W.C. Trevelyan.
"Heigh ho! says Rowley" (Vol. i., p. 458.).—The burden of "Heigh ho! says Rowley" is certainly older than R.S.S. conjectures; I will not say how much, but it occurs in a jeu d'esprit of 1809, on the installation of Lord Grenville, as Chancellor, at Oxford, as will be shown by a stanza cited from memory:—
"Mr. Chinnery then, an M.A. of great parts,
Sang the praises of Chancellor Grenville.
Oh! he pleased all the ladies and tickled their hearts;
But, then, we all know he's a Master of Arts,
With his rowly powly,
Gammon and spinach,
Heigh ho! says Rowley."
Chethamensis.
Wimpole Street, May 11. 1850.
Arabic Numerals.—As your correspondent E.V. (Vol. i., p. 230.) is desirous of obtaining any instance of Arabic numerals of early occurrence, I would refer him, for one at least, to Notices of the Castle and Priory of Castleacre, by the Rev. J.H. Bloom: London; Richardson, 23. Cornhill, 1843. In this work it appears that by the acumen of Dr. Murray, Bishop of Rochester, the date 1084 was found impressed in the plaster of the wall of the priory in the following, form:—
The writer then goes on to show, that this was the regular order of the letters to one crossing himself after the Romish fashion.
E.S.T.
Pusan (Vol. i., p. 440.)—May not the meaning be a collar in the form of a serpent? In the old Roman de Blanchardin is this line:—
"Cy guer pison tuit Apolin."
Can Iklynton again be the place where such an ornament was made? Ickleton, in Cambridgeshire, appears to have been of some note in former days, as, according to Lewis's Topog. Hist., a nunnery was founded there by Henry II., and a market together with a fair granted by Henry III. As it is only five miles from Linton, it may have formerly borne the name of Ick-linton.
C.I.R.
"I'd preach as though" (Vol. i., p. 415.).—The lines quoted by Henry Martyn are said by Dr. Jenkyn (Introduction to a little vol. of selections from Baxter—Nelson's Puritan Divines) to be Baxter's "own immortal lines." Dr. J. quotes them thus:—
"I preached as never sure to preach again,
And as a dying man to dying men."
Ed. S. Jackson.
May 18.
"Fools rush in" (Vol. i., p. 348.).—The line in Pope,
"For fools rush in where angels fear to tread,"
it has been long ago pointed out, is founded upon that of Shakspeare,
"For wrens make wing where eagles dare not perch."
I know not why that line of Pope is in your correspondent's list. It is not a proverb.
C.B.
Allusion in Friar Brackley's Sermon (Vol. i., p. 351.)—It seems vain to inquire who the persons were of whom stories were told in medieval books, as if they were really historical. See the Gesta Romanorum, for instance: or consider who the Greek king Aulix was, having dealings with the king of Syria, in the 7th Story of the Novelle Antiche. The passage in the sermon about a Greek king, seems plainly to be still part of the extract from the Liber Decalogorum, being in Latin. This book was perhaps the Dialogi decem, put into print at Cologne in 1472: Brunet.
C.B.
Earwig (Vol. i., p. 383.).—This insect is very destructive to the petals of some kinds of delicate flowers. May it not have acquired the title of "couchbell" from its habit of couching or concealing itself for rest at night and security from small birds, of which it is a favourite food, in the pendent blossoms of bell-shaped flowers? This habit is often fatal to it in the gardens of cottagers, who entrap it by means of a lobster's claw suspended on an upright stick.
S.S.S.
Earwig (Vol. i., p. 383.).—In the north of England the earwig is called twitchbell. I know not whether your correspondent is in error as to its being called in Scotland the "coach-bell." I cannot afford any explanation to either of these names.
G. Bouchier Richardson.
Sir R. Haigh's Letter-book (Vol. i, p. 463.).—This is incorrect; no such person is known. The baronet intended is Sir Roger Bradshaigh, of Haigh; a very well-known person, whose funeral sermon was preached by Wroe, the warden of Manchester Collegiate Church, locally remembered as "silver-mouthed Wroe."
