Notes and Queries, Number 177, March 19, 1853: A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc.Various
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Notes and Queries, Number 177, March 19, 1853: A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc.
Various
Questions and answers -- Periodicals
This is evidently full of typographical errors, and may be more correctly
set forth in the English edition of 1596, which I have not at hand. I
therefore wish for information on these points:
1. What is the correct version of this prophecy, and where may it be found?
2. What place is meant by "Here?"
I need hardly say that I have no difficulty as to the first two lines:
"When you see a hart reared (erected) in Here, then shall England be
divided into three parts."
J. H. V.
_A Skating Problem._--The motto of your paper is, "When found, make a note
of it." Here then is one for you.
In several of my skating excursions I have observed, and noted it to
others, that ice of just sufficient strength to bear any one in skates
standing upon it, will instantly break if tried by the same person without
having skates on. I don't know if any of your readers have made the same
discovery: if so, can they explain the cause? If, on the contrary, any are
incredulous enough to doubt the fact, I would recommend them to test the
truth of my statement by a personal trial, before they pass a hasty
judgment of the subject.
A SKATER.
"_Rap and rend for._"--In Dryden's Prologue to _The Disappointment, or the
Mother in Fashion_, we find these lines:
"Our women batten well on their good nature
All they can rap and rend for the dear creature."
"All they can rap and run for" is the more frequent colloquial version of
this quaint phrase.
In Chaucer's "Chanones Yeman's Tale" it stands thus:
"But wasten all that ye may rape and renne."
And to this last word Tyrwhit, in his Glossary, gives "rend?" with a mark
of interrogation, as doubtful of the meaning.
Johnson gives it "rap and rend," and quotes a line of Hudibras:
"All they could rap and rend and pilfer:"
and adds, "more properly, _rap and ran_; [ræpan] Sax., to bind, and _rana_,
Icelandic, to plunder."
The question is, are we to accept this phrase in the sense it is commonly
used, _to seize and plunder_; or have later and better philologists mended
the version?
The context in Chaucer does not seem to warrant the interpretation given by
Tyrwhit. The narrator is warning his hearers against the rogueries of
alchemy:
"If that your eyen cannot seen aright,
Loketh that youre mind lacke not his sight.
For tho' ye loke never so brode and stare,
Ye shul not win a mite on that chaffare,
But wasten all that ye may rape and renne.
Withdraw the fire, lest it to faste brenne;
Medleth no more with that art, I mene;
For if ye don, your thrift is gon ful clene."
M.
"_The wee brown Hen._"--Can any of your correspondents oblige me with a
copy of the old Jacobin song, the "Wee brown Hen?" It begins thus:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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