Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 9.djvu/59

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ii s. ix. JAN. IT, i9H.] NOTES AND QUERIES.


father-in-law. They are : Creek, Tr and Lat. mtricus = stepfather ; Gr. Ki>/oo9 and Lat. socer= father-in-law. The origin of vitric-HS seems uncertain, but socer and cKvpos are undoubtedly originally akin to Cymric chwegr-wn, Old Slavonic svekr, Old English sweor. Old High German sivehur, &c. (cf. Walde'.s ' Latein. Etymolog. Worterbuch,' 1010; Miklosich's 'Etymolog. Worterb. der Slav. Sprachen,' p. 332).

H. KREBS.

COLOUR OF LIVERIES (US. viii. 190, 295, 357, 472, 515). None of your correspondents on this subject has touched upon the differ- ence made between the ordinary and the state livery. In great houses on great occasions the livery servants wore as their state livery, in some instances, coats of a different colour from their ordinary livery. For instance, in one such household where the ordinary liveries were blue, lined with yellow, the state liveries were yellow, lined with blue.

H.

An anonymous writer in 1664, when travelling about France in search of the Due de Brissac who was moving about from place to place was told at a village about " un grand train dont les couleurs estoient jaunes avec des veloutez noirs," and at once recognized them as the Duke's colours, whose coat of arms, I find, was a field or with two (or three) horizontal velvet-bands (veloutes) sable (Acid. MS. 19,568).

L. L. K.

" RUCKSACK " OR " RUCKSACK "(US. viii. 447,497., 517). "Rucksack" is the bag carried on the back. The name is a compound of ruek-(e\ the old form for Eiicken (back), and Sack (not Zak, as one of your correspondents states, which is Dutch). " Rucksack " would not mean anything, as the adverb riickzuriick can only be joined to sub- stantives denoting motion e.g., Euckfahrt ; if the compound were formed to-day, it would be Rilckensack. I am thankful that our ancestors coined it when the short and unmutated ruck was still available. So it is not a deformity, but is as correct as can be. The assertion that it is M'orn by soldiers and schoolboys is very loose. Up to the time when mountaineering became the fashion this sort of bag belonged almost exclusively to Tyrol, where every male, from boy to old man,, from shepherd to emperor (when out hunting), used it. Since then its use has spread, and has become universal for touring. Twenty-five years ago one would have been hooted at if one had


appeared with it in public in Berlin ; now it has become an indispensable piece of the outfit of Berlin sportsmen, boy scouts, and workmen. The word thus has nothing to do with the verb rucken (to move, to jerk).

G. KRUEGER. Berlin.

R. GREY (11 S. viii. 488). See Cooper's ' Athena? Cantab.,' ii. 21 and 543, for a good account of Richard Grey, Rector of Withyham, who was presented to the living 9 March, 1539/40, by King's College, Cam- bridge, the then patrons. F. L. CLARKE.

King's College, Cambridge.

For Richard Grey see Cooper, ut supra and vol. iii. p. 90. It is Impossible to identify him with a man who was living in 1593:

"Dying 27 February 1582-8, he was buried at Withyam. An iron slab on the pavement of the church there is thus inscribed :

" Anno Domini 1582. The 27 Day of Februarys Dyed Richard Graye, Parson of Wythiham." Op. cit., ii. 21.

EDWARD BENSLY.

' MEMOIRS OF SIR JOHN LANGHAM, BARO- NET ' (11 S. viii. 281, 351, 463; ix. 16). Every reader will be glad to have the advantage of SIR CHARLES LANGHAM'S special knowledge of his family's history presented so lucidly as he has done. My authority for referring to Sir John Langham as being " famed for his readiness in speaking florid Latin r ' is Bridges's ' Northampton- shire,' vol. i. p. 554. A reference to Burnet's ' History ' shows that Bridges was wrong, and that he should have attributed the Latin scholarship to Sir James Langham.

Samuel Clarke's ' laves of Sundry Eminent Persons,' 1683, does not contain any funeral sermon upon Lady Elizabeth Langham, but it has a biography of that lady occupy- ing ten closely printed folio pages, and ending with the delicious couplet : May not the story of this Lady. Saint Make many Lady [sic] blush thro' Patch and Paint.

The funeral sermon was, as I said at viii. 352, preached by the eminent divine Simon Ford. It is called :


xP ia " riavov ; or a Christians acquiescence in all the products of divine providence : opened in a Sermon on Acts xxi. 14, preached at Cottes- brook ...... April the 16, 1664, at the interment of

...... Lady E. Langham [with elegies, Latin and

English, and an armorial plate]. London, 1665," 8vo

This little volume has more than thirty poetical elegies by various hands printed at the end.