10 s. x. NOV. 28, iocs.] NOTES AND QUERIES.
435
phrases : Dear be here ! Dear bless you !
Dear help you ! Dear keep us ! Dear kens !
Dear knows ! Dear love you ! Dear me !
(Dear God, save me !)
The earliest example of " O dear ! " in ' N.E.D.' is taken from Congreve's
- Double Dealer,' dated 1694. How is it
possible to connect this late usage with an Old French word obsolescent in the six- teenth century ? No, there is nothing diabolic in the innocent exclamation " O dear ! " A. L. MAYHEW.
Oxford.
DR. PENA (10 S. x. 365). I think there can be little doubt that MB. DAVID SALMON is correct in identifying Bacon's Dr. Pena with the botanist of that name. A fine copy of the ' Stirpium Adversaria Nova,' 1570, is included in a recent catalogue {No. 122) of Messrs. Ellis of New Bond Street. The first issue of the book is said to be of great rarity, and to be a highly creditable production of the press of Thomas Purfoot. The catalogue adds :
" On the last page is a curious woodcut of the barnacle geese issuing from the pods of a marine plant, and on page 252 is an illustration of the tobacco plant, then only recently brought to Europe from the West Indies, pasted on to the leaf, it having evidently been procured while the book was in the press."
W. F. PRIDEATJX.
QUEEN ANNE'S FIFTY CHURCHES (10 S. ix. 429 ; x. 36). It is not quite so easy to answer this question as at first sight appears, as there is no official record, so far as I am aware, of the proceedings of the Com- missioners appointed to carry out Queen Anne's benevolent intention. There were in all three Acts of Parliament dealing with this matter, viz., 9 Anne, cap. 22 (1710) ; 10 Anne, cap. 11 (1711); and 12 Anne, cap. 17, stat. 1 (1713) ; and the number of churches specified was fifty (not fifty-two, as MR. PAGE says at the second of the above references). He is also incorrect in his citation of the Act, which is cap. 22, not cap. 1. There is a large mass of papers connected with the building of these churches amongst the " Audit Office Declared Ac- counts " at the Public Record Office, and I know that in the case of one church the accounts are so detailed as to give the names of the wood-carvers and the wages they Deceived. MR. PAGE includes St. James's, Bermondsey ; but this is surely an error, as the first stone of the present build- ing was not laid until 21 Feb., 1827.
I am sorry to be so critical, but St Oeorge's, Queen's Square, which is included
by both correspondents at pp. 36-7, was
certainly not built by the Commissioners,
as it was in existence as a chapel-of-ease
to St. Andrew's, Holborn, before the first
Act was passed, and a pamphlet was pub-
lished containing the sermon preached by
Dr. J. Marshall at the opening of the chapel
on Whitsunday, 12 May, 1706. What the
Commissioners actually did was to assign
a district to the chapel, thus giving it the
status of a parish church, as they were
empowered to do by section ix. of 10 Anne,
cap. 11 (1711). They also purchased a
burial-ground for the use of the parish, a
part of which is now a public open space.
MR. PAGE refers to an " error " made by Mr. George Sampson in the course of his article on De Foe in The Bookman for June, but does not seem to have grasped the full extent of Mr. Sampson's blunder, for " Queen Anne's Bounty " has nothing what- ever to do with the building of the fifty new churches. EDWIN W. FLETCHER.
Ivydene, Hendham Road, Upper Tooting, S. W.
"MOLOKER," YIDDISH TERM (10 S. x. 385). MR. PLATT is not quite accurate in the sound of the word. It never at any time has the hard k, but the ch as in the German word loch. In different countries the vowel -sounds vary somewhat. A Spanish Jew pronounces the word melacha, a Polish Jew meloochoo, a Lithuanian Jew melawchaw, a Cockney Jew melocho ; and when used in Yiddish the word still retains the pronunciation of the original Hebrew according to the dialect of the speaker. The transition of the ch to k is owing to the inability of the Englishman to sound this guttural, and the word has in slang become moloker. ISRAEL SOLOMONS.
91, Portsdown Road, W.
There are two forms of a word in use amongst working people which seem to be related to moloker. These words are sounded maylex and moylox, and equal the word " muddle." I have often heard them when one person has watched another set about a job, the result being "a regular maylex or moylox of it " a muddle, in fact. Some one blundering over a piece of work makes " a maylex " of it. THOS. RATCLIFFE.
MR. PLATT seems to think that the accent should be on the penultimate. But I am by no means sure that he has traced moloker to its real Hebraic source. Besides meldcha, or " trade," we have molka, or queen. Now it is quite possible that the first quick-witted Hebrew in the purlieus of Petticoat Lane
