Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 7.djvu/181

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

9*" S. VII. MARCH 2, 1901.] NOTES AND QUERIES.


173


given in both the Transactions of the Philo logical Society (London) for 1898 and Anglia vol. xx. 1898,* valuable periodical publications which your correspondent may see, but appa rently does not read. Then there is, besides the indisputable evidence of place-name: (and surnames) embodying or consisting o the word both in England and, as to th< continental equivalent, in Low German dis tricts.

When your correspondent objects to rny etymologically dividing hiwisc or higwisc thus : hi(g)-wisc, he is on somewhat firmer ground, for Kluge, in his 'Stammbildungs lehre,' took the suffix here to be -isc ; bul that was so long ago as 1886, and I conteno that the balance of the evidence and all the probability are now in favour of our " Huish land-names containing the A.-S. land-wore wise, not merely the adjectival suffix -isc Your correspondent mentions kiw-scipe, but he ignores the fact that the word is also found as hig-scipe (just as Awa=member of a family, also occurs as higa\ and that hiwisc is like- wise found with -gw-.

The objection to the comparison with Low German wische or wiske=modern High Ger- man Wiese, " meadowland," is frivolous and wholly uncalled for. I wonder what Jelling- haus, one of the collaborators in Paul's great

  • Grundriss ' of Germanic philology and a

Low German specialist living in a Low Ger- man district, would say to it ! In the article in Anglia, 1898, already referred to, he instances, under A.-S. wise, several Low Ger- man place-names in wiske and wische, and rightly ignores Kluge's theoretical Low Ger- man wiska. It seems to me that some of our etymologists require to take to heart a recent utterance of one of our most eminent Old English scholars. He says :

"The relation of fundamentally kindred significa- tion has not yet been systematically studied to any sufficient extent, and until this is done and philo- logists leave off" ' taking care of the sounds and letting the sense take care of itself,' there must be wasteful controversy and unscientific method amid all the parade of rigour and uniformity."

It must, I am afraid, be said that your esteemed * correspondent's opinions would " inspire respect " in a much greater degree than they do if they did not so often carry the taint of over-haste and ill-consideration, and consequently result in more or less decided withdrawal. Excessive recantation is apt to show philology in a bad light to the Philistines. HY. HARRISON.


  • See also the Zeitschrift f. deutsche Philoloyie,

xxxi. 557.


ST. CLEMENT DANES (9 th S. vii. 64). In a work by J. J. A. Worsaae, F.S.A., entitled 'An Account of the Danes and Norwegians in England, Scotland, and Ireland,' London, 1852, the following remarks are made upon our Danish invaders and their connexion with the foundation of the church of St. Clement Danes:

" Approaching the city from the west-end, through the great street called 'the Strand,' we see, close outside the old gate of Temple Bar, a church called St. Clement Danes, from which the surrounding parish derives its name. In the early part of the middle ages this church was called in Latin ' Ecclesia Sancti dementis Danorum,'or the Danes' Church of St. Clement. It was here that the Danes in London formerly had their burial-place, in which reposed the remains of Canute the Great's son and successor, Harold Harefoot. When, in 1040, Hardi- canute ascended the throne after his brother Harold, he caused Harold's corpse to be disinterred from its tomb in Westminster Abbey and thrown into the Thames, where it was found by a fisherman, and afterwards buried, it is said, ' in the Danes' church- yard in London.' From the churchyard it was subsequently removed into a round tower which ornamented the church before it was rebuilt at the close of the seventeenth century. It has, indeed, been supposed by some that this church was called ifter the Danes only because so many Danes have been buried in it ; but as it is situated close by the Thames, and must have originally lain outside the city walls, in the western suburbs, and consequently outside of London proper, it is certainly put beyond all doubt that the Danish merchants and mariners who, for the sake of trade, were at that time established in or near London, had there a place of their own in which they dwelt together as fellow countrymen. Here it should also be remarked that

his church, like others in commercial towns, as,

'or instance, at Aarhuus, in Jutland, at Trondhjem, n Norway, and even in the City of London (in East- )heap), was consecrated to St. Clement, who was especially the seaman's patron saint. The Danes naturally preferred to bury their dead in this hurch, which was their proper parish church."

EVERARD HOME COLEMAN. 71, Brecknock Road.

" KNIEVOGUE " (9 th S. vii. 69). If MR. MAY- HEW will refer to a little volume of mine, Jacob at Bethel,' p. 101 (he will find it in the Bodleian), he will see some notice of this fetish ind its place in folk-lore. The absurd spelling cnievogue seems to stand for neevoge, which suppose in Irish would be neamh-ogh, cpn- ected with neamh, heaven, and meaning ' the little sacred thing."

A. SMYTHE PALMER. S. Woodford.

DARCY LEVER (9 th S. vii. 1, 73). I possess copy of Darcy Lever's work referred to by MR. RALPH THOMAS. The full title is * The Young Sea Officer's Sheet Anchor, or, A Key to the Leading of Rigging and to Practical Seamanship,' London, 1808. One of the