gives the interpretation of tirling at the pin, which has been before cited. From these statements, it appears to me that the various meanings of the verb to thirl, to thril, to dirl, to drill, and to tirl, may be arranged thus: 1. To make a hole, to pierce, from thyrl, a hole. 2. Transferred to the sense of touch, in the same manner as we speak of shooting, of acute, and, in medical language, of lancinating pains. 3. Transferred to the sense of hearing, analogous to the expressions, piercing sound, sharp sound, acute sound, penetrating sound. Thus Crashaw, in his Music's Duel, says of the nightingale : Sharp airs. Her supple breast trills out And in the beautiful verses of Milton: See there the olive-grove of Academe, Trills her thick warbled notes the summer long 35. 66 So Lord Hume says in Kenilworth : I would, man, thou couldst make the mad lady be still yonder; for her moans do sae dirl through my head, that I would rather keep watch on a snow drift in the wastes of Catlowdie 36. " 4. When this word had once been 37 applied to a particular kind of sounds, its signification was easily extended to all sounds; and hence, to tirl or to dirl, meant generally to make a noise. This is its sense in the passages of old English and Scotch ballads above quoted. So Dr. Willan states, that in the provincial dialect of Yorkshire, "to tirl" means "to make a slight scratching noise;" and Dr. Jamieson explains dirling to be "the sound caused by reiterated strokes on the ground or on a floor," quoting a passage in which it is said, that the brownie keeps the servants awake with "the noisy dirling of its elfin flail 38." It is observable, moreover, that the Italian trillo, 35 Par. Reg. IV. 244. 36 Kenilworth, Vol. 11. ch. 18. 37 Archæologia, Vol. xv11. p. 161. 38 It is remarkable that in Spanish trillo signifies a flail, and trillar to thresh, whence it has acquired the sense of fre quenting; as we say, a beaten road. It is possible, however, that trillar may be a frequentive formed from tritum the supine of tero, (i. e. tritolar), like ventilare from ventum, &c. which is evidently not of Roman origin, but derived from the Teutonic drille or trille, is applied to a particular succession of musical notes, and therefore affords another instance of the transfer of the word in question to the sense of hearing. From trillo, have been borrowed the French trille, and the English trill, for which musical term we are doubtless indebted to the Italian, although we have the word whence it came into that language. Adelung says that drillen is the frequentative of drehen, to turn, for drehelen. Nevertheless, he compares it, among other corresponding forms in Teutonic languages, with the Anglo-Saxon thyrlian, which is evidently derived from thyrl, a hole or opening. This word thyrel, or thyrl, as Adelung himself elsewhere remarks, (in thür), is, however, formed from thyr, by the addition of the suffix el; and thyr is allied to the Anglo-Saxon dur, the old high German tur, the Greek Oúpa, and the Latin turo, which verb is discernible in the compounds obturo, to shut, and returo, to open". The same radical form may likewise be discerned in durh AngloSaxon, and durch German; from the latter of which is derived the adjective dürchel, pierced, which occurs in the Nibelungen Lied. According to this explanation, the sense of turning, which sometimes belongs to drillen, drill, and tirl, would be accounted for by the rotatory movement of a drill in piercing a hole" and it is not impossible that to twirl may be a word belonging to the same class: it seems, however, preferable to refer the various forms of the verb, thirl, to the primary sense of piercing, immediately flowing from the root tur, which occurs under so many forms in the languages of the Helleno-Teutonic family. The Teutonic languages have other words which may be referred to this radical form: thus, thorn Anglo-Saxon and English, dorn German, has the sense of piercing: throta Anglo-Saxon, throat English, (whence throttle English, and thropill or thrapple Scotch,) properly signify the gullet or windpipe, a perforated tube. 39 The Italian has the verb turare, to shut; but whether retained from the ancient uncompounded form, or corrupted from obturare, seems uncertain. 40 To troll means to turn or roll; see Richardson in v. To troll the bowl, was to pass the vessel about in drinking: an old catch begins : Trole, trole the bowl to me, And I will trole the same again to thee. Dodsley's Old Plays, Vol. 11. p. 21. 2nd edit. The French trou likewise appears to be a word of this class: Caseneuve (in Menage, Etym. Fr. in v.) derives it from traugus, a low Latin form, stating that traug was still current in Languedoc. The modern Provençal form is traou; traucar however occurs as a verb in the Troubadour poetry. Nevertheless, as the forms tral and traul occur in old French, (Roquefort in v.) it seems to me most probable that tral is the original form derived from the German drille or dralle, which became first traou, (as in modern Provençal,) and then trou; and that the c or g is a formative letter, and does not belong to the root. The Italian torlo or tuorlo, the yolk of an egg; the Low Latin trullus, a round building, with an arched ceiling or roof, and torus, a round hill, (Ducange in vv.), probably belong to the same root; the notion of roundness being easily derived from that of drilling or turning. The Scotch has the substantive thryll or thirl, the verb to thryll, or to thirl, and the derived substantives thrillage, or thirlage, and thirldom, corresponding to the English thrall, to enthrall, and thraldom. These words having in Scotch originally signified slavery, in process of time came to mean the obligation imposed on the occupants of certain lands to grind their corn at a particular mill". Percy has suggested that the words in question have their origin in the custom of boring the ears of slaves, mentioned in Exodus xxi. 6. (comp. Grimm D. Rechtsalt. 