The Library.
A New English Dictionary on Historical Principals.-(Vol. X.) Wavy-Wezzon. By Henry Bradley and W. A. Craigie. (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 10s. net.).
THE articles in this section
which has not been cleared up is Johnson's authority for weak "=soft, phant. Weak with its derivatives and 6. wear both sb. and V. are very good articles. Weary originally may have borne the stupefied,' bewildered," and formerly was used without all the "strong emotional em- as far as phasis which the word has acquired in mod- weigh were revised, so a prefatory ern times," and which is a development one note tells us, and sent to the printer by Dr. may fairly suppose, from associations Bradley. The section records 3,203 words gathered round one or two familiar Biblical illustrated by 17,707 quotations; with which texts. Under wed v., in its third sense-to figures we may compare the 177 words and marry-we are told that the word is now, 750 quotations of the corresponding portion except for dialects, only literary : of Johnson's Dictionary. It need hardly be observation which brings up the question how said that nearly the whole of this instalment far newspaper bills and head-lines may be ex- is concerned with short-mostly monosyllabic pected to influence speech; for in these -words of English origin, whose first appear- wed," so conveniently short, is often to be ance is made far back in our literature, and observed. The first sense of the word is whose use has continued unbroken to our own to make a woman one's wife by the giving of day. The first important word is wax sb. a pledge. A pretty old word, faintly alive in -the substance produced by bees," for poetry, which gives a pleasant collection of which the quotations begin from the ninth instances is " weed," a garment. Widow's century. Two eighteenth century quotations weeds," its latest surviving use, itself begins record rough wax as a name once erron- to pass with the fashion it denoted. The eously applied to the pollen adhering to the original meaning of week (which cannot legs of bees in the belief that this well have been a period of seven days) has was the crude material of wax. Man of not been determined. The brief summary wax as a term of emphatic commendation under the definition of this word furnishes seems to have been found first in Romeo and a good example of the historical notes em- Juliet'; it is quoted from seventeenth century bedded in the Dictionary. Weigh and and nineteenth century writers. We cannot weight "the numerous words connected with think that the word here is wax "growth them and or stature, as some have held. The Diction-back to our earliest sources, which is excel- have a history that goes ary does not disdain the slang to be in a lently worked out. Weird substantive, ad- wax," for which the first quotation comes jective and verb is a good Old English word, from Verdant Green.' The article way which dropped out of Middle English until c. which runs to twenty-seven columns, counts 1300 when it among the great articles of the Dictionary Singleton in 1855 used appears chiefly in the North. both from the intrinsic interest of the mater-lation for Parcae the Weirds as trans- ial and the manner in which it is handled. in Virgil. Several instances The L. via, formerly regarded as cognate, is from a 900 to 1883 are given of the proverb after word comes now, we are told, generally referred to a dif- weird," equivalent to ferent root. But way has always been the normal translation of via and its French descendant voie, which have come to influence the sense-development. There is a recent ten- dency to bring "back into use way for road. path," which is still felt to be a novelty, its principal current use being in phrases. These are exceedingly numerous, ex- pressive and rich in history. Under the sense, of course, of travel or movement there is a good paragraph on the way of all flesh." It is noted that the sense of a path in life, a person's activities or fortunes is mainly of Hebrew origin. The way name for the Christian religion is duly noted; should not the similar Buddhist use have been noted also? Waybread " is a for plantain ("a broad-leaved plant growing beside the ways") which is found c. 700. "Ways and Means," in the English Parlia- mentary use, appears first in the Rolls of Parliament, 1433. Wayward" is aphetic from "awayward," the same thing as froward "-_ but the idea that it meant "bent on going one's own way has influenced the modern sense. For Wayzgoose " no satisfactory ex- planation has been found. A small point
