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EARLY USE OF TIN.—DERIVATION OF THE NAME OF BRITAIN

(Vol. viii., p. 290.)

Many questions are proposed by G.W., to which it is extremely improbable that any but a conjectural answer can ever be given. That tin was in common use 2800 years ago, is certain. Probably evidence may be obtained, if it have not been so already, of its use at a still earlier period; but it is unlikely that we shall ever know who first brought it from Cornwall to Asia, and used it to harden copper. It is, however, a matter of interest to trace the mention of this metal in the ancient inscriptions, Egyptian and Assyrian, which have of late years been so successfully interpreted. Mistakes have been made from time to time, which subsequent researches have rectified. It was thought for a long time that a substance, mentioned in the hieroglyphical inscriptions very frequently, and in one instance said to have been procured from Babylon, was tin. This has now been ascertained to be a mistake. Mr. Birch has proved that it was Lapis lazuli, and that what was brought from Babylon was an artificial blue-stone in imitation of the genuine one. I am not aware whether the true hieroglyphic term for tin has been discovered. Mention was again supposed to have been made of tin in the annals of Sargon. A tribute paid to him in his seventh year by Pirhu (Pharaoh, as Col. Rawlinson rightly identifies the name; not Pihor, Boccharis, as I at one time supposed), king of Egypt, Tsamtsi, queen of Arabia, and Idhu, ruler of the Isabeans, was supposed to have contained tin as well as gold, horses, and camels. This, however, was in itself an improbable supposition. It is much more likely that incense or spices should have been yielded by the countries named than tin. At any rate, I have recently identified a totally different word with the name of tin. It reads anna; and I supposed it, till very lately, to mean "rings." I find, however, that it signifies a metal, and that a different word has the signification "rings." When Assur-yuchura-bal, the founder of the north-western palace at Nimrúd, conquered the people who lived on the banks of the Orontes from the confines of Hamath to the sea, he obtained from them twenty talents of silver, half a talent of gold, one hundred talents of anna (tin), one hundred talents of iron, &c. His successor received from the same people all these metals, and also copper.

It is already highly probable, and farther discoveries may soon convert this probability to certainty, that the people just referred to (whom I incline strongly to identify with the Shirutana of the Egyptian inscriptions) were the merchants of the world before Tyre was called into existence; their port being what the Greeks called Seleucia, when they attempted to revive its ancient greatness. It is probably to them that the discovery of Britain is to be attributed; and it was probably from them that it received its name.

In G. W.'s communication, a derivation of the name from barat-anac, "the land of tin," is suggested. He does not say by whom, but he seems to disclaim it as his own. I do not recollect to have met with it before; but it appears to me, even as it stands, a far more plausible one than bruit-tan, "the land of tin:" the former term being supposed to be Celtic for tin, and the latter a termination with the sense of land: or than brit-daoine, "the painted (or separated) people."

I am, however, disposed to think that the name is not of Phœnician origin, but was given by their northern neighbours, whom I have mentioned as their predecessors in commerce. These were evidently of kindred origin, and spoke a language of the same class; and I think it all but certain, that in the Assyrian name for tin (anna) we have the name given to it by this people, from whom the Assyrians obtained it. "The land of tin" would be in their language barat (or probably barit) anna, from which the transition to Britannia presents no difficulty. I assume here that b-r-t, without expressed vowels, is a Phœnician term for "land of." I assume it on the authority of the person, whoever he may be, that first gave the derivation that G. W. quotes. I have no Phœnician authority within reach: but I can readily believe the statement, knowing that banit would be the Assyrian word used in such a compound, and that n, r, and b are perpetually interchanged in the Semitic languages, and notoriously so in this very root. Ummi banitiya, "of the mother who produced me," is pure Assyrian; and so would banit-anna, "the producer of tin," be; all names of lands being feminine in Assyrian.

It would be curious if the true derivation of the world-renowned name of Britain should be ascertained for the first time through an Assyrian medium.

Edw. Hincks.

Killyleagh, Down.

As there are several Queries in the Note of G. W. which the Celtic language is capable of elucidating, I beg to offer a few derivations from that language.

Britain is derived from briot, painted, and tan, a country—i. e. "the country of the painted people." It is a matter of history, that the people of Britain dyed their bodies with various colours.

Tin is from the Celtic tin, to melt readily, to dissolve. It is also called stan: Latin, stannum.

Hercules is from the Phœnician or Celtic, Earr-aclaide, pronounced Er-aclaie, i. e. the noble leader or hero.

Melkarthus is derived from Mal-catair, pronounced Mal-cahir, i. e. the champion or king of the city (of Tyre).

