Notes and Queries, Number 39, July 27, 1850 | Page 2

Cor. ii. 7.[1] It was the day on which was fulfilled the promise {139} made to them by CHRIST that "The Comforter, which is the HOLY GHOST, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall _teach you all things_, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you." John, xiv. 26. When "He, the Spirit of Truth, came, who should guide them into all truth." John xvi. 13. And the consequence of this "unction from the Holy One" was, that they "knew all things," and "needed not that any man should teach them." 1 John, ii. 20. 27.
_Whit-sonday_ was, therefore, the day on which the Apostles were endued by God with wisdom and knowledge: and my Query is, whether the root of the word may not be found in the Anglo-Saxon verb,--
_Witan_, to know, understand (whence our _wit_, in its old meaning of good sense, or cleverness and the expression "having one's wits about one," &c.); or else, perhaps, from--
_Wisian_, to instruct, show, inform; (Ger. _weisen_). Not being an Anglo-Saxon scholar, I am unable of myself to trace the formation of the word witson from either of these roots: and I should feel greatly obliged to any of your correspondents who might be able and willing to inform me, whether that form is deduceable from either of the above verbs; and if so, what sense it would bear in our present language. I am convinced, that _wisdom day_, or _teaching day_, would afford a very far better reason for the name now applied to Pentecost, than any of the reasons commonly given. I should observe, that I think it incorrect to say Whit-Sunday. It should be Whitsun (Witesone) Day. If it is Whit Sunday, why do we say Easter Day, and not Easter Sunday? Why do we say Whitsun-Tide? Why does our Prayer Book say Monday and Tuesday in Whitsun-week (just as before, Monday and Tuesday in Easter-week)? And why do the lower classes, whose "vulgarisms" are, in nine cases out of ten, more correct than our refinements, still talk about Whitsun Monday and Whitsun Tuesday, where the more polite say, Whit Monday and Tuesday?
Query II. As I am upon etymologies, let me ask, may not the word _Mass_, used for the Lord's Supper--which Baronius derives from the Hebrew _missach_, an oblation, and which is commonly derived from the "missa missorum"--be nothing more nor less than mess (_mes_, old French), the meal, the repast, the supper? We have it still lingering in the phrase, "an officers' mess;" i.e. a meal taken in common at the same table; and so, "to mess together," "messmate," and so on. Compare the Moeso-Gothic _mats_, food: and _maz_, which Bosworth says (_A.-S. Dic._ sub voc. _Mete_) is used for bread, food, in Otfrid's poetical paraphrase of the Gospels, in Alemannic or High German, published by Graff, Konigsberg, 1831.
H.T.G.
Clapton.
[Footnote 1: The places in the New Testament, where Divine Wisdom and Knowledge are referred to the outpouring of God's Spirit, are numberless. Cf. Acts, vi. 3., 1 Cor. xii. 8., Eph. i. 8, 9., Col. i. 9., &c. &c.]
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FOLK LORE.
_Sympathetic Cures._--Possibly the following excerpt may enable some of your readers and Folklore collectors to testify to the yet lingering existence, in localities still unvisited by the "iron horse," of a superstition similar to the one referred to below. I transcribe it from a curious, though not very rare volume in duodecimo, entitled _Choice and Experimental Receipts in Physick and Chirurgery, as also Cordial and Distilled Waters and Spirits, Perfumes, and other Curiosities_. Collected by the Honourable and truly learned Sir Kenelm Digby, Kt., Chancellour to Her Majesty the Queen Mother. London: Printed for H. Brome, at the Star in Little Britain, 1668.
"_A Sympathetic Cure for the Tooth-ach._--With an iron nail raise and cut the gum from about the teeth till it bleed, and that some of the blood stick upon the nail, then drive it into a wooden beam up to the head; after this is done you never shall have the toothach in all your life." The author naively adds "But whether the man used any spell, or said any words while he drove the nail, I know not; only I saw done all that is said above. This is used by severall certain persons."
Amongst other "choice and experimental receipts" and "curiosities" which in this little tome are recommended for the cure of some of the "ills which flesh is heir to," one directs the patient to
"Take two parts of the moss growing on the skull of a dead man (pulled as small as you can with the fingers)."
Another enlarges on the virtue of
"A little bag containing some powder of toads calcined, so that the bag lay always upon the pit of the stomach next the