38
NOTES AND QUERIES.
[9 th S. 1. JAN. 8,
and the blowing of horns form part of the
ritual. There is some account of this old
custom in my 'Manley and Cprringham
Glossary.' See also the late Sir Charles
Anderson's 'Lincoln Pocket Guide,' p. 17 ;
Marshall's 'East Yorkshire Words,' vol. i.
p. 39; Elworthy's 'West Somerset Word-
Book,' p. 674 ; Dawson's ' History of Skipton,'
p. 295 ; and ' N. & Q.,' 7 th S. iii. 367.
EDWARD PEACOCK.
" KEST, BUT DO NOT LOITER " (8 th S. xii. 244, 318, 332). As a sort of parallel to the above, I may, perhaps, quote the injunction to per- sons availing themselves of a drinking foun- tain attached to the General Post Office in New York at least, I copied it from there in the blazing sun of July, 1880 :
" Keep cool and good-natured,
Take your turn, The line forms this way."
This legend impressed me the more because some of my American friends had scoffed at our railway-station " cautions " and " warn- ings," as only suitable for babes and sucklings. JAMES HOOPER.
CONSTRUCTION WITH A PARTITIVE (8 th S. xii. 206, 312, 411, 477, 517). But for an assured dictum at the last reference, this subject might now have been let alone as quite suffi- ciently discussed. On the question, however, as to whether the humble inquirer is to be guided by the practice of distinguished writers or the rules of grammar-books, we now learn that the proper course is "to follow the generally accepted rules of grammar as closely as possible." Then comes this philo- sophical distinction, with implied thoughtful caution :
" Whatever may be the case as regards the con- struction of sentences, we ought certainly to be careful of the meanings of words, and this of itself should guard us against such constructions as ' different to,' ' averse to,' ' neither of them are.' "
In "averse to" we have a new item for consideration. The writer guards us against the use of it, after having dwelt on the im- portance of grammatical rules. Now, there is at hand a grammar, by William Lennie, on which many learners must have been reared, seeing that its title-page bears that it is in its " ninety-third edition, improved " (Oliver & Boyd, 1894). This work is entitled 'The
Principles of English Grammar, with
Copious Exercises in Parsing and Syntax'; and the thirty-second of its syntactical rules, given on p. 113, asserts that "certain words and phrases must be followed with appro- priate prepositions ; such be " and in the appended list is "averse to" On p. 115, among sentences to be corrected, is, "This
prince was naturally averse from war," to
which the author appends the note, " Averse
and aversion require to after them rather than
f rom ; but both are used, and sometimes even
oy the same author." Now, the student who
uses this book evidently an authoritative
guide if numerous editions have a meaning
will conclude that " averse to " is correct and
proper, and " averse from " an aberration, if
not a blunder. Yet, in the face of this, an
upholder of " the generally accepted rules of
grammar " warns his readers against " averse
to," which he unhesitatingly pillories as one
of three glaring absurdities in syntax. This
state of matters must be painfully discon-
certing to the " thoughtful and conscientious
reader " who has already figured in this dis-
cussion. It may comfort him to learn from
the 'Encyclopaedic Dictionary,' with appro-
priate examples, that Mr. Lennie con-
sciously or not is historically defensible.
While etymology would demand/row, modern
practice prefers to. And so an end.
THOMAS BAYNE. Helensburgh, N.B.
NOTES ON BOOKS, &c.
First Steps in Anglo-Saxon. By Henry Sweet, Ph.D.
(Oxford, Clarendon Press.)
WE have reason to feel grateful when an acknow- ledged master in any branch of knowledge con- descends to the low estate of the tyro, and provides leading-strings to guide his unaccustomed steps. If the beginner in Anglo-Saxon does not soon learn to run alone, the blame certainly does not rest with Dr. Sweet, who now improves upon his 'Anglo- Saxon Primer' by issuing a still more elementary manual of a less concise and abstract nature. All the more scientific considerations of mutation, gra- dation, and the like are here allowed to stand over for the present, and it is only the absolutely essen- tial and practical part of the grammar that is insisted upon. In First Steps in Anglo-Saxon' the learner is encouraged to proceed by having a minimum of syntactical details forced upon nis attention, and in this way he is to a large extent enabled, in George Eliot s phrase, "to get at the marrow of the language independently of the bones." To supply a praxis of reading lessons Dr. Sweet has selected certain passages from Beda's ' Astronomy,' the ' Colloquy ' of yElfric, and the ' Beowulf,' and in order to render these more suitable for his purpose he has submitted them to a process of normalization and paraphrase which we do not greatly like. All that can be said is that the end justifies the means.
Handbook to Thornton Abbey. By J. R. Boyle,
F.S.A. (Andrews.)
MR. BOYLE has performed a useful and interesting piece of work in writing this little guide-book to one of the only two Lincolnshire abbeys (Croyland being the other) which at all repay a pilgrimage. It is sufficiently illustrated, and contains (besides a history and description of the buildings of the
