172
NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. v. MARCH 3, 1900.
your readers to judge. As to the general
question " Was Shakespeare musical 1 " there
are some interesting pages in Dr. Brandes's
great work (i. 199-202). Perhaps some of
your correspondents could tell us something
about the conclusions arrived at by the
writers mentioned by Dr. Brandes who have
made a special study of the subject.
A. W. VERITY.
GALLOWS BIRDS AND OTHERS (9 th S. iv. 127, 233).
"Tomtit, a Blue Titmouse (Pants cceruleus).! am aware that this little bird will choose curious places for bringing up its young, but the following surpasses all I ever oefore heard of. Some years ago, a man of the name of Tom Otter murdered his sweetheart at a place called Drinsey Nook, in Lin- colnshire. The assassin suffered the extreme penalty of the law, and was gibbeted near the place where he committed the fatal deed. It ap- pears, that whilst the carnivorous tomtit was feed- ing on the flesh of the malefactor, he had an eye to a comfortable habitation in the vicinity of so much cheer ; and as there was no hole in the gibbet post to suit his purpose, he actually took possession of the dead man's mouth, and he and his mate brought forth a brood of young cannibals ; and more than that, they built there the next year and were equally successful in rearing their young. I think 1 hear some of your readers say, ' Come, come, Mr. Wood- cock (Scolopax rusticola) ; you are now dealing in the marvellous, and are rather stretching it'; but I can assure you, sir, it is correct, as I have had it corroborated by several eye-witnesses. Id." [Sc6lopax rusticola, Chilwell, Notts, 21 Oct., 1832 (sic).] London's Magazine of Natural History, April, 1832 [tc], vol. v. p. 289.
"About two years ago [1839] they [the Gonaszi, or robber-swineherds of the Bakony forest] attacked a castle and plundered it of seventeen thousand florins ; but within six months afterwards, I saw the sparrows build their nests in the skulls of those who had performed this exploit. "Kohl's 'Austria ' p. 196.
I suspect that skulls and skeletons were formerly as common nesting-places as iron lamp-posts now. THOMAS J. JEAKES.
Tower House, New Hampton.
"PETIGREWE" (9 th S. v. 49, 117). The etymology of pedigree is now known. The explanation petit degre, of course a corruption of an older petit gre, "little step," was no doubt the " popular etymology " of the six- teenth century. But it is certainly wrong, because all the earlier spellings show that the word ended in -u, -ue, -ew, or something of that kind, for which -ee was substituted ir order to make an imaginary sense.
In short, it was explained in an excellenl letter by Mr. C. Sweet, printed in the Atke WKWHI, 30 March, 1895, nearly five years ago The older spellings show that the Anglo French form must have been pee (or pe) di grue, lit., " foot of a crane." That pee was th
A.F. form of F.pied appears from the word
ap-a-pee or cap-a-pe, for which see ' Historical
English Dictionary,' noting that the earliest
examples show the A.F. form pe, not the
Jentral F. pie.
Mr. Sweet further explained what the term ' foot of a crane " really meant. It was the )ld name for a mark resembling the modern ' broad arrow," i.e., three short lines radiating rom a common centre, like the three toes of a crane's foot. See the numerous uses of the imilar term patte-d'oie, goose-foot, in Littre. This peculiar symbol was actually used in old )edigrees to signify the branching out of the lescendants from the paternal stock. By >lacirig this sign under a man's name it was signified that the names in the line beneath were the names of his children.
I now give a few quotations, to show that
- he older forms did not, as a rule, terminate
n -eor -ee; neither did they, as a rule, employ he voiceless dental t, but rather the voiced a. That who so lyst loke and doe ynfolde The pee de Or ewe of these cronicles olde. Lydgate, * Siege of Thebes,' fol. Ee 1, back, 1. 7. Of. the spelling peedegrue, riming with virtue, in a poem by Lydgate, written in 1426*, printed in 'Polit. Poems,' ed. Wright, ii. 138. The less correct form peticru is given by Ducange in his * Dictionary.'
In my larger * Etymological Dictionary ' I cite the spellings pedegru, pedegrw, pedygru, pedegrewe, as well as petygru, petygrwe, from the 'Promptorium Parvulorum,' 1440 ; pete- greu from a note in Hearne's * Robert of Glou- cester,' p. 585 ; and show that the form in Palsgrave (1530) is petigrewe, whilst the fairly correct form pedigrew occurs as late as in the vocabulary by Levius (1570).
More than this, I pointed out, as early as in the first edition of my 'Dictionary' in 1882, that the known forms all point back to the sense " crane's foot," though I wholly failed to discover the reason. WALTER W. SKEAT.
MARRIAGE GIFT (9 th S. v. 7, 111). The wooden spoon is thus alluded to by Lord Byron in 'Don Juan,' c. iii. st. ex. :
Sure my invention must be down at zero, And I grown one of many " wooden spoons"
Of verse (the name with which we Cantabs please
To dub the last of honours in degrees). This facetious hieroglyph seems happy enough and is not difficult to decipher. "Spoon" stands for spooney = &i\ intellectual babe or duffer, so dubbed because he can still only digest the pap and spoon-meat of knowledge. The spoon is wooden in sly allusion to the implied character of the recipient's cranium, and there is possibly, for some, a further reminiscence of the obsolete adjective " wood "