Moloch cannot be identical with the Tyrian Hercules, as Moloch was the god of fire: probably a name for the sun, from the Celtic molc, i. e. fire.

Fras. Crossley.

YEW-TREES IN CHURCHYARDS

(Vol. viii., p. 244.)

Whilst offering a solution to the Query of R. C. Warde, as to the placing yew-trees in churchyards, I am obliged to differ from him toto cœlo, by considering the derivation of the name of the plant itself, though I must candidly confess that the solution of the Query and the derivation of the word are my own.

Yew is ancient British, and signifies existent and enduring, having the same root as Jehovah; and yew is Welsh for it is, being one of the forms of the third person present indicative of the auxiliary verb bód, to be. Hence the yew-tree was planted in churchyards, not to indicate death, despair, but life, hope and assurance. It is one of our few evergreens, and is the most enduring of all, and clearly points out the Christian's hope in the immortality of the soul: Resurgam.

Whilst on the word yew, I may perhaps observe that I am hardly inclined now (though I once was so) to derive from it, as the author of the Etymological Compendium does, the name yeoman: I think that yeoman is not yew-man, "a man using the yew-bow," but yoke-man, a man owning as much land as a yoke of oxen could plough in a certain time.

J. G. Cummings.

The following extract frown the Handbook of English Ecclesiology, p. 190., may be of some assistance to your correspondent:

"Yew. These were planted generally to the south of the church, to supply green for the decoration of churches at the great festivals; this tree being an emblem of immortality. It is a heathen prejudice which regards it as mournful. It is not probable yews were used as palms; the traditional name given to the withy showing that this was used in the procession on that festival."

William W. King.

Instead of troubling you with a particular answer to Mr. Warde's inquiry, let me refer him to the Forest Trees of Britain, by the Rev. C. A. Johns, p 297. et seq., where, among many other curious and interesting facts, he will find the various reasons assigned by different authors, ancient and modern, for the plantation of yew-trees in churchyards. I do not find, however, that the origin ingeniously assigned by Mr. Warde is among the number.

Φ.

I have always supposed, but I know not upon what authority, that the custom of planting yew-trees in churchyards originated in the idea of supplying the yeomen of the parish with bows, in the good old archery days.

Ignoramus.

STARS ARE THE FLOWERS OF HEAVEN

(Vol. vii. passim.)

I sent a Note to "N. & Q" some time ago, expressing my conviction that the original locale of this beautiful idea was in St. Chrysostom. but, as I could not then give a reference to the passage which contained it, my suggestion was of course not definite enough to call for attention. I am now able to vindicate to the "golden-mouthed" preacher of Antioch this expression of poetic fancy, the origination of which has excited, and deservedly, so much inquiry among the readers of "N. & Q." It occurs in Homily X., "On the Statues," delivered at Antioch. I transcribe the passage from the translation in The Library of the Fathers:

"Follow me whilst I enumerate the meadows, the gardens, the flowering tribes; all sorts of herbs and their uses, their odours, forms, disposition; yea, but their very names; the trees which are fruitful and the barren; the nature of metals; that of animals, in the sea or on the land; of those that swim and those that traverse the air; the mountains, the forests, the groves; the meadow below and the meadow above; for there is a meadow on the earth, and a meadow too in the sky, THE VARIOUS FLOWERS OF THE STARS; the rose below, and the rainbow above!… Contemplate with me the beauty of the sky; how it has been preserved so long without being dimmed, and remains as bright and clear as if it had been only fabricated to-day; moreover the power of the earth, how its womb has not become effete by bringing forth during so long a time!" &c. Homily X., "On the Statues," pp. 178-9.

W. Fraser.

Tor-Mohun.

P.S.—Are the following lines, which contain this idea, and were copied long ago from the poet's corner of a provincial paper, with the title of "The Language of the Stars, a fragment," worth preserving?

 
"The stars bear tidings, voiceless though they are:
'Mid the calm loveliness of the evening air,
As one by one they open clear and high,
And win the wondering gaze of infancy,
They speak,—yet utter not. Fair heavenly flowers
Strewn on the floor-way of the angels' bowers!
'Twas His own hand that twined your chaplets bright,
And thoughts of love are in your wreaths of light,
Unread, unreadable by us;—there lie
High meanings in your mystic tracery;
Silent rebukings of day's garish dreams,
And warnings solemn as your own fair beams."
 

BOOKS BURNED BY THE COMMON HANGMAN

(Vol. viii., p. 272.)

