Page:Notes and Queries - Series 7 - Volume 5.djvu/24

---

hats were becoming obsolete), and offered to the British public at the reasonable figure of four shillings and ninepence. Albert Smith sang:—

Then his hat cost about four and nine,
 With a brim very broad and quite flat.
’Tis a pity that medical students
 Have such love for a gossamer hat.

E. G. Younger, M.D.

 

The word goss, applied to a hat, is usually supposed to be a shortened form of gossamer, with reference to the use of gossamer silk in the manufacture of hats. Bardsley thinks that the origin of the surname is to be found in goose, cf. ‘English Surnames,’ p. 494, ed. 1875. Ferguson, in ‘The Teutonic Name-System,’ p. 309, thinks that the name is connected with goz, another form of gaud=Goth. F. C. Birkbeck Terry.

[Other correspondents reply to the same effect.]

 

The Sling (7th S. iv. 427).—The sling, as σφενδόνη, is mentioned once in Homer, as part of the equipment of Helenus, and borne by his attendant in the combat with Menelaus (‘Il.,’ N. xiii. l. 600). It appears under the synonym, ἐΰστροφος ὀιὸς ἄωτος, as a part of the arms with which the Locrians came supplied (ib., l. 716). When the Athenians landed, B.C. 425, upon the island of Sphacteria to attack the Lacedemonian garrison, they feared that in the event of a retreat they might be set upon, inter alia, καὶ σφενδόναις (Thuc., iv. 32).

Virgil has an excellent description of the use of the sling in the combat between Mezentius and the son of Arcens:—

Stridentem fundam, positis Mezentius hastis,
Ipse ter adducta circum caput egit habena;
Et media adversi liquefacto tempora plumbo
Diffidit, ac multa porrectum extendit arena.

‘Æn.,’ ix. 586–9,

Pliny attributes the invention to the Phœnicians (‘N. H.,’ vii. 56). Others attribute the invention to the inhabitants of the Baleares Insulæ, who were famous for the use of the sling. So Livy has, in reference to their alliance with the Carthaginians and opposition to the Roman fleet:—

“Fundis ut nunc plurimum, ita tunc solo eo telo utebantur, nec quisquam alterius gentis unus tantum ea arte, quantum inter alios omnes Baleares excellunt: itaque tanta vis lapidum creberrimæ grandinis modo in propinquantem jam terræ classem effusa est, ut, intrare portnm non ausi averterent in altum naves.”—B.C. 206, lib. xxviii. c. 37.

Florus writes of another attack upon the Romans at a later time, B.C. 123, in very similar terms:—

“Sed quum venientem ab alto Romanam classem prospexissent, prædam putantes, ausi etiam occurrere; et primo impetu ingenti lapidum saxorumque nimbo classem operuerunt. Tribus quisque fundis præliatur. Certos esse quis miretur ictus, quum hæc sola genti arma sint, id unum ab infantia studium? Cibum puer a matre non accipit, nisi quem, ipsa monstrante, percussit.”—‘Hist. Rom.,’ l. iii. c. 8.

They were not, however, successful, but were overcome by Metellus. Strabo connects the two original sources of the invention very neatly when, in writing of the inhabitants of these islands, he observes:—

Εφενδονῆται ἄριστοι λέγονται, καὶ τοῦτ ἤσκησαν, ὥς φασι, διαφερόντως, ἐξ ὅτον Φοίνικες κατέσχον τὰς νήσονς.—‘Geogr.,’ l. iii. p. 168.

Cæsar availed himself of them:—

“Eo de nocte Cæsar, iisdem ducibus usus, qui nuncii ab Iccio venerant, Numidas et Cretas sagittarios et funditores Baleares subsidio oppidanis (Remorum) misit.”—‘De Bell. Gall.,’ ii. 7.

The use of slings by the early Britons forms the subject of some notices in ‘N. & Q.,’ 1st S. v. 537; vi. 17, 377. Ed. Marshall.

 

See the following: ‘The Use of the Sling as a Warlike Weapon among the Ancients, by W. Hawkins, 4to., illustrated, 1847; the article “Sling” in Smith’s ‘Dictionary of the Bible.’ W. C. B.

 

See Virgil, ‘Æneid,’ ix. 665:—

Intendunt acres arcus, amentaque torquent.

Jonathan Bouchier.

 

Public Penance (7th S. iv. 469).—The instance referred to by Mr. Walford is not the last. The following appeared in the Liverpool Mercury of August 2, 1882, and as the remarks of the clergyman are pertinent, I give the report in extenso:—

“On Sunday evening a man named Llewellyn Hartree did penance at All Saints’ Church, East Clevedon, for the seduction of a servant girl, who now awaits her trial for manslaughter. The church was crowded, and after the evening prayer, as the vicar was about to enter the pulpit, he requested the congregation to remain seated. He then said: ‘We are about to deal with a matter of a most ancient character—a case of Church discipline. It is a very common reproach to us English Churchmen that we are the only body of Christians in the world amongst whom holy discipline is dead. Among the Catholics or in the Eastern Church, the Presbyterians of Scotland, or the English dissenters, I know not any body of Christians where salutary discipline is dead except the Church of England. I as firmly as any one in this church feel it would be a perfectly intolerable evil for a parish priest, at his own discretion, to call before him in the church any notorious offender for public rebuke, but it becomes very different when he is acting with the consent of the churchwardens, congregation, and parishioners. The offender will now come into the church to ask forgiveness of his fellow men, the one he has wronged, and Almighty God.’ The churchwarden then brought the man into the church. On reaching the chancel steps the vicar motioned the man to kneel. This he did, and the senior churchwarden then handed the vicar a paper, when he said to the man, ‘Do you acknowledge this to be your handwriting?’ He in a low voice said, ‘Yes.’ The declaration was then read as follows: ‘I, Llewellyn Hartree, do acknowledge to be guilty of the most grievous sin, for which I do hereby ask the forgiveness of my fellow men, and of the woman I have wronged, and of Almighty God. In proof of my repentance I promise to carry out the penance laid upon me in the presence of this congregation.’ The