126
NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. i. FEB. 12, '98.
established. The following judgment pro-
nounced upon it a hundred years ago by
James Pettit Andrews, in his 'Anecdotes'
(1789, Addenda, p. 24), is a notable specimen
of ignorant criticism :
" M. de Valois deduces the French word coucher (actively taken) from collocare, and, aware of the readers objections, he supports his argument by quoting from Catullus :
Vos, unis senibus, bonae*
Cognitae bene feminae,
Collocate puellulam.
He brings also two excerpts from Tully and from Suetonius, to shew that collocare means ' to put to bed.' But as he is totally unable to make out any similarity of sound between ' collocare ' (pronounced as in France) and ' coucher,' his derivation must appear one of the most improbable ones ever pro- duced, and only is here introduced to evince to what frivolous ideas the passion for finding etymo- logies may lead a man of genius."
The italics are mine. Now there is no " similarity of sound between " Rollo and Ron, yet Andrews would not have questioned the identity of Ron with Rollo; he might, too, have called to mind mol and mou, orfol and fou. F. ADAMS.
"Jiv, Jiv, KOOEILKA!" A recent 'Note on Books ' in ' N. & Q.' (8 th S. xii. 140) concludes with a fervent tribute to the priceless services of those learned scholars who, as the ages roll on, labour, in the words of your reviewer, " to hand on to generations the never-dying torch of truth." A bright and noble simile is this, of which the inspiration is caught from ancient Greece. Yet as I muse thereon the vision which comes before me is not of wise men bending over their books, nor of classical scenes of antiquity. I discern a humble Russian village of the present day, with peasant children playing round about. Merry laughter resounds as, with loud shouts of " Jiv, jiv, koprilka ! " ( " Alive, alive 's the torch !") a flaming splinter is passed rapidly from hand to hand, the youth or maiden who happens to hold it when the light dies out being adjudged the loser. This is the game of koomlka, or firebrand, still popular in Russia (see Dahl's 'Dictionary,' in Russ, St. Petersburg, Wolff, edition of 1881, s.v. 'Koorit,' to smoke). The pastime is evidently very ancient. A Russian-French dictionary gives "petit bonhomme vit encore" as the equivalent. The Russian formula is used, colloquially, to express satisfaction upon luck returning unexpectedly when things look blackest, as an Englishman might cheerily cry, " Never say die ! " I frequently hear the
- Carm. Ixi. 186 ; the reading is that of the
' Valesiana,' p. 73,
words "Jiv, koorilka !" used in this sense,
even by people who do not know the country
game, and cannot therefore explain their
origin. Like most proverbial expressions,
the phrase is not often heard here in polite
society, but is interesting to lovers of folk-
lore. Truly the popular phrase, as a French
writer remarks, often resembles the peasant's
son in the folk-tale who went to bed a beggar
and awoke to find himself a prince. Even so
shall the peasant child's piece of flaring
torchwood, after doing duty in modest guise
as an emblem of unexpected success in humble
every-day matters, become etherealized in
tender hands until its apotheosis is reached,
and it burns aloft with its purest and steadiest
light as the symbol of eternal truth.
H. E. M. St. Petersburg.
CHAELES LAMB AND THE SEA. Charles Lamb, in his ' Elia ' essay ' The Old Margate Hoy,' speaks of " the dissatisfaction which I have heard so many persons confess to have felt (as I did myself feel in part on this occa- sion) at the sight of the sea for the first time.
.But the sea remains a disappointment."
A little further on he speaks of "our un- romantic coasts." Dear author of ' Elia ' ! In your own words, your name "carries a perfume in the mention" ; but I fear that on this occasion you went "ultra crepidam." Had you ever looked out from the Land's End or St. Ives, you could not and would not have thought that the sight of the sea was " a disappointment," nor, had you ever visited " the guarded mount " of St. Michael or stood on Gurnard's Head, could you have spoken of " our unromantic coasts."
cari luoghi !
Ille terrarum mihi praeter omnes
Angulus ridet.
JONATHAN BOUCHIER. Ropley, Hampshire.
HOMEE. I am not a great scholar ; I am only a reader. But I can see generally a resemblance between the language of the 'Iliad' and that of the 'Odyssey.' Take the first ten lines of the second book of the 'Odyssey' as an example. Every line may be found somewhere in the ' Iliad.' The speech of Eurymachus to Halitherses reminds me of similar speeches of Agamemnon in the first book of the ' Iliad,' and is hardly inferior. I think that the scene between Calypso and Ulysses is such as only the genius of Homer could have produced. Calypso is kind and gentle, but, being a goddess, merely feels the inconvenience of the loss of a lover when Ulysses leaves her, She does, not descend
