In the Anglo-Saxon _Gloss_, to Ælfric's Latin dialogue,
_higdifatu_ is not, I conceive, an error of the scribe, but a
variation of dialect, and therefore, standing in no need of
correction into _hydigfatu_ ("NOTES and QUERIES," No. 13.).
_Hig, hi_ and _hy_, are perfectly identical, and nothing
is more usual in A.S. than the omission of the final _g_ after
_i_; consequently, _hig=hy, di=dig_, therefore _higdi=hydig_.
Mr. Singer's reading of _cassidilia_ for _culidilia_, I consider
to be well-founded.
His conjecture, that _sprote_=Goth. _sprauto_, has
something very specious about it, and yet I must reject it. That
useful and sagacious author, Dr. Kitchener, tells us, that there is
only one thing to be done in a hurry (or _sprauto_); and even
if he had not informed us what that one thing is, very few indeed
would ever have imagined that it was _fish_-catching. The word
_sprote_ was a puzzle to me, and I had often questioned myself
as to its meaning, but never could get a satisfactory answer; nor
was it until some time after the publication of the 2nd edition of
my _Analecta_ that it occurred to me that it might signify a
wicker or _sallow_ basket (such as is still in use for the
capture of eels), from Lat. _sporta_, whence the German
_sportel_. My conjecture, of _salice_ for the _salu_
of the text, was based on the possibility that the apparatus might
somehow or other be made of the _salix_.
I beg leave to inform "SELEUCUS," that _The Phoenix_, with an
English version, and with the Latin original, is to be found in the
_Codex Exoniensis_, edited by me, in 1842, for the Society of
Antiquaries. The Latin ascribed to Lactantius, is printed in the
Variourum edition of Claudian, and, I believe, in the editions of
Lactantius.
Jan. 30, 1850.