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FOLK LORE

High Spirits considered a Presage of impending Calamity or Death:—

1. "How oft when men are at the point of death
Have they been merry! which their keepers call
A lightning before death."

Romeo and Juliet, Act v. Sc. 3.

2. "C'était le jour de Noel [1759]. Je m'étais levé d'assez bonne heure, et avec une humeur plus gaie que de coutume. Dans les idées de vieille femme, cela présage toujours quelque chose do triste.... Pour cette fois pourtunt le hasard justifia la croyance."—Mémoires de J. Casanova, vol. iii p. 29.

3. "Upon Saturday last … the Duke did rise up, in a well-disposed humour, out of his bed, and cut a caper or two.... Lieutenant Felton made a thrust with a common tenpenny knife, over Fryer's arm at the Duke, which lighted so fatally, that he slit his heart in two, leaving the knife sticking in the body."—Death of Duke of Buckingham; Howell. Fam. Letters, Aug. 5, 1628.

4. "On this fatal evening [Feb. 20, 1435], the revels of the court were kept up to a late hour … the prince himself appears to have been in unusually gay and cheerful spirits. He even jested, if we may believe the cotemporary manuscript, about a prophecy which had declared that a king should that year be slain."—Death of King James I.; Tytler, Hist. Scotland, vol. iii. p. 306.

5. "'I think,' said the old gardener to one of the maids, 'the gauger's fie;' by which word the common people express those violent spirits which they think a presage of death."—Guy Mannering, chap. 9.

6. "H.W.L." said: "I believe the bodies of the four persons seen by the jury, were those of G.B., W.B., J.B., and T.B. On Friday night they were all very merry, and Mrs. B. said she feared something would happen before they went to bed, because they were so happy."—Evidence given at inquest on bodies of four persons killed by explosion of firework-manufactory in Bermondsey, Friday, Oct. 12, 1849. See Times, Oct. 17, 1849.

Nos. 1, 2, 5, 6, are evidently notices of the Belief; Nos. 3, 4, are "what you will." Many of your correspondents may be able to supply earlier and more curious illustrations.

C. FORBES

June 19.

THE HYDRO-INCUBATOR

Most, if not all, of your readers have heard of the newly-invented machine for hatching and rearing in chickens, without the maternal aid of the hen; probably many of them have paid a visit (and a shilling) at No. 4. Leicester Square, where the incubator is to be seen in full operation. The following extract will, therefore, be acceptable, as it tends to show the truth of the inspired writer's words, "There is no new thing under the sun:"—

"Therefore … it were well we made our remarks in some creatures, that might be continually in our power, to observe in them the course of nature, every day and hour. Sir John Heydon, the Lieutenant of his Majesties Ordnance (that generous and knowing gentleman and consummate souldier, both in theory and practice) was the first that instructed me how to do this, by means of a furnace, so made as to imitate the warmth of a sitting hen. In which you may lay several eggs to hatch and by breaking them at several ages, you may distinctly observe every hourly mutation in them, if you please. The first will be, that on one side you shall find a great resplendent clearness in the white. After a while, a little spot of red matter, like blood will appear in the midst of that clearness, fast'ned to the yolk, which will have a motion of opening and shutting, so as sometimes you will see it, and straight again it will vanish from your sight, and indeed, at first it is so little that you cannot see it, but by the motion of it; for at every pulse, as it opens you may see it, and immediately again it shuts, in such sort as it is not to be discerned. From this red speck, after a while, there will stream out a number of little (almost imperceptible) red veins. At the end of some of which, in time, there will be gathered together a knot of matter, which by little and little will take the form of a head and you will, ere long, begin to discern eyes and a beak in it. All this while the first red spot of blood grows bigger and solider, till at length it becomes a fleshy substance, and, by its figure, may easily be discern'd to be the heart; which as yet hath no other inclosure but the substance of the egg. But by little and little, the rest of the body of an animal is framed out of those red veins which stream out all about from the heart. And in process of time, that body encloses the heart within it by the chest, which grows over on both sides, and in the end meets and closes itself fast together. After which this little creature soon fills the shell, by converting into several parts of itself all the substance of the egg; and then growing weary of so strait a habitation, it breaks prison and comes out a perfectly formed chicken."—Sir Kenelm Digby's Treatise of Bodies, Ch. xxiv. p. 274. ed. 1669.

Could Sir Kenelm return to the scenes of this upper world, and pay a visit to Mr. Cantelo's machine, his shade might say with truthfulness, what Horace Smith's mummy answered to his questioner,—

"—We men of yore
Were versed in all the knowledge you can mention."

