PASSING NOTES. (From Saturday's Daily Times.)

Otago Witness, Issue 2571, 24 June 1903, Page 5

PASSING NOTES. (From Saturday's Daily Times.)

"Servian," "serbe," "serf," "servus," "slave," "Slav" — all these words hang together, and there is a good deal of useful history in them, if we cared to work it out. The word " Slav," according to the Slavs themselves, means " glory" ; yet obviously it has yielded the Teutonic word " slave" ; in like manner " Servian" goes back to " servus," and " Servus" is Latin 1 for a slave. Following up the scent on either line we thus comei to the same fact of slavery ; in which fact we are straightway corroborated by the history books, learning from them that the Slavs — Servian Slavs and other Slavs — have been enslaved by Goths, by Huns, by Germans, by Latins, by Turks in turn. Their character at the present hour s>ums up their history. After slavery ended Slav affairs were — like our Wars of the Reset — " the scuffling of kites and crows." The elevating influences of religion were represented by the Greek Church, the most degenerate form of Christianity, the least intelligent, the least humane. As alternative, there was for the Balkan Slavs the religion of Mahomet. Political development of modern type dates from 1800 or thereabouts. Then began the era of constitutions, parliaments, ministries, and the comic opera kingdoms of the Balkan Peninsula. But in those regions the dividing line between comedy and tragedy is never sharply drawn. There is a Gilbert and Sullivan phase, and then" hey, presto, an assassination phase, an insurrection and massacre phase, a reign" of terror phase.- The Slav politician is before all things a quick-change artist. These facts considered, the amazing horrors reported from Servia this week are less amazing than would at first appear.

In some of these remarks, nay even in particular expressions, I have been anticipated, I find, by a Pall Mall Gazette writer of some weeks back. Pereant gui ante nos nostra dixemnt ! — which is another way of saying that the worst of thieves is the thisf who steals your ideas before you have thought of them yourself. Here is the Pall Mall paragraph : Serria is the veritable pays de Cooagae of modem times, a land of constitutional cormic opera, of political quick-cha.ngo artists, and Iho reigmng monarch is the most representative man in hia dominions He is, indeed, a youth of promise — and «ke of performance — Ijs King Alexander. Not conteni with having made a. marriage a, sensation, which was the talk of Europe in its time, his Majesty, having already engineered one successful coup d'etaS, has now brought off a second. Like all great inventions, the Alexandrian method is simplicity itself. The King is dissatisfied with the working of the Servian Constitution , so ho just abolishes it for 20 minutes, changes the governing personnel, and tlten restores it again in full working order. If that bo not wisdom while you wa.it,'' we should like to know what constitutes that useful commodity. And the beauty of it flll is this- that nobody seems to make the «'.ightest objection, least of all the people of Servia. But how jealous the Ka-iser must be l The Kaiser is jealous no longer. Like the Czar and the Austrian Emperor he is mingling homilies with congratulations for the admonition and encouragement of Alexander's .successir. Mrs Civis. who usually luns up in her own person the common sense of a whole community, wants to .know why murders so incredibly barbarous as tho=e done upon Alexander and his luckless Queen are to go unpunished. Was ever anything so horrible ! — it's like Ahab and Jezebel when he flung her out of the window. It wasn't Ahab that flung her out of the window, say I, correcting. It was all the same, says &he. It wasn't all the same, say I ; for if Ahab had flung her out, the case would have been merely an ordinary example of domestic infelicity ; ■whereas — Do stop! she cries, interrupting; and pray talk reason. Why are these

human fiends to escape? Isn't Europegoing to punish them. Apparently Europe isn't, I tell her. Europe understands that tragedy is for the present withdrawn and that the curtain now rises on opera bouffe. " Yesterday" — say the latest cables — " the Ministers, the members of the Skuptschina, and officers attended a thanksgiving Te Deum at the cathedral" — for mercies vouchsafed. Concurrently, " The military party threatened to murder an editor if he advocated republicanism. On his abjuring his principles he was created Minister of Justice." In other words the comic muse once more holds the boards. For a time.

