vii. APRIL 6, loci.] NOTES AND QUERIES.
271
SURNAMES (9 th S. vii. 28, 98, 235). A corre-
spondent thinks it worth while to favour
' N. & Q.' with the fond fancies of a vener-
able friend about his own surname, to the
effect that " Prynne is the only family name
which occurs in the ' Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,
which is the oldest historical record we have
of English history. It was, it appears, the
family name of the last king of Kent." Now,
really, your correspondent ought to have
turned up the 'Chronicle' before inflicting
these venerable figments upon ' N. & Q.' He
would have found that the last king of Kent
in 794 was " Eadbryht, j?am was oj>er noma
nemned Prsen " ; and a high-school girl would
have told him that Preen was not a " family
name," and that Preen was not and could not
have become Prynne. But much allowance
is to be made for people, venerable or other,
when they ruminate upon their family name.
I had a respected friend surnamed Catlin,
who believed that he was descended from a
Roman Catiline not the notorious one com-
memorated by Sallust, but " another man of
the same name " who came to Britain with
Julius Caesar, stayed behind when the
Romans left the island, married a British
heiress, and bequeathed his cognomen as a
surname to his descendants, who, my in-
formant added with feeling, "have never
been very numerous." And I knew a re-
spectable, if humble family surnamed
Salaam, who carried their ancestry much
farther back. My wife once had a member
of this family as maid, and this maid confided
to a fellow-servant the notable fact that her
great-grandfather once owned an ass that
spoke. "It was perfectly true, for it said so
in the Bible ; her father had once shown her
the place where it told all about it, and he
said that that was his own grandfather." Un-
fortunately she could not now find the place
in the Bible, and the fellow-servant, being of
a sceptical turn, disbelieved that any ass
ever spoke, and appealed to her mistress.
The latter showed her the place in the Bible,
but told her that that happened long ago in
the days of miracles ; she feared it was too
long ago for these Balaams to be connected ;
she suspected if there was any connexion
it was with the ass rather than the pro-
phet. A worthy Scotch friend of mine from
Aberdeenshire claims to belong by lineal
descent to the oldest family in the world,
before which Balaams and Catlins, and even
Prynnes, must bare reverent heads. His sur-
name is Adam. I suspect that his descent
from Adam is a good deal more certain than
that of the Prynnes from Prsen. A geologist,
however, reminds me of a much earlier
ancestral being, called flozoon, down in the
Lauren tian rocks. He adds that there are
still flagons in the * London Directory.' If
' N. & Q.' is really going in for this sort of
thing, why should it bother about Prsen
and the Prynnes, who, like the rest of us, "are
of yesterday, and know nothing," when so
much may be said, etymologically and his-
torically, for the venerable flozoon and the
Easons? J. A. H. MURRAY.
Oxford.
P.S. For the sake of the sober antiquary, I may add that I afterwards incidentally came across the name of a former member of the Balaam family under the spelling Bal- ham. The analogy of Clapham, Hatcham, Peckham, and thousands of other surnames derived from place-names inclines one to take this as the original form. But Balaam used to be pronounced like Balham or Bahlam (ray grandmother said the latter), and probably some parish clerk who had to enter the name took it upon him to conform it to the Bible spelling.
One surname was extinguished by an Act of the Scottish Parliament abolishing for ever the name of Ruthven (and decreeing that the barony of Ruthven should be known as the barony of Huntingtower) in conse- quence of the attack on King James by Ruthven, Earl of Gowrie, in August, 1600.
R. B.
Upton.
ST. PATRICK'S DAY (9 th S. vii. 223). The four-leaved shamrock is, I suppose, the four- leaved clover, though it is by no means certain that the true shamrock was a clover. For its ' special significance " see Folkard's ' Plant- Lore' or Friend's ' Flowers and Flower-Lore.' It is scarcely worth while to burden the columns of ' N. & Q.' with what is so easily accessible in all books of the class^ of^ those referred to. C. C. B.
VULGAR MISUSE OF "RIGHT" (9 th S. vii. 49). The word is in general use here in the sense given in the quotations by F. H. We say a oerson "has no right" to do a certain thing. [ do not think it vulgar or a misuse ; ^it may 36 provincial. H. B R.
South Shields.
"HUTCHING ABOUT" (9 th S. vii. 165). If LINCOLN GREEN heard this expression for the first time in Lincolnshire but a few days ago. he must pardon me for saying that his verdancy is not autochthonic. To me it seems both familiar and satisfactory, and I confess I am disappointed to find that MR.
