518
NOTES AND QUERIES, [ii s. vm. DEC. 27, 1913.
0n
Insulce Britannicce: the British Isles, their Early
Geography, History, and Antiquities. By A. W.
Whatmore. (Elliot Stock.)
THIS is an extraordinary book, written by one who
has studied the sources of British history, and who
is a Gaelic scholar. This enables him to suggest
some most wonderful derivations of Roman and
British names of places.
Such derivations as those suggested for Watling Street (p. 145), the Via Julia (p. 155), and Shrews- bury (p. 163) seem to be wildly improbable; and so are many of the Gaelic derivations given for the names of roads, walls, dykes, tribes, and the numerous towns mentioned in the Itinerary of Antonine, the Ravennas, the Notitia, Nennius, and in inscriptions. These form the bulk of the book (pp. 135-297), though a Gaelic glossary at the end of the volume, and two excellent indexes of ancient and modern names of places, make the book useful and worth having.
But we hardly know what to say about the first 135 pp. Here we have a writer who makes Ulysses go to Jona (p. 4), and says that the story of the Sirens is a play upon the Gaelic word *' seirean " (p. 5); who disbelieves in the existence of St. Patrick (p. 36), and converts St. Columba into a Circle-god (p. 35); and who can write such a sen- tence as the following (p. 60) :
" Inferentially ' Kymry,' either originally or by poetic perversion, had reference to the curious submarine bank, called Adam's Bridge, which runs across Palk Strait from Ceylon to the mainland, and which, leading to the Aii, must have shared with Albionic Aeaea the reputation of being in the path to Hades"!
References to " the incoherent Creed of Atha- nasias " (sic) and to the early poet " Necham " (sic) should not have been allowed to stand (pp. 69, 155).
Whitakers Almanack, 1914. (Whitaker & Sons.) WhitaJcer's Peerage, 1914. (Same publishers.) The International WhitaJcef, 1914. (Same pub- lishers.)
WE again welcome with hearty New Year greet- ings the two useful friends of many years also our one-year-old friend ' The International,' young and sturdy, with a promise of a long and useful life like its grandparents, the elder of whom celebrates its forty-sixth birthday on New Year's Day. As is proper, he becomes more portly with the >ears. Last year Mr. Lloyd George was responsible for an increase of weight by his National Insurance Act, which has been found by some difficult to digest. This year statistics dealing with housing and town-planning, in- creased cost of living, decreased purchasing power of the sovereign, and other matters, are responsible for a further increase in bulk. The result of the Board of Trade inquiry as to food-prices showed that between 1905 and 1912 the food-purchasing power of the sovereign decreased by about one- ninth. Prices vary considerably in different districts. In the majority of the towns in- vestigated, the increase in the combined cost of food and coal of working-class consumption varied from 10 to 15 per cent. Prices in Ports- mouth rose only 7 per cent, but at Stockport the increase amounted to no less than 20 per cent
in the seven years. Earlier readers of ' Whitaker *
would have been puzzled by finding in the Index
under ' Royal ' a Flying Corps, and by discover-
ing, on turning to p. 282, that we had a Naval
Wing and a Military Wing, with Flight Com-
manders and their squadrons; while the refer-
ence to wireless telephony would have been
equally puzzling.
One always turns with sadness to the obituaries- In the past year the losses to learning have been very heavy : Lord Avebury, Samuel Franklin Cody, Lord Crawford, Sir George Darwin, Prof. Sedgwick, and Prof. Vambery, to mention only a few. The publishing trade has lost William; Blackwood (many years editor of the magazine which bears his name), Francis Hansard Riving- ton, Andrew Chatto, and J. W. Arrowsmith. The names under literature include Prof. Dowden, Dr. Hodgkin, W. F. Monypenny (the biographer of Lord Beaconsfield), and W. B. Tegetmeier (forty years editor of The Field). There are two- Japanese statesmen : Prince Katsura and Count Hayashi, the latter the first Japanese Ambassador to Great Britain.
During the past year honours have not been distributed so profusely as in the previous year, and the number of pages in the Alphabetical Directory of ' Whitaker's Peerage ' is increased by no more than thirteen. Five new Peerages have been created, including Lord Alverstone's Viscounty, and of these two are for life only. In addition, the Baronies of Latymer and Furni- vall have been called out of abeyance. On the other hand, those of Macnaghten (life) and Rendel, and the Viscounties of Llandaff and Tredegar (a Barony remaining in this case), have become extinct. Three Baronetcies have also ceased to exist, Lindsay, Tomlinson, and Vavasour, but sixteen have been added to the roll.
This year there is a valuable addition : " An attempt has been made for the first time to dis- tinguish between those entitled by birth or marriage (including Maids of Honour) to the prefix ' Hon.' and the increasingly large number of persons who have acquired by public service the right to this distinction, which in their case is now printed in italics." As showing how up to date the work is, we note in the Obituary the name of Sir Robert Ball, who died on the 25th of last month.
The second issue of ' The International Whitaker* well fulfils the promise given in the first. ' Whit- aker ' does not believe in stereotyping, and the accounts of the various countries have been revised in every instance from official sources,, and in many cases by Government departments. " Among those to whom the Editor is particularly indebted are the Statistical Offices at Vienna,. Brussels, Berlin, the Hague, Christiania, Stock- holm, Berne, and Washington, and the British and American Embassies and Legations in the arious capitals; while the Colonial Offices at Berlin, Paris, the Hague, and Lisbon have most obligingly revised the portions submitted to
- hem." This shows how accurate and first-hand,
are the contents.
Who 's Who (A. & C. Black) is decidedly one of the most useful of the works of reference which, as a matter of course, arrive with the New Year. The volume for 1914 is as every one must have ? oreseen that it would be by far the bulkiest, a s