speak of the devil, etc." The adjectival use must be taken to ccme from the weird Sisters," that is the witches, in Macbeth.' Well is a fine article running to twelve columns, to which are added more than fifty columns illustrating compounds. Under well-being in the ecclesiastical quotation it should perhaps have been noted that the Being, but the Well-being of Ordination renders a quasi-technical theological distinc tion between " esse and bene esse." Many of the rarer compounds are curious-as, for example, Herrick's well-bestrutted." The immediate source of the modern use of as a west meaning to die, or perish, or disappear is said not to have been established. There is the seventeenth century allusive use of ward" for to Tyburn." The figurative use of "wet-blanket," which has sundry derived nonce-words, seems a nineteenth century inven- tion. A curious Scottish word for the ague is wedenonfa," i.e. "onfall" or attack of weed," a sudden feverish attack-particu- larly puerperal fever. One of the most inter- sting historical words is weeping cross. It occurs as place-name in several English examples the counties-five present
Ordnance Maps are given here. All seem to be at cross-roads, and presumably indicate the site of a stone cross now, however, in every case destroyed. The reason for calling this a weeping cross has been said to be that acts of devotion at these crosses were enjoined upon penitents; or that the cross was near an ancient place of execution; or that the cross marked a place where a body being carried to burial was set down for the bearers to rest. No explanation, unfortunately, has any evidence to back it. There is a proverbial phrase "to come home by Weeping Cross" signifying to suffer grievous disappointment or failure. The earliest quotation is from a 1500. Is it pos- sible that the name referred to the cross it- self? Was it something more elaborate than a bare cross? or a Descent from the Cross with mourning figures? This would have been swept away after the Reformation. Saint Joan of Orleans. Scenes selected and translated by Joan Evans. The text edited by Paul Studer. (Clarendon Press, 7s. 6d. net.) THE scenes which compose this book
taken from the Mystere du Siège d' Orléans.' This is a play which, soon after the relief of Orleans by Joan of Arc in 1429, was established as an annual commemoration of the great deed of the Maid. The city accounts and the manuscript of the play con- sidered together may lead us to conclude that the portion of the play earliest composed is to be dated before 1439, while pageantry of some kind, probably not any part of the play, was being performed in celebration of the relief of the city in 1435. The play exists in a single MS. (Vatican, Queen of Sweden's MSS., No. 1022). Examination of the text dis- closes plain indication that the original work
was expanded by the insertion of more than
one episode, and also by the addition of over five thousand lines of introductory matter the English expedition, the telling about attacks on Orléans and the siege. The whole work runs to well over twenty thousand lines, containing a hundred and forty-six speaking parts and over two hundred scenes. Acted on a double stage with "mansions" in its lower division, running on continuously without change of scene, it would take up two whole days at least, and probably three. As the editors point out in their excellent Introduc- tion, it is by no means a dramatization of the life of a saint, though the sanctity of the Maid forms the justification of her enterprise: it is a chronicle play centred in the relief of Orleans, terminating with the Maid's entry into Orleans after the battle of Patay, and having supernatural elements woven into the story only so far as these explain the historical facts. There is instructive comparison to be made between this 'Mystére' and the so-called 'Journal du Siège d'Orléans which was printed in 1570, and may well be the account known to have been written for the city of Orleans in 1467.
The scenes printed here, taken from the earlier portion of the play, begin with the prayer for help of Charles VII and end with the taking of the Tourelles. The verse is the usual octosyllabic line arranged in stanzas mostly of eight lines, and rhymed according the somewhat complicated ballad type. Without pretending to find any high poetical quality in the author, we think the play de- serves a little more praise than is here be- stowed on it. It possesses in good measure the charm of simplicity, liveliness and serious- ness; the verse sometimes displays that quaint has the trick only here trick is hardly in clearness of which Mr. Walter de la Mare question-and must be good for acting pur- poses; the characters are not without life and force. The scene between St. Michael and the Maid at the beginning is graceful; and the scenes where the captains argue with the Maid about the fighting and where she is wounded do not go badly. We regret that the translation is not better. It has nothing to correspond with the flow of the French; yet it is not close enough to serve as a crib. We noted some places in which it is barely cor- rect, and several in which touches of the original are omitted. These Scenes can hardly have been published solely with a view to the comparatively few who read fifteenth cen- tury French with pleasure; yet we fear those find them rather stiff and tedious. There are who have to depend on the translation will four pictures, taken from the Vigiles de Charles VII (1484).
