Notes and Queries, Number 179, April 2, 1853.

Оглавление

Various. Notes and Queries, Number 179, April 2, 1853.

Notes

JACK

MYTHE VERSUS MYTH

WITCHCRAFT IN 1638

ST. AUGUSTIN AND BAXTER

FOLK LORE

JOHNSONIANA

Minor Notes

QUERIES

EUSTACHE DE SAINT PIERRE

PASSAGE IN COLERIDGE

Minor Queries

Minor Queries with Answers

Replies

HAMILTON QUERIES

THE WOOD OF THE CROSS

EDMUND CHALONER

"ANYWHEN" AND "SELDOM-WHEN:" UNOBSERVED INSTANCES OF SHAKSPEARE'S USE OF THE LATTER

CHICHESTER: LAVANT

SCARFS WORN BY CLERGYMEN

INSCRIPTIONS IN BOOKS

PHOTOGRAPHIC NOTES AND QUERIES

Replies to Minor Queries

Miscellaneous

NOTES ON BOOKS, ETC

BOOKS AND ODD VOLUMES

Notices to Correspondents

MURRAY'S

Отрывок из книги

I wish to note, and to suggest to students in ethnology, the Query, how it comes to pass that John Bull has a peculiar propensity to call things by his own name, his familiar appellative of Jack?

Of all the long list of abbreviations and familiar names with which times past and present have supplied us, that which honest Falstaff found most pleasing to his ears, "Jack with my familiars!" is the household word with which ours are most conversant. Were not Jack the Giant-killer, Jack and the Bean-stalk, and Little Jack, the intimates of our earliest days? when we were lulled to sleep by ditties that told of Jack Sprat and his accommodating wife (an instance of the harmony in which those of opposite tastes may live in the bonds of wedlock); of Jack, the bachelor who lived harmoniously with his fiddle, and had a soul above the advice of his utilitarian friend; of Jack who, like Caliban, was to have a new master; of Jack1 the brother of Gill; and of the Jack who was only remarkable for having a brother, whose name, as a younger son, is not thought worthy of mention. And were not our waking hours solaced by songs, celebrating the good Jack2, little Jack Horner, and holding up to obloquy the bad Jack, naughty Jacky Green, and his treachery to the innocent cat? Who does not remember the time when he played at jack-straws, fished for jack-sharps, and delighted in a skip-jack, or jack-a-jumper, when jack-in-a-box came back from the fair (where we had listened not unmoved to the temptations of that eloquent vagabond cheap-Jack) and popped up his nose before we could say Jack Robinson; and when Jack-in-the-green ushered in May-day? While a halo of charmed recollections encircles the memory of Jack-pudding, dear to the Englishman as Jack Pottage and Jack Sausage (Jean Potage and Hans Wurst) are to Frenchman and German.

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Rotation of the Earth.—Has the experiment which about two years ago was much talked of, for demonstrating the rotation of the earth by means of a pendulum, been satisfactorily carried out and proved? And if so, where is the best place for finding an account of it? The diagram by Mr. Little in the Illustrated London News does not seem to explain the matter very fully.

Nelson and Wellington.—The following statement has been going the round of the American newspapers since the death of the Duke of Wellington. Is it true?—"Lord Nelson was the eighteenth in descent from King Edward I., and the Duke of Wellington was descended from the same monarch."

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