339). It appears to me, however, that these must be referred to a very different source. The Anglo-Saxon threal or thrall, a slave, is evidently derived from threa, pæna, afflictio: whence the English throe, and the Scotch thraw. Threal is stated by Lye to mean not only servus, but also disciplina, correctio, shewing plainly the connexion with threa. It cannot, I fear, be doubted that pain and affliction were far more invariable concomitants, and more remarkable characteristics of the state of bondage in the Saxon times, than any practice of boring the ears, even if such a custom could be proved to have been formerly prevalent in England and Scotland. Grimm, in his Rechtsalterthümer, p. 303, speaking of thrall, which also occurs in the Scandinavian dialects, says only, that its origin is obscure, and he com 41 Jamieson in vv. W. Scott's Monastery, Vol. II. ch. 1. pares Tpáλes, Thracian mercenaries and slaves, but without shewing that the resemblance of form is not a mere accident. The Greek language has an extensive class of words allied to the same root as eúpa, which have the sense of piercing and also drilling: from Topéw are formed, by contraction and derivation, τρέω, τραίνω, (Odyssy, ψ. 198,) τέρετρον, τερηδών, τορός, τορεύω, and τόρνος. From τρύω are formed τρυπάω and τρύπανον, whence the Low Latin trepannus; in Italian, trapano; in Spanish, trepano. It should be observed, that rpów acquired the sense of wearying and vexing, like the English bore, and the German trillen: it bears this sense in the compound adjectives, Tpvoißios, used by Aristophanes, Nub. 420, Kuster., and тpvσavóp, used by Sophocles, Phil. 208, Brunck. "ArpUTOs likewise signified unwearied; and τρύσις, νόσος, πόνος, occurs in Hesychius in v. From this coincidence of significations, it might seem that the Greek reípw, the Latin durus, the Anglo-Saxon teorian (to tire), and threa, have an affinity to the same root. But this affinity, even if it should be thought to exist, does not affect the question of the etymology of threal, a slave, which has evidently no direct connexion with the sense of piercing or perforating. G. C. LEWIS. VIII. NOTICES OF RECENT PUBLICATIONS. THE number of the Westminster Review for last May, (No. 77) contains an article on Grecian Legends and Early History, which is understood to have been written by Mr. Grote. The writer is induced, by the appearance of the little collection of Greek heroic legends, prepared by Niebuhr for his son Marcus, to expound at length the chief characteristics of the mythology, as opposed to the history of Greece, and to state the marks by which the mythical may be distinguished from the historical period. He begins by shewing that the mythus is essentially fictitious; that it differs in its essence not only from accurate and well-ascertained, but also from inaccurate and ill-ascertained history. It can be traced to no determinate and authentic origin; it flies through the mouths of men, and gains strength and credit by diffusion; but if you ask after its source, you must be told, in Homeric language, that "it has been suggested by some god, or the airy-tongued Ossa, the bearer of encouragement and intelligence from omniloquent Zeus." Mr. Grote proceeds to explain the difference between a period when the habit of ascertaining positive matter of fact by collecting and examining evidence has been formed, and a period when, not only the recording of facts by writing is unknown or unpractised, but no desire of obtaining authentic memorials of the past or present exists. But although a community in the latter state has no knowledge of its history, it has feelings, both fervent and universal, with respect to the past. These feelings are connected with its religion, with its belief as to the divine and heroic beings who sway its actual destinies. Such being the state of mind of the early Greeks, nothing was needed for the creation of a body of legends, in a form which was likely to give them permabut the appearance of some men richly endowed with the poetical faculty. To the existence of the wonderful genius of Homer at the time when he arose, and of the epic poets who were able to imitate his style, as well as to the extraordinary beauty, copiousness, and flexibility of the language in which they composed, we mainly owe the formation and preservation of the body of narratives which constitute the Greek mythology. The feelings with which the Homeric poems were regarded by the contemporary Greeks are well described in the following passage: nency, "Transporting ourselves back to this early period, near to the time when the Iliad and Odyssey seem to have been first promulgated, there |