10 s. VIIL AUG. 3, 1907.] NOTES AND QUERIES.
97
observance of May Day by the old sun-
worshippers ? This question of May Day
observance and what he calls " May-year "
worship is discussed by Sir Norman Lockyer
in his recently published work, ' Stonehenge
And other British Stone Monuments Astro-
nomically Considered ' (London, 1906). Does
not the jubilant May Morning musical service
carry us back to the time when our pre-
historic forefathers got on high vantage
ground to welcome the May Day sun, the
harbinger of spring and the crop-growing
season ? FREDK. A. EDWARDS.
JEisallatwous.
NOTES ON BOOKS, &o.
The Oxford English Dictionary. Misbode Mono- poly. (Vol. VI.) By Henry Bradley. (Oxford, Clarendon Press.)
THE back of the paper covers of this section shows the admirable advance already made in the pro- duction of this colossal Dictionary, which within a year or two will in all probability be completed. The energy and scholarship which have long been exerted on the work deserve the highest praise, and the editors have raised a monument which should be famous as long as the English language is spoken .and written. It takes an expert with years of practice in English to appreciate the extent of the stores here set before him, and the skilful analysis which has unravelled scores of riddles, killed a hundred false analogies (or shall we say scotched them? since error is long lived), and added new attractions even to familiar words.
If the people who write would only, instead of inventing base ill-struck coin of their own, seek out the neglected gold and silver which is their true heritage, English might again be the wonderful instrument that it ought to l>e. Dr. Bradley has laid before us a long collection of words in "mis-," many of which will oe unknown to the most careful of students and collectors. We find "misenglish" (an obsolete verb which there is, alas ! ample occa- .sion to use), "nrisease," " nrisemployment," "mis- proud," and many other effective compounds. " Misfaith " has examples from Wyclif and Tenny- son only. "Mish-mash" is a good word seldom used by modern writers. Scott s 'Abbot' is duly quoted for "Misrule." "Miss" (verb and noun) occupies two long articles in which the various enses are treated with great skill. "Mithridatize, " to render immune from poison, is one of the specially interesting words derived from persons. " Mixen is an old word for an ugly thing enough, and a word of some dignity. We think it worth while to note that Tennyson has used it in 'The Marriage of Geraint':
To pick the faded creature from the pool, And cast it on the mixen that it die. " Mizzle "=rain slightly, might have been found in -Jane Austen, who has some pleasant surprises in the way of English of a coltoquial kind. "Moated' is, of course, connected with Shakespeare's "moated grange " and Mariana ; but no reference is made to the imaginative treatment of the same theme m
Tennyson's ' Mariana,' which repeats the phrase ;
e.g., in
Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn
About the lonely moated grange. "Mob" is used by Australian writers, "with- out disparaging iniplication," to mean a crowd. " Mobolatry," which is quoted in only two journal- istic examples, we should have hardly included. " Mockage =mockery, is said to be very common in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. For "moderate " (adjective) we might add the following from Matthew Arnold's poem ' The Second Best '
Moderate tasks and moderate leisure,
Quiet living, strict-kept measure, for it seems to us to represent well that rule of aurea mediocrita* which we associate specially with Horace. Generally we like to see quotations from poets of mark, for their work does much to pre- serve, and sometimes to ennoble, words which are apt to be degraded in ordinary prose, and still more so in journalism. Horace points out this in his ' Ars Poetica,' which is still an excellent manual of the artistic use of language ; and his views are sub- stantially, we believe, those of many who keep a zealous eye on English to-day. We make no apology, then, for suggesting the addition of some poetical quotations, though we are aware that the large class who have no taste for poetry may think them superfluous in a dictionary. Of course, it is impossible to produce the quotations which are the best in every case, and such additions as we propose may be distasteful to some, or may even have been rejected by the compilers of the ' Dictionary.' It is far ahead of all others in its illustrative matter so far ahead, indeed, that the editors can afford to accept with complacency any trifling additions. Many quotations we seek, and discover, here, with admiration for the unwearied collectors who brought them from all sorts of writers.
"Mods," as the abbreviation for an Oxford ex- amination, is included; for the 'Dictionary' has a wide sweep, and gathers in abbreviations, and even such unregenerate sporting terms as "monkey" for 500. "Moiety" is used jocularly for " one's oetter half, i.e., a wife, rarely a husband." For "molen- dinary" we are pleased to see quotations familiar to us from Scott's 'Monastery' and 'Pirate.' A new word has been added since the publication of this section to those derived from p6\vB$o<;, i.e., " molybdott," a substance which may become famous, if, as its French inventor declares, it has the same powers as radium. "Moment" is a long and interesting article. The "mongoose" is duly gathered out of Mr. Kipling's 'Jungle Book.' The quotations for "monist are only two of 1836-7 and 1862 and might have been easily added to, but we believe that the editors do not care to trouble them- selves with modern usages of the last fifty years or so. They have already a sufficiently extensive field to cover. The school "monitor" we expected to see exemplified from some standard scholastic book, such as Stanley's 'Life of Arnold.' In Myers's great book on Human Personality' (2 vols., 1903) the introductory glossary defines " monition " as "a message involving counsel or warning, when that counsel is based upon facts already in exist- ence, but not normally known to the person who receives the monition." This scientific sense is not 1 mentioned by the 'N.E.D.' The selection of quota- i tions for "monody" is all that could be desired, i including a reference to ' Lycidas.'
