Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 8.djvu/450

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442


NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. vm. NOV. so, 1901.


SCHILLER'S TRANSLATORS. A fairly dose collation of Coleridge's fine version of * Die Piccolomini ' and ' Wallensteins Tod ' with the original indicates that 520 lines are omitted, and 217 lines are unrepresented in the German text. These variants are in part admitted by Coleridge, and probably the bulk of the remainder results chiefly from differences between the MS. used by the translator and Schiller's final revise before publication. With regard to 'Don Carlos,' a literary curiosity in its way is the appearance of Lord John Russell's ' Don Carlos ' (1822) amongst the translations of the poems and plays of Schiller collected by Prof. H. Morley (1890), with the editor's benediction. This is " traduttore, traditore," with a vengeance !

J. DORMER.

ORME'S 'HISTORY OF INDOOSTAN.' It will probably interest students of Indian history to know that Orme, through lack of personal knowledge of the locality, made some mis- takes in his descriptions of the campaigns carried on by Stringer Lawrence in the neighbourhood of Trichinopoly in the middle of the eighteenth century. In the ' District Manual of Trichinopoly,' which was compiled by Mr. Lewis Moore, of the Madras Civil Service, in 1875, these mistakes were con- sidered and rectified. Future writers will do well to consult the ' Manual ' before writing of the campaigns, lest they blindly follow Orme in making Col. Lawrence perform the impossible feat of planting British colours on the top of the Golden Rock.

FRANK PENNY, LL.M.

  • 4, Woodville Road, Baling, W.

' THE BROWNIE OF BLEDNOCH.' Detailing the early literature that influenced Sir Richard Calmady, Lucas Malet mentions the ballad of ' Aiken-drum' (ii. i. 94). She adds that the reader's imagination was fired with this " mixture of humour, realism, and pathos," and that he straightway made many portraits of 'that 'foul and stalwart ghaist,' the Brownie of Badnock." The reference is appa- rently to the 'Brownie of Blednoch,' by Wil- liam Nicholson (1783-1842), the Galloway pedlar, whose 'Tales in Verse and Miscella- neous Poems ' appeared in 1814. An edition,

Kar il ne demoert en ceo pais pur autre chose qe pur cele dette, e pur argente qe lui est deu sur les loeaux le Roy, e nous sumes molt tenuz a Ladalli pur le bon seruice qil ad fait a nostre seignur le Roy e a nous, e pur ceo qil est du pais nostre tres- chere dame e mere qe dieux assoile, nous ne voeriom en nulle manere qil senparust de ceo pais plev- naunt de nostre seignur le Roy ne de nous. Donne sous, &c., a Langeley le iiij. iour de Joen." Miscel- lanea of the Exchequer, 5/2,


with memoir by John M'Diarmid, was issued in 1828, and this was revised with a fresh biographical preface by Mr. M. M'L. Harper in 1878. The ' Brownie' was greatly admired by Dr. John Brown, author of 'Rab and his Friends,' and he quotes it with high approval in his article on 'The Black Dwarf's Bones ('Horse Subsecivse,' Second Series, p. 355, ed. 1882). THOMAS BAYNE.

'THE TEMPEST' ANAGRAM. This anagram occurs in the last two lines of the Epilogue to 'The Tempest':

As you from crimes would pardon'd be,

Let your indulgence set me free.

The couplet in well-printed editions is out of line with the rest of the Epilogue, being shifted a little to the right, as if not belong- ing to it. The use of " from " in the place of "for" in the first line is apparently inten- tional. On transposing the letters and add- ing another "a " we get

' Tempest ' of Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam.

Do ye ne'er divulge me, ye words !

It is noteworthy that the first edition of the plays begins with ' The Tempest.'

E. SIBREE.

University College, Bristol.

" COONDA-OIL ": "KuN DA-OIL." This im- portant trade term, the name of a medicinal oil, occurs in both spellings in the ' Century Dictionary' and 'N.E.D.' without any ety- mology. It is a contraction of a longer word, written in English tallicoona, in French tou- loucouna, the latter appearing in Littre, also without etymology. The editors of the 'N.E.D.,' who must sooner or later deal with this full form under letter T, may be glad to know that touloucouna, or in more scientific orthography tulukuna, belongs to the Wolof tongue, spoken in the French colony of Sene- gambia. In the cognate Serer language it is tulukuni, whence perhaps the English variant coondi. There are several other Wolof words, botanical and zoological terms, which have passed into English e.g., gourou (nut), kevel (gazelle), khaya (Senegal mahogany), kob (antelope) none of them satisfactorily treated in our existing dictionaries. For the benefit of future lexicographers, English or French, I may indicate Dard's 'Wolof Dictionary' (1825) and Guy Grand's (1890) as containing full information concerning all these.

JAMES PL ATT, Jun.

CHRIST ADELPHIAN. The 'H.E.D.' defines the Christadelphians as "a religious sect founded in the United States by Dr. Thomas in 1833." This date is hardly correct. John Thomas was born in Hoxton Square, London,