Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 12.djvu/96

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88


NOTES AND QUERIES. w* s. xn. AUG. i, im


tion, I have thought it needful for the use of the 'New English Dictionary' to have the original letter examined in the State Paper Office. The result, authenticated to us by the Deputy - Keeper of the Rolls, is that Motley's paddy turns out to be a misreading or rniscopying, Digges's word being baddy. The passage transcribed verbatim is as fol- lows where observe that Motley has sub- stituted " doubt not " for Digges's sixteenth- century English doubt = fea,r: "I doubt the flower of the pressed English bandes are gone, and the remnant supplyed with such baddy persons as commonly, in voluntary procurements, men are glad to accept." Paddy adj. thus drops out of the language, though, like some hundred other bogus "words" which originated in some misread- ing, miswriting, misprint, or mistake of some kind, it will no doubt be handed down in paste-and-scissors dictionaries, compiled one from another, ad inftnitum. Digges's word baddy I have not met with elsewhere. Is it a derivative of bad, like goody from good, whity from white ? or could it be itself a mistake for badde, the earlier form of bad ? Baudy or bawdy (the first of our two adjectives so spelt),

in the sense " dirty," as in Lydgate's " He

in the kechen laye with baudycoate," is

in some dialects pronounced with the same vowel as bad, and may also be considered. It may be added that there is said to have been a local word paddy, meaning worm- eaten, used in the isle of Thanet in the eighteenth century, and registered by Lewis, on whose authority it was included by Pegge in his 'Kenticisms'; thence it has been un- fortunately compiled into a modern 'Kentish Glossary,' and, more amazingly, into a Hampshire one, as a living word ; but Prof. Wright has found no living evidence for it : all goes back to Lewis. Had Digges's word actually been paddy, " worm-eaten " might have been conjectured as a picturesque de- scription of Leicester's miserable soldiers, like a row of worm - eaten harbour - posts ; but Digges's word is baddy, and baddy, not- withstanding Motlejr and the queue of dic- tionaries, is the word we have to deal with. J. A. H. MURRAY.

WORDSWORTH QUERIES. Can any one in- form me of the authorship of the following quotations, made by Wordsworth in his poems ? I give the name of the poem in which each occurs with the date.

1. " A prospect all on fire ": 'An Evening Walk,' 1787-9.

2. "The blessings he enjoys, to guard": 'Descriptive Sketches,' 1791-2.


3. " The dreadful appetite of death ": ' Ex- cursion,' published 1814.

4. "Who never tasted grace, and goodness ne'er had felt ": ' Artegal and Elidure,' 1815.

5. "Poorly provided, poorly folio wed "; ibid.

6. " The murtherer's chain partake, Corded and burning at the social stake": 'Ecclesias- tical Sonnets,' part ii. xxxiv., published 1827.

7. "Cruel of heart were they, bloody of hand ": ' Stanzas suggested off St. Bee's,' 1833.

I may add that I have failed to find the alexandrine, No. 4, either in Spenser or in Thomson. NOWELL SMITH.

New College, Oxford.

STORY OF FRENCH REVOLUTION. Can any one kindly refer me to a story which, to the best of my remembrance, appearea some forty years ago in Household Words or All the Year .Round, and which turned on events in the French Revolution 1 It was a serial tale running through several numbers, and one of the chief 'characters was called Lomaque, an ex-steward of a French noble.

C. B.

Moy Lodge, Pinner, Middlesex.

TALE BY ARCHIBALD FORBES. Can you kindly inform me in which of the monthly magazines, during, I believe, the past ten years, a tale by Archibald Forbes appeared, entitled 'How the Craytur got on the Strength'? I believe, but am not sure, it is published in a book called 'Barracks, Bivouacs, and Battles,' by Archibald Forbes ; but I want the name and date of the magazine wherein it appeared by itself.

S. I. M.

WAS MARAT A JEW 1 Mr. E. Belfort Bax, in his ' Life of Jean- Paul Marat, the People's Friend,' writes :

" The register of his [Marat's] birth and baptism is as follows : ' Jean-Paul Mara, son of M. Jean- Paul Mara, proselyte, of Cagliari, in Sardinia, and of Mme. Louise Cabrol, of Geneva, was born on the 24th of May, and has been baptized on the 8th of June, 1743, having no godfather, and having for god- mother Mme. Cabrol, grandmother of the infant. His father thus belonged to the population of mixed race and Italian speech inhabiting one of the most interesting seats of early European civilization. He was made a citizen of Geneva on the 10th of March, 1741, having renounced his hereditary faith in favour of the Calvinism of his adopted city.

"The name 'Mara,' taken in conjunction with his native country, suggests some interesting reflec- tions for the philologist and ethnologist. It is well known that a strong Semitic element has always existed in Sardinia, as the result of the colonization in early ages of the neighbouring Carthaginian coasts of Africa. The word Mara itself certainly, as it stands, looks Hebrew and suggests the * waters of Marah.' In view of the characteristics of Marat