The Cleaning and Restoration of Museum Exhibits. (H.M.S. Stationery Office, 5s. net.).
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Memorabilia.
N active correspondence on the authorship of the De imitatione Christi' has been carried on in recent numbers of L'Intermé
diaire. M. Alfred Péreire has sought to show that the attribution to Thomas a Kempis is mistaken. In the number for Dec. 10 our contemporary prints a long letter from le R. P. Fleury stating the reasons for which, after long and close work on the 'De imitatione' in preparation for the edition of the Latin text published in 1919, he adheres to the opinion that Thomas a Kempis is the author. The letter should be noted by everyone interested in the subject. P. Fleury, rebutting an argument from the concluding prayer, in a translation dated 1447, which contains words considered by M. Péreire to be the "signature symbolique" of Jean Gerson, notes that a French translation printed by Jehan Lambert in 1493 explicitly states that the De imitatione is neither by St. Bernard, nor by Gerson, but by Thomas a Kempis, canon of Windescheim. Again the complete works of Gerson were published at Strassburg in 1488, and Sehot, the canon of Strassburg, who wrote the Preface to the book, declares that 'De imitatione is not to be counted among the works of Gerson but is verily by Thomas a Kempis. Yet again, Jean Gerson's own brother, Prior of the Celestines at Lyons, in whose house Jean Gerson died in 1429, when drawing up a list of the works of Jean, in 1423, six years before his death, makes no mention of 'De imitatione.' Finally, the friend and secretary of Jean Gerson, when revising this list in the year of Jean's
death, preserves the same silence. On the other hand there is the witness of thirteen contemporaries at least to the authorship of Thomas a Kempis (their names are set out in the letter) while sixty out of seventy-six MSS. (five of them written during the author's life-time), the twenty-three earliest printed editions (1470 to 1500) and the French translation of 1449 mentioned above all attribute the book to him. This cer
tainly is testimony not lightly to be set aside in favour of a symbolic signature or on account of a MS. of 1460, thirty-one years after Gerson's death, which bears his name, and is the first to bear it.
THE night which began the year 1927 finished so far as year-reckoning goes -the thirteenth and began the fourteenth century of the existence of a Christian church on the site where York Minster stands. In 627 Edwin of Northumbria, instructed by Paulinus, and drawn on by Ethelburga, decided to embrace the Christian faith, and here built a wooden baptistery where at Easter-time, he was baptized. The occasion was celebrated by a great service at the Minster, at midnight, when in procession by torchlight the Archbishop came to the great west door, and struck it thirteen times, with a mallet made of ancient oak, demanding admission. At this summons the west doors were flung open, and to the sound of a fanfare from trumpets of Hussars, followed by drums and the organ and the singing of All people that on earth do dwell," the Archbishop and his company passed into the nave where the Dean and Chapter were assembled to receive him. The Lord Mayor and Corporation of the city joined in the procession up the aisle, and a great crowd of spectators were witnesses. There followed an act of thanksgiving for the men and women through whom the history of York Minster descends, with an address from the Archbishop and then a solemn Te Deum.
N the January Cornhill (which contains a
pretty instalment of A Girl's Friendship with John Ruskin' relating the first meeting between the friends) we noted Mr. Horace Hutchinson's paper on the Yew and the Bow. He disproves alas! the "fond tradition," still prevailing, of the bow of English yew. 'Tis Spanish yew that Drayton sings of as piercing the weather" at Agincourt; and our writer quotes a modern past-master of the toxophilitic mystery' as pronouncing that "Bows made
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