our tub. The above etymologies were unknown, even to Adelung, before the publication of the Old High German glosses. BA, BOTH. This remarkable word is made the vehicle for two very unfortunate guesses. The Latin bis is not a genitive absolute of the Gothic ba, both, but from the Sanscrit dwis; in Greek, dropping the labial, dis; in Zend and Latin, dropping the dental, bis; the Icelandic, more faithful to its origin, exhibits tois-var; English, twice. The conjecture that our both is compounded of ba + twa, is instantly shown to be impossible by the German form beide, compared with zwei. The real genealogy of both is as follows: Sanscrit ub'ha, ub 'hau, (whence, inserting the liquid, aμqw, ambo,) Lettish, abbu; Slavonic, obo, oba; Gothic, by apheresis, ba, subsequently enlarged into bajoths (vid. Ulphilas, Matt. ix. 17, Luc. v. 38.); whence the Icelandic, badir; German, beide; Bavarian, baid, bod; English, both. The hypothesis of a Gothic origin of the Latin language, or any considerable portion of it, may be easily demonstrated to be a mere chimera: the languages are connected not by descent, but collaterally. BAWSAND.-Streaked with white on the face, applied to horses and cattle. Dr. Jamieson refers this word to Ital., balzano, white-footed; while Mr. Stevenson laboriously endeavours to trace it to the Innos Quλios of Belisarius. The readers of their lucubrations are likely to be in the same predicament as the Breton peasants mentioned by Madame de Sévigné, who thought their curé's new clock was the gabelle, until they were assured that it was the jubilee. The matter lies on the surface. Brock is a badger; bawsin, ditto; brock-faced (ap. Craven Glossary, and Brockett), marked with white on the face like a badger; bawsin'd, ditto. This simple analogy weighs more with us than five hundred pages from the Byzantine historians. BLACK-CLOCK.—The common black-beetle.—Hallamshire Glossary. The word clock-peculiar, we believe, in this sense, to the North-Anglian district-is used as a generic term for all coleopterous insects ex. gr. brown-clock, the cock-chafer, lady-clock, the lady-bird (coccinella septem punctata), bracken-clock, a species of melolontha, willow-clock, and many others. This might seem a mere arbitrary designation, or local perversion of some more legitimate term. It is, however, a genuine Germanic word, and of remote antiquity, as is shown by the ancient gloss published by Gerbert-chuleich, scarabæus.' It appears from Schmeller, that kieleck was the Bavarian appellation for the scarabæus stercorarius, late in the seventeenth century. The preservation of this term term in a remote English province is a good illustration of Ihre's excellent aphorism- Non enim ut fungi nascuntur vocabula.' Both Tacitus and Ptolemy describe the Angli as a tribe of Suevi, an account which we believe to be confirmed by the numerous coincidences between the dialects of South Germany and those of our Anglian and Northumbrian counties. Indeed, we have our reasons for thinking that the language of the Angles was in many respects more a German than a Saxon dialect, and that it differed from the speech of Kent, Sussex, and Wessex, both in words and grammar. We expect that the publication of the Durham and Rushworthian glosses will either confirm or disprove this conjecture. HELDER OF ELDER, sooner (rather).-Perhaps from the word older. -Halifax Glossary, ap. Hunter. Ετυμολογία γραωδεστάτη! The cognate languages show that helder is the true orthography, consequently the word has nothing to do with old. It might seem most obvious to refer it to the Icelandic helldur, potiùs, proclivius, with which it agrees pretty exactly both in form and meaning. But so few Scandinavian particles have become naturalized among us, that it is safer to have recourse to the Saxon form ge-hældre, absurdly derived by Lye from hælan, to heal. The true root is hald-acclivis; Icelandic haldr. Compare, Suabian, halden, a declivity, halden, to slope; Upper Austrian, hälder, hälter, rather, sooner; German, hold, huld, &c. The analogy between these words and the Latin clivus, proclivis, procliviùs, is sufficiently evident, both in the primary sense of the terms as attributes of material objects, and their secondary application to denote operations or affections of the mind. GAR. To cause, make.