232
NOTES AND QUERIES. [9*s.iiLMAB.25 f m
out of twenty used what he called "the in-
elegant term rungs." He nowasks for "present-
day authority " in order to answer the ques-
tion, " Which word round or rung is a
writer or speaker to use, to avoid the risk of
being considered either ignorant or vulgar ? "
Apparently J. S. M. T. does not think that
novelists know how to write decent English.
Putting this class aside, therefore, let me
adduce the case of a writer who, so far from
being ignorant or vulgar, was in some measure
representative of the highest culture of the
day the late John Addington Symonds. At
p. 347 of his book ' Our Life in the Swiss
Highlands,' published in 1892, he writes :
"Successive flights of ladders, each ending in a giddy platform hung across the gloom, climb to the height of some hundred and fifty feet ; and all their rungs were crusted with frozen snow."
A few pages further on (p. 354) he again uses the objectionable word. Nevertheless, the example of Bryce and Symonds may, per- haps, brace up the spirits of the unfortunate novelist in his efforts to secure a polite vocabulary.
It is easy to understand PROF. SKEAT'S reasons for declining to pursue further a dis- cussion of this kind, but perhaps with hi usual kindness he will answer the following question. In a foot-note on p. 116 he says that round is merely borrowed from the French. I think that Echelon is the usual French term for the rung of a ladder. As Shakespeare seems to have been the first writer of any eminence who used the word round, I should be glad to know if ronde was habitually used by the French in that sense about the year 1600, and if there are reasons for thinking that Shakespeare borrowed il from them. If I had Littre or any gooc dictionary at my elbow, I should not ask this question. W. F. PRIDEAUX.
45, Pall Mall, S.W.
TAKING THE PLEDGE ILLEGAL (9 th S. iii. 148) The would-be startling paragraph refers probably, to the "old law" of the Act 39 Geo. ill. c. 79, 52 Geo. III. c. 104, and 57 Geo. III. c. 19, and may indicate a case rea or imaginary covereu by their provisions See also Stephen's 'Commentaries,' vol. iv bk. vi. c. 6. The Christian World may meai the " Spenceans," mentioned in the last-namec statute (see Stephen's * Criminal Law,' p. 52).
M.A.
Hastings.
EDWARD H. MARSHALL,
OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S 'EARTH AND ANI
MATED NATURE ' (9 th S. iii. 69).
"In instances of the most violent passion, th under jaw has often an involuntary quiverin
otion ; and often also a state of languor produces
nother, which is that of yawning. Every one
nows how very sympathetic this kind of languid
otion is ; and that for one person to yawn is
ufficient to set all the rest of the company a-yawn-
ig. A ridiculous instance of this was commonly
ractised upon the famous McLaurin, one of the
rofessors at Edinburgh. He was very subject to
ave his jaw dislocated ; so that when he opened
is mouth wider than ordinary, or when he yawned,
e could not shut it again. In the midst of his
arangues, therefore, if any of his pupils began to
e tired of his lecture, he had only to gape or yawn,
nd the professor instantly caught the sympathetic
flection ; so that he thus continued to stand
peechless, with his mouth wide open, till his
ervant from the next room was called in to set his
aw again." Goldsmith's ' Earth and Animated
Mature,' vol. i. p. 170 (Blackie Son, 1870).
Curiously enough, while the text remains unaltered, the following foot-note is sub- oined :
"Since the publication of this work the editor tas been credibly informed that the professor had lot the defect here mentioned. Note by Gold- mith."
K. M. SPENCE, D.D. Manse of Arbuthnott, N.B.
The joke or blunder about Maclaurin's fits of yawning is told in Boswell's 'Life of lohnson,' under 3 April, 1776. M. N. G.
See Boswell's 'Johnson,' vi. 130, ed. 1876; and Forster's ' Goldsmith,' ii. 205, ed. 1878. EDWARD H. MARSHALL, M.A. Hastings.
"FRETISH " (9 th S. iii. 165). I am unable to accept MR. MAYHEW'S correction of my ety- mology of this verb. The alleged mediaeval Latin frigutire, to shiver with cold, seems to be a mere " ghost- word." There is a classical Latin word of identical form meaning " to twitter, chatter, stammer." Mediaeval lexi- cographers, meeting with this word in some text, and not knowing its meaning, have provided it with a conjectural interpretation based on a false etymology. Hence frigutire appears in Du Cange, though it has no more right to be there than any other of the many classical words that were misunderstood by glossarists.
Even if frigutire had really existed in the alleged sense, MR. MAYHEW'S conjecture woul ' still be extremely hazardous, as it posti lates the existence of a French word which is not only unrecorded, but unsupported by the evidence of a formal equivalent in any Eomanic language. My own conjecture in- volves a much less violent assumption, viz., that *fredish, the regular anglicized form of the known Old French freidiss-, was mispro- nounced as fretish, or that the d of the Ok French word was heard by Englishmen as a t.
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