Dear " Civis,"— Thanks for yoixr satisfactory note on. "In Memoriaitn." " Horned flood " is certainly an obscure expression. I had kna-gined. tha>t it referred to the upward curl of wavelets, which sometimes suggest boms. The mythological explanation is, however, no doubt the true one. Tennyson was not the first English poet to use the words. Ben Jonson makes Volpone say (iii, 5) : " I would have contended With the blue Proteus, or the horned flood." The meaning no doubt is " with the sea-, or liho river ' ; but if he had said so in plain English, the lover's vow would not have been so impressive. (By the way, ,ivaa th-e> pedantic Ben right in making three, syllables of " Proteiis," even sis Shakespeare does with, his "smaSll Latin"?). Is it not likely that Tennyson borrowed the phrase from Jonson, and Jonson from Virgil? Tho latter gentleman, it may be noted, has not only " Corniger Eesperidum fluvius," which you quote, but also (A. viii, 728) " Ehenusque bicornis," the two-horned Rhine F. The same poet in his Fourth Georgic attributes twin horns to the Eridanus, which is the River Po. Similar examples are to be found in Ovid, Horace, Martial, and others. For what reason the Latin imagination gave horns to rivers, and decorated with a bull's front the deities supposed to preside over rivers, we are left to guess. Modern scholarship has only conjectured. It was, says Bentley (Ovid, M., ix, 1.), either because of the bull-like roaring of rivers, or because of their curvatures. Not so, says Sidgwick (Virgil, Gf. iv, -371) ; it was because bull's heads and horns were a primitive sign of strength. Both wrong, say Lewis and Short (passim) ;• it was because rivers have horn-shaped branches, and sometimes reach the sea through a divided outlet. So there you are ; you may take your choice. As for Tennyson, he may have been guided to the epithet "horned" by the windings of the river at Barmouth, where, it is said, canto 85 was written, or by the jutting headlands at its mouth. But the essential thing is that he had ample precedent, not only in Ben Jonson — a fact of which I was not aware, — but' in the Latin poets. And now, quid pro qutf,. let my' correspondent address his intelligence to a dark saying in canto 40. For tho" my nature rarely yields To tha/t vague fear implied in death ; Nor shudders at the gulfs beneath, . The howlinga from forgotten fields ; Yet oft when sundown skirts the moor An iaae>r trouble I behold, — etc. What is meant by " the bowlings from forgotten fields"? " V

" Proteus," in the Ben Jonson line quoted above, may be read as either two syllables or three, without harm to the scanning. Shakespeare, on the other hand, cannot be let off so lightly. His "Proteus" in the " Two Gentlemen of Verona" is either a three-syllable word, naked and unashamed, or a hybrid between two syllables and three. You question the possibility of such a hybrid? Substitute y for c and you get it. Sound " Proteus" as Protyus, and you may, without more than the usual Shakespearian license, scan every line in which the word occurs. An illustration of this useful y sound may be had in " gladiolus" (the flower) as it ought to be pronounced — ought to be and isn't. " Gladyolus," if you please, with the accent on the " glad" ; not " gladiolus," with o long and accented. The y which reduces " gladiolus" to three syllables would reduce " Proteus" to two, with advantage to the poet's scholarship and no great harm to his metre. Not that there is any motive to refine away Shakespeare's reproach in respect of this or any similar barbarism. His back is broad enough. Think of the audacity of a poet whose lines compel you to put an accent on the second syllable of " Andronicus." Such a man is a law ur.to himself. But "Titus Andronicus" is probably not Shakespeare's? Then it is certainly not Bacon's, for Francis Bacon knew Latin, and wrote books in Latin ; that throughout a whole play he. should have written the Latinised Greek name " Andronicus" with accent on the antepenult is a thing incredible.

It is to be remembered, no doubt, that every language is mistress in its own house, and may name things and persons as it chooses. If the French prefer to speak of Shakespeare as " the divine Williams" ; if the Germans, when they have occasion to speak of Samson, call him Simson-(as they do) ; that is their own affair ; tie French and the Germans are strictly within their rights. Similarly in our case, we may take over any exptitJ word and transmogrify it to our liking, spelling and pronouncing it according to the analogies of our own tongue. In the process of their acclimatising, such exotics are always .transmogrified more or less. . The place-names " Trafalgar" and " St. Helena," as usually pronounced, are examples ; the flowername " anemone" is another. I am not going to call an anemone an Annie Mohny, constrained, thereto by the long o in 'the Greek original ; Ann Emony I have been accustomed to call it — the tendency in English being to throw the accent back — and Ann Emony it shall continue to be. In science words, of which we-^are constantly introducing new ones, and which are often Greek or Latin as they" stand,- this license does not hold. Thus in "angina" (angina, pectoris), and "hydatid" the accent is on the first .syllable. Yet there is not, I suppose, a British medical man £ existence who ioesn't put it on the second. Why? Why, indeed. Why did Dr Johnson define "pastern" as "the knee of a horse"?