-Jamieson, Brockett, Craven Glossary. This word may be regarded as the Shibboleth of a language wholly or partially Scandinavian. The Germans and Saxons regularly employ machen, macan, which, in its turn, is unknown in pure Norse. Garon, to prepare, used by Otfried, has been long obsolete; a descendant, however, exists in gerben, to tan leather, formerly garawen. The root of the Icelandic verb göra appears to exist in the Sanscrit kri, facere; Persian, kerden; Greek, xpaiva; Latin, creo; and the gipsy gerraf-Imper. gerr.undoubtedly of Oriental extraction. Mr. Boucher, in his remarks under bamboozle,' confounds the gipsy language with the flash of our thieves and pickpockets, not knowing apparently that this remarkable race have a regularly constructed tongue, with eight cases to its nouns, and more inflections for its verbs than we ourselves can boast of. We are not going to digress into an analysis of it, but shall merely observe that the name by which they they call themselves, Sinte, (i. e., people of Sind,) bears an odd resemblance to that of the ancient inhabitants of Lemnos, the Σίντιες αγριοφώνοι of Homer, commonly supposed to be a tribe of Pelasgi. An intrepid antiquary, capable of seeing a long way into a millstone, might patch up a fraternity between the two, by some such process as the following. The Pelasgi were an Oriental race the Livres were Pelasgians-Lemnos, the place of their abode, was the workshop of Vulcan-the present Sinte, also Oriental, have from time immemorial exercised the trade of tinkers; ergo, &c. As Cobbet used to say--we do not vouch for the fact. LATE, OF LEAT. To search or seek; Icelandic, leyta [leita].— Brockett. Rectè ! This word will enable us to correct an erroneous interpretation of Sir Tristrem :— Wha wad lesinges layt Tharf him ne further go'— which lait Dr. Jamieson renders give heed to.' The meaning evidently is, He who would seek after falsehoods needs not to go any further.' The term lait, familiar to the inhabitants of the English northern counties, is, we believe, wholly unknown in Scotland proper; affording a presumptive argument, that the poem in which it occurs was written to the south of the Tweed. This we believe to have been the case with several other metrical romances usually claimed as Scottish. It is not sufficient for those who make this claim to show that they exhibit many words commonly employed in Scotland, unless they can also produce a number that were never used in England. 'LATHE, a barn.'-Craven Glossary. From the Danish lade. It is well known that Chaucer puts this word in the mouth of one of his north country clerks in the 'Reeve's Tale,' who, as the narrator informs us, were of a town hight Strother. Dr. Jamieson, deceived by the Northumbrian words employed by the speakers, boldly claims them as Scots, and maintains that Strother is certainly Anstruther in Fife. We say, certainly not: but, as Dr. Whitaker long ago observed in his History of Craven, Long Strother in the West Riding of Yorkshire. This may be proved-inter alia-by the word lathe, common in Yorkshire and its immediate borders, but never heard in Scotland. Long Strother, or Longstroth* dale, is not a town, This appellation exhibits a curious jumble of Celtic and Teutonic. Strother appears to have originally been Strath-hir, the long valley. The present form is a good example of the difference between the Celtic and Teutonic idioms. By the way the oddest specimen of the jumbling of those dialects that we know of occurs in the name of the mountain at the head of the Yarrow,-viz. Mountbenjerlaw.— Ben-Yair, or Ben-Yarrow, was no doubt the old Celtic name, and the Romanized Provincials and the Danes successively gave the Mont and the Law, both of which superfluities are now preserved in cumulo. but but a district, in the north-west part of the deanery of Craven, where the Northumbrian dialect rather preponderates over the Anglian. Chaucer undoubtedly copied the language of some native; and the general accuracy with which he gives it, shows that he was an attentive observer of all that passed around him. We subjoin an extract from the poem, in order to give our readers an opportunity of comparing southern and northern English, as they co-existed in the fifteenth century. It is from a MS. that has never been collated; but which we believe to be well worthy the attention of any future editor of the Canterbury Tales. The italics denote variations from the printed text : 'John highte that oon and Aleyn highte that other: Oure maunciple I hope he wil be ded- * To grynde oure corn, and carye it ham agayne. This John goth out and fynt his hors away- She saide-Allas, youre hors goth to the fen Excepting the obsolete forms hethen (hence), swa, lorn, whilke, alswa, capel-all the above provincialisms are still, more or less, current in the north-west part of Yorkshire. Na, ham(e), fra, banes, attanes, ra, bathe, are pure Northumbrian. Wang (cheek or temple) is seldom heard, except in the phrase wang tooth, dens molaris. ́Ill, adj., for bad-lathe (barn)—and fond (foolish)— are most frequently and familiarly used in the West Riding, or its immediate borders. Several of the varia lectiones are preferable to the corresponding ones in the printed text, especially the lineI is as ill a meller as are ye.' Now Tyrwhitt's reading, as is ye,' is a violation of idiom which no Yorkshireman would be guilty of. The apparently ungrammatical forms, I is, thou is, are in exact accordance with the present practice of the Danes, who inflect their verb substantive as follows: It is worth observing, that the West Riding dialect exhibits, at least, as great a proportion of Scandinavian terms as the speech of the more northern districts. This we regard as a proof that Anglian and Northumbrian were distinct dialects prior to the |