Your correspondent Balliolensis should remember that at the time Dr. Drake published his Historia Anglo-Scotica, 1703, there were no bounds to the angry passions and jealousies evoked by the discussion of the projected union; consequently, what may appear to as in the present day an insufficient reason for the treatment the book met with in the northern metropolis, wore a very different aspect to the Scots, who, under the popular belief that they were to be sold to their enemies, saw every movement with distrust, and tortured everything said or written on this side the Tweed, upon the impending question, to discover an attack upon their national independence, their church, and their valour.

Looking at Dr. Drake's book, then, for the data upon which it was condemned, we find that it opens with a prefatory dedication to Sir E. Seymour, one of Queen Anne's Commissioners for the Union, and a high churchman, wherein the author distinctly ventures a blow at Presbytery when he says to his patron:

"The languishing oppressed Church of Scotland is not without hopes of finding in you hereafter the same successful champion and restorer that her sister of England has already experienced."

He farther calculated upon Sir Edward inspiring the neighbouring nation "with as great a respect for the generosity of the English as they have heretofore had to dread their valour." Now the Scots neither acknowledged the Episcopacy which Seymour is here urged to press upon them, nor had they any such slavish fear of the vaunted English prowess with which Dr. Drake would have them intimidated; without going farther, therefore, into the book, it appears to me that the Scots parliament had a right to consider it written in a bad spirit, and to pacify the people by condemning it.

Defoe, in his History of the Union (G. Chalmers' edition, London, 1786), says:

"One Dr. Drake writes a preface to an abridgment of the Scots History, wherein, speaking something reflecting upon the freedom and independence of Scotland, the Scots parliament caused it to be burned by the hangman in Edinburgh."

In his Northern Memoirs, 1715, Oldmixon observes:

"They (the Jacobites) therefore put Dr. Drake, author of the High Church Memorials, upon publishing an antiquated Scotch history, on purpose to vilify the whole nation in the preface, and create more ill blood. This had the desired effect. The Scots parliament highly resented the affront, and ordered it to be burnt by the common hangman at Edinburgh."

D'Israeli, in his Calamities of Authors, has the following interesting notice of Drake:

"I must add one more striking example of a political author in the case of Dr. James Drake, a man of genius and an excellent writer. He resigned an honorable profession, that of medicine, to adopt a very contrary one, that of becoming an author by profession for a party. As a Tory writer he dared every extremity of the law, while he evaded it by every subtlety of artifice; he sent a masked lady with his MSS. to the printer, who was never discovered; and was once saved by a flaw in the indictment, from the simple change of an r for a t, or nor for not, one of those shameful evasions by which the law, to its perpetual disgrace, so often protects the criminal from punishment. Dr. Drake had the honor of hearing himself censured from the throne, of being imprisoned, of seeing his Memorials of the Church of England burned at (the Royal Exchange) London, and his Hist. Angl. Scot. at Edinburgh. Having enlisted himself in the pay of the booksellers, among other works, I suspect, he condescended to practise some literary impositions; for he has reprinted Father Parsons famous libel against the Earl of Leicester, under the title of Secret Memoirs of Robert Dudley, E. of L., 1706, with a preface pretending it was printed from an old MS."

The same instructive writer adds:

"Drake was a lover of literature; he left behind him a version of Herodotus, and a system of anatomy, once the most popular and curious of its kind. After all this turmoil of his literary life, neither his masked lady nor the flaws in his indictments availed him; government brought a writ of error, severely prosecuted him; and abandoned, as usual, by those for whom he had annihilated a genius which deserved a better fate, his perturbed spirit broke out into a fever, and he died raving against cruel persecutors, and patrons not much more humane."

Another book before me, and one which shared the fate of Drake's in Edinburgh, is The Superiority and Direct Dominion of the Imperial Crown of England over the Crown and Kingdom of Scotland, the true Foundation of a compleat Union reasserted; 4to. London, 1705. This had appeared the year before, but was reproduced to answer the objections to it from the other side. It was written by William Attwood, Esq. If it required a nice discrimination to discover the offence of Drake, there was no such dubiety about this book, which goes the whole length of Scottish vassalage; and Mr. Attwood would lead us to believe that he knocks over the arguments of Hodges and Anderson⁶ for Scottish independence with as much ease as he would ninepins.

Unfortunately these subjects are again forced upon us, and a reference to some of the books I have cited will enable gentlemen who are curious upon the point to judge for themselves in the matter of the present agitation of "Justice to Scotland."

J. O.

On May 5, 1686, M. Claude's account of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew was burnt in the Old Exchange, "so mighty a power and ascendant here had the French ambassador." (Evelyn's Memoirs.)

John S. Burn.