"Ignorance, Madam, pure ignorance !** Etymology need not govern pronunciation — except in science works. Etymology is for meanings. Apropos — someone asked me the other day to look up the derivation of the plant-name " penny -royal." Would it be suspected that "jpenny" in this compound is akin to the word "flea"? Nothing could seem more unlikely. Yefc 6ee how it works out: "Flea" is from Latin " pulex," the f and the 1 of the one representing the p and the 1 of the other. From "pulex" was formed "puleium," name of a plant thought to be good against fleas— a flea-bane ; the addition of "regium" (puleium regium) set forth that the plant was a " royal," or sovereign, remedy in that behoof. Finally, by "a singular corruption." as Skeat judiciously remarks, "puleium" degenerated into "penny"-; whence " pennyroyal." Whence also we may perceive the profundity of Voltaire's dictum about philology — the science of words, their history and deriva* tion, in which the consonants count • foi little and the vowels for -nothing at all. The .antiquity of jests is itself an ancient jest. The first thing you may be sure about in any new joke or witticism is that it is as old as the hills. ; the next, that the man who made it was consciously or unconsciously a plagiarist. According to De Quincey all the good things ascribed to Talleyrand might be traced uo to the ancient Greeks,— all or most. "There is one, " and that the most famous in the Talleyrand jewel case— the celebrated ' mot' about language as a gift to man for the purpose of concealing his thoughts — that belongs to Goldsmith, who must have been dying about the time that the Right Reverend French knave took the trouble to be born." Thus De Quincey ; I suspect, however, that Goldsmith himself stole from the Greeks. Jests are not only of prehistoric antiquity, but are fated to an inevitable immortality— so precious is the salt of humour! — and that is why old jests are not only for ever turning up again, but get themselves assigned to the wrong man. The Lyttelton Times, discoursing of Shakespeare and Bacon, remarked ike other day that the best thing ever said on tho subject had been said by Sydney Smiththat the plays were not written by Shakespeare, but by another fellow of the same name. This of course is an old friend who may be met with in many guises, the commonest being that in which a university •undergraduate stands for Sydney Smith and Homer for Shakespeare. - For another example take the following clipping from a London paper: For pure confusion of thought the following l-rief essay by a Boajrd School- child o.f tjyelvd on the " Human Body " •would be naiid to bea/fc. Ii is »n absolutely geiruiae production : — The human body is divided into three parts, the head, the chest, and the tummick.' The head contains the eyea, ears, nose, mouth, and brains, if amy. The chest contains the heart, lungs, and pa.rfc | of the liver. The tummick is entirely devoted to the vowels, I of wliioh theTe airo five, namely, a> c i o U, and sometimes w and y. And this is "absolutely genuine." Number 2, with its "brains, if any," is plainly a make-up. Number 4, about the vowels, I can remember from as far back — let me ccc ; — I won't say exactly how far back ; but from an early date in the last century. Yet it is now offered to us as the production of a modern " Board School child of twelve." I marvel at the gullibility of London editors. Cms.

A meeting of the committee' of the Dun edin Jewish congregation was held on the . 16tb inst. for the consideration of the matter of the atrocities that have lately been perpetrated -.pou the Jewish people in Eastern Europe. The following resolution was passed on the subject: — "That this meeting declares its abhorrence at the merciless outrages perpetrated at Kisheneff, not only upon men, but also upon helpless women and children of the Jewish faith, and expresses the- fervent hope that the Russian Government will take effectual stops to prevent a repetition of crimes that .aro a stain upon our common humanity and a disgrace to ciyilisa* >tion." It was also resolved that a subscription list be opened for the assistance of the sufferers, and wTtli this object in view Mr Julius Hyman (president of the congrega~ tion) and Mr S. Jacob were appointed to collect subscriptions. The Bruce He-raid is informed that Mr Straw, late mine manager of the Fortification Coal Company, has taken ov»r the pit and line from the debenture-holdere while the boring operations are going on. MrStraw has opened up the drive, and ha 9 several thxnisand tons of good coal in view. All arrangements have- now been made to "supply coal from the mine, and it is, we are informed, intended to keen the coal up to the excellent standard which has beer*, prevailing for some time past. Under the heading of "Twa. Macdonalds," a correspondent writes to say thaft he saw two Macdonalds being introduced th» other day— the one a, Gordon, the other v revere-nd stranger. Says G. : " Aye, aye,, mon, am real gled ta see ye. An' boo lang? is it since ye crossed the Border?" S. :, " Weel, aboot a hunder yeors." G. : "An* 1 is the blood thick yet? " S. : " Na, mon* na; there's nae a drap o' Scottish blood in, my veins." G. : " Toots, toots, mon, dinna cay that, for 'a body can see ye hae th» grit o' yer granny's parridge in ye yet, an*i< yer a Covenanter oot an' oot.' -• S. : "Ij maunna deny it." G. : "Na, na, mon; th€t heather, the parrijjge, tn' the Psalms o'| Dauvid leave their mork until the third andj four generation." Mr Hugh M'Call, of Clover Meadowy Seaward Downs (the Wymdhain Farme-n states), lost no lee* than 22 head of cattley most of them young dairy heifers, during the^ late floods.

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