CROOKED ANSWERS. 147 Another, Virgil, Æn. iv. 245: 'Illâ fretus agit ventos, et turbida tranat Nubila. Jamque volans apicem et latera ardua cernit "She crosses the straits like the wind and gives up a disagreeable husband. And now wishing she sees a bee and the length and breadth of the stern Atlantic, which touches the sky at a vertex." "Enthusiasm," according to one, was derived from ὁ θεός ἐν ἡμῖν; and according to another from a Latin term thyas, a female bacchanal who rushed madly about shouting, "Evoe! Bacche!" These instances of "howlers" are of comparatively recent date. I find in my note-book others considerably older. While I have an impression that I found the two following in the revision of examination papers, it is possible that they may have been noted down as the experience of others : "Est medici sitim restinguere et sedare," "A doctor's duty is to quench his thirst and sit down and rest himself." "Ultro pollicitus est quod antea negaverat," "He promised to the uncle what he had refused to the aunt." To candidates for degree I prescribed a number of words and phrases for derivation and explanation. One was "sepulchre," with which many were correct, a few wrong, but only one amusing. 66 'Sepulchre derived from se, negative, and pulcher, fair, the place where beauty fades"; a very ingenious conjecture, creditably reasoned out, and for which we might have been thankful if we had not sepelio to fall back upon. I could not in my heart refuse to give him a few marks. Another was "catechism," which gave occasion for many wild guesses, all of which were wrong. The simplest was "from xaтéXW, κατέχω, to restrain, a questioning calculated to restrain from falling into sin." Another and more elaborate one was, "a compendium in which the facts of any particular set of truths are broken up, as it were, and presented in a definite form. This meaning is easily traceable to the two Greek words from which it is derived, xaтá, down, and xiw, to separate or break." Many other attempts were made, all wrong, as I more than half expected, but the most amusing was the following: "Catechism-derived from κатá, down, and xáoμa, a gap, a set of questions arranged to keep people from stumbling into the bottomless INGENIOUS DERIVATIONS. 149 pit." This was completed by a sort of Euclidian Q.E.D.-"in short, a catechism." The author of this answer became a respected and most orthodox minister. An intending medical student translated a line from Virgil "Jacet ingens littore truncus," "His huge body was laid upon a stretcher." These two examples show how translation is apt to take form and colour from one's professional aims. The aspirant for holy orders found in "catechism" a reference to the bottomless pit, and the medical student in "littore " a reference to the litter of ambulance work. "Prevaricate" was derived from pra and varicosus, full of veins. Candidates for the preliminary medical examination are responsible for a large number of queer answers. A "papal bull" was said to be "an image blessed by the Pope and worshipped by Roman Catholics." The "equator"-a line passing through the centre of the earth, where the sun is hottest. A "cabal" was variously a kind of cabinet, or a rope generally belonging to a ship for mooring it. The "Romance languages" were, according to one, the languages in which novelists write, and according to another, the languages spoken in the time of Romulus. A "journeyman was a person who travels with goods. "Christian Fathers" were pious heads of families. "A coign of vantage" was a lucky penny. The "Pole-star," a star fixed on to the heavens at the north pole, on which the earth seems to spin round. "Paradox" another writing. 66 some ridiculous writing like Apocryphal" that which is hidden from man's comprehension. ORKNEY. 151 CHAPTER XIII. ORKNEY - "PICTS' HOUSES AND · KIRKWALL CATHEDRAL FOR the first sixteen years of my official life, from 1869 to 1875, Orkney and Shetland formed part of the district under my charge. My last visit was in 1879. Since then more frequent communication, with an excellent service of steamers, has no doubt wrought many changes, and made these outlying islands much better known; but forty years ago they were so little known that many persons, in other respects well informed, thought of them as in some sort the refuse of creation-some of the rubbish for which no use could be found, and which had been tossed out into the great lumber-room of the ocean to be out of the way; inhabited by a race with whom the civilised world had no commun |