this circumstance it appears to me likely that this sort of onion may be so called, though I never heard of it before. They are fit for use as large hard onions some time before the other sort.

J. WODDERSPOON.

Norwich, March 10. 1851.

{253}

_Roman Catholic Peers_ (Vol. iii., p. 209.).--The proper comment has been passed on the Duke of Norfolk, but not on the other two Roman Catholic peers mentioned by Miss Martineau. She names Lord Clifford and Lord Dormer as "having obtained entrance _at last_ to the legislative assembly, where their fathers sat and ruled when their faith was the law of the land." The term "fathers" is of course figuratively used, but we may conclude the writer meant to imply their ancestors possessing the same dignity of peerage, and enjoying, in virtue thereof, the right of "sitting and ruling" in the senate of their country. If such was the lady's meaning, what is her historical accuracy? The first Lord Dormer was created in the reign of James I., in the year 1615; and, dying the next year, never sat in parliament: and it has been remarked as a very singular fact that this barony had existed for upwards of two centuries before any of its possessors did so. But the first Lord Dormer, who sat in the House of Lords, was admitted, not by the Roman Catholic Relief Act, but by the fact of his being willing to take the usual oaths: this was John, the tenth lord, who succeeded his half-brother in 1819, and died without issue in 1826. As for Lord Clifford of Chudleigh, that family was not raised to the peerage until the year 1672, in the reign of Charles II.

J. G. N.

_Election of a Pope_ (Vol. iii., p. 142.).--Probably T. refers to the (alleged) custom attendant upon the election of a pope, as part of the ceremony alluded to in the following lines in _Hudibras_:--

"So, cardinals, they say, do grope
At t'other end the new made Pope"