296
NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. vn. APRIL is, iw.
all its subtlety when ambassadors are said
to be men sent " abroad to lie," instead of
men sent " to lie abroad," for the benefit
of their country, as there is a double mean-
ing in lie which seems to be dispelled by the
transposition. To lie signifies not only to
tell falsehoods, but to reside or to stay.
The ' N.E.D.' has the following example
among several others : " 1632, Lithgow,
' Trav.' iv. 141 [He] kept a better house,
than any Ambassadour did that ever lay
at Constantinople."
Izaak Walton's account of Sir Henry Wotton's skit at his profession will bear repetition (' Lives,' pp. 128-9, Zouch's edition) :
"At his first going ambassador into Italy, as he passed through Germany, he stayed some days at Augusta, where having been in his former travels, well known by many of the best note for learning and ingeniousness (those that are esteemed the virtuosi of that nation), with whom he, passing an evening in merriments, was requested by Chris- topher Flecamore to write some sentence in his Albo (a book of white paper which the German gentry usually c jerry about with them for that purpose) ; and Sir Henry Wotton consenting to the motion, took an occasion from some accidental discourse of the present company to write a pleasant definition of an ambassador, in these very words :
' ' Legatus est vir bonus peregre missus ad men- tiendum reipublicae causa.'
"Which Sir Henry Wotton could have been content should have been thus Englished :
"'An ambassador is an honest man, sent to lie abroad for the good of his coimtry.'
" But the word for lie, being the hinge upon which the conceit was to turn, was not so expressed in Latin as would admit (in the hands of an enemy especially) so fair a construction as Sir Henry thought in English. Yet as it was, it slept quietly among other sentences in this Albo, almost eight years, till by accident it fell into the hands of Jasper Scioppius, a Romanist, and a man of a rest- less spirit and a malicious pen ; who, with books against King James, prints this as a principle of that religion professed by the King, and his Ambassador Sir Henry Wotton, then at Venice and in Venice it was presently after written h several glass-windows and spitefully declared to be Sir Henry Wotton's."
It is interesting to note how the " Albo " o the seventeenth century developed into the fashionable album of the eighteenth anc early nineteenth, which was chiefly charac terized by its vari-coloured pages.
ST. SWITHIN.
M. GAIDOZ himself suggests what appear to be an excellent illustration of the phras which he explains. Wotton's famous de finition of an ambassador was originally written in Latin : " Legatus est vir bonu peregre missus ad mentiendum reipublicae causa." The jeu d' esprit contained in th
English form commonly quoted (slightly
nverted by M. GAIDOZ), " An ambassador
s an honest man sent to lie abroad for the
ommonwealth," is, of course, absent in
he original, being doubtless a product of
sprit d'escalier. EDWARD D. BEWLEY.
M. GAIDOZ gives chapter and verse for is quotation, but the saying, as I have eard it, is not so hard on the diplomats, t runs thus : " Men who lie abroad for the enefit of their country." In this there is- 10 thing more unkind than a double entente. JOHN P. STILWELL. Hilfield, Yateley.
Your French correspondent, not un- laturally, has marred the point of Sir lenry Wotton's mot when he quotes it as ' A man sent abroad to lie for the benefit >f his country." Sir Henry said : " A man ent to lie abroad for the benefit of his Country." " Lie abroad " means to sleep- and therefore to reside in a foreign, ountry, but Sir Henry's phrase lent itself o the witty suggestion of " lying abroad "' n another sense. P.
' REPONSE AUX QUESTIONS D'UN PRO<- V~INCIAL ' (10 S. vii. 249). According to- 3arbier, ' Dictionnaire des Ouvrages ano- nymes,' vol. iv. col. 308, the author of this >ook, 5 vols., 1704-7, at Rotterdam, chez Leers, is P. Bayle. LTJDWIG ROSENTHAL.
Hildegardstrasse, 16, Munich.
" CREELING " THE BRIDEGROOM (10 S. vii.. 186, 256). This custom, as it was carried out in Tranent, East Lothian, is thus- described in ' Tranent and its Surroundings,' by P. M'Neill, second ed., 1884, p. 260 :
"Another curious old custom was that of ' creel- ng' the bridegroom, but it too has nearly died out. This ceremony used to be looked upon as a most interesting part in the wedding programme, and, hundreds turned out to witness it. No sooner had! the married couple returned from the celebration of the mystic rite than the newly made husband was brought out, and a creel, filled with stones,, placed on his back. This he was compelled to carry until his spouse coxild muster courage sufficient to ryin out and kiss him publicly, when, amid the- ringing cheers of the crowd, his burden was allowed^ to fall to the ground. This custom of 'creeling was meant to signify that the gudeman had made- tap his mind to bear the burden of providing for the- future household ; and the kiss publicly given, showed that the gudewife \vould be equally ready,, when required, to fly to his assistance.
w. s.
DIPPING WELL IN HYDE PARK (10 S. vii. 247). At the north-west corner of Hyde Park was an enclosure, for admission to- which one shilling was charged. It had 1