The operations of the two machines appear to be precisely the same: the only difference being the Sir Kenelm's was an experimental one, made for the purpose of investigating the process of nature; while Cantelo's, in accordance with "the spirit of the iron time," is a practical one, made for the purposes of utility and profit. Sir Kenelm's Treatise appears to have been first published in the year 1644.

HENRY KERSLEY.

Corpus Christi Hall, Maidstone.

ETYMOLOGY OF THE WORD "PARLIAMENT."

It has been observed by a learned annotator on the Commentaries of Blackstone, that, "no inconsiderable pains have been bestowed in analysing the word 'Parliament;'" and after adducing several amusing instances of the attempts that have been made (and those too by men of the most recondite learning) to arrive at its true radical properties, he concludes his remarks by observing that

"'Parliament' imported originally nothing more than a council or conference, and that the termination 'ment,' in parliament, has no more signification than it has in impeachment, engagement, imprisonment, hereditament, and ten thouand others of the same nature."

He admits, however, that the civilians have, in deriving testament from testari mentem, imparted a greater significance to the termination "ment." Amidst such diversity of opinion, I am emboldened to offer a solution of the word "Parliament," which, from its novelty alone, if possessing no better qualification, may perhaps recommend itself to the consideration of your readers. In my humble judgment, all former etymologists of the word appear to have stumbled in limine, for I would suggest that its compounds are "palam" and "mens."

With the Romans there existed a law that in certain cases the verdict of the jury might be given CLAM VEL PALAM, viz., privily or openly, or in other words, by tablet or ballot, or by voices. Now as the essence of a Parliament or council of the people was its representative character, and as secrecy would be inconsistent with such a character, it was doubtless a sine quâ non that its proceedings should be conducted "palam," in an open manner. The absence of the letter "r" may possibly be objected to, but a moment's reflection will cast it into the shade, the classical pronunciation of the word palam being the same as if spelt PARlam; and the illiterate state of this country when the word Parliament was first introduced would easily account for a phonetic style of orthography. The words enumerated by Blackstone's annotator are purely of English composition, and have no correspondent in the dead languages; whilst testament, sacrament, parliament, and many others, are Latin words Anglicised by dropping the termination "um"—a great distinction as regards the relative value of words, which the learned annotator seems to have overlooked. "Mentum" is doubtless the offspring of "mens", signifying the mind, thought, deliberation, opinion; and as we find "palam populo" to mean "in the sight of the people," so, without any great stretch of imagination, may we interpret "palam mente" into "freedom of thought or of deliberation" or "an open expression of opinion:" the essential qualities of a representative system, and which our ancestors have been careful to hand down to posterity in a word, viz., Parliament.

FRANCISCUS.

"INCIDIS IN SCYLLAM, CUPIENS VITARE CHARYBDIM."

I should be sorry to see this fine old proverb in metaphor passed over with no better notice than that which seems to have been assigned to it in Boswell's Johnson.

Erasmophilos, a correspondent of the Gentleman's Magazine in 1774, quotes a passage from Dr. Jortin's Life of Erasmus, vol. ii. p. 151., which supplies the following particulars, viz.:—

1. That the line was first discovered by Galeottus Martius of Narni, A.D. 1476.

2. That it is in lib. v. 301. of the "Alexandreis," a poem in ten books, by Philippe Gualtier (commonly called "de Chatillon," though in reality a native of Lille, in Flanders).

3. That the context of the passage in which it occurs is as follows:—

"– Quo tendis inertem
Rex periture, fugam? Nescis, heu perdite, nescis
Quem fugias: hostes incurris dum fugis hostem.
Incidis in Scyllam, cupiens vitare Charybdim."

where the poet apostrophises Darius, who, while flying from Alexander, fell into the lands of Bessus. (See Selections from Gent. Mag. vol. ii. p. 199. London, 1814.)

C. FORBES.

This celebrated Latin verse, which has become proverbial, has a very obscure authority, probably not known to many of your readers. It is from Gualtier de Lille, as has been remarked by Galeottus Martius and Paquier in their researches. This Gualtier flourished in the thirteenth century. The verse is extracted from a poem in ten books, called the "Alexandriad," and it is the 301st of the 5th book; it relates to the fate of Darius, who, flying from Alexander, fell into the hands of Bessus. It runs thus:—

"– Quo flectis inertem
Rex periture, fugam? Nescis, heu perdite, nescis,
Quem fugias; hostes incurris dum fugis hostem;
Incidis in Scyllam, cupiens vitare Charybdim"

As honest JOHN BUNYAN, to his only bit of Latin which he quotes, places a marginal note: "The Latin which I borrow,"—a very honest way; so I I beg to say that I never saw this "Alexandriad," and that the above is an excerpt from Menagiana, pub. 1715, edited by Bertrand de la Monnoie, wherein may also be found much curious reading and research.