This name is correctly given in Puttick and Simpson's Catalogue of a Miscellaneous Sale on April 15, and it is to be hoped that Sir Roger's collection of letters, ranging from 1662 to 1676, may have fallen into the hands of the noble earl who represents him, the present proprietor of Haigh.
Chethamensis.
Marescautia (Vol. i., p. 94.).—Your correspondent requests some information as to the meaning of the word "marescautia." Mareschaucie, in old French, means a stable. Pasquier (Recherches de la France, l. viii. ch. 2.) says,—
"Pausanias disoit que Mark apud Celtas signifioit un cheual … je vous diray qu'en ancien langage allemant Mark se prenoit pour un cheual."
In ch. 54. he refers to another etymolygy of "maréchal," from "maire," or "maistre," and "cheval," "comme si on les eust voulu dire maistre de la cheualerie." "Maréchal" still signifies "a farrier." Maréchaussée was the term applied down to the Revolution to the jurisdiction of Nosseigneurs les Maréchaux de France, whose orders were enforced by a company of horse that patrolled the highways, la chaussée, generally raised above the level of the surrounding country. Froissart applies the term to the Marshalsea prison in London. In D.S.'s first entry there may, perhaps, be some allusion to another meaning of the word, namely, that of "march, limit, boundary."
What the nature of the tenure per serjentiam marescautiæ may be I am not prepared to say. May it not have had some reference to the support of the royal stud?
J.B.D.
Memoirs of an American Lady (Vol. i., p. 335.).—If this work cannot now be got it is a great pity,—it ought to go down to posterity; a more valuable or interesting account of a particular state of society now quite extinct, can hardly be found. Instead of saying that "it is the work of Mrs. Grant, the author of this and that," I should say of her other books that they were written by the author of the Memoirs of an American Lady. The character of the individual lady, her way of keeping house on a large scale, the state of the domestic slaves, threatened, as the only known punishment and most terrible to them, with being sold to Jamaica; the customs of the young men at Albany, their adventurous outset in life, their practice of robbing one another in joke (like a curious story at Venice, in the story-book called Il Peccarone, and having some connection with the stories of the Spartan and Circassian youth), with much of natural scenery, are told without pretension of style; but unluckily there is too much interspersed relating to the author herself, then quite young.
C.B.
Poem by Sir E. Dyer (Vol. i., p. 355.).—"My mind to me," &c. Neither the births of Breton nor Sir Edward Dyer seem to be known; nor, consequently, how much older the one was than the other. Mr. S., I conclude, could not mean much older than Breton's tract, mentioned in Vol. i., p. 302. The poem is not in England's Helicon. The ballad, as in Percy, has four stanzas more than the present copy, and one stanza less. Some of the readings in Percy are better, that is, more probable than the new ones.
"I see how plenty surfeits oft."—P.
suffers.—Var.
"I grudge not at another's gain".—P.
pain.—Var.
"No worldly wave my mind can toss."—P.
wants.—Var.
These seem to me to be stupid mistranscriptions.
"I brook that is another's pain."—P.
"My state at one doth still remain."—Var.
Probably altered on account of the slight obscurity; and possibly a different edition by the author himself.
"They beg, I give,
They lack, I lend."—P.
leave.—Var.
In this verse,
"I fear no foe, I scorn no friend."—P.
fawn.—Var.
I think the new copy better.
"To none of these I yield as thrall,
For why my mind despiseth all."—P.
doth serve for.—Var.
The var. much better.
In this—
"I never seek by bribes to please,
Nor by dessert to give offence."—P.
deceit.—Var.
I cannot understand either.
So very beautiful and popular a song it would be well worth getting in the true version.
C.B.
Monumental Brasses.—In reply to S.S.S. (Vol. i., p. 405.), I beg to inform him that the "small dog with a collar and bells" is a device of very common occurrence on brasses of the fifteenth and latter part of the fourteenth centuries. The Rev. C. Boutell's Monumental Brasses of England contains engravings of no less than twenty-three on which it is to be found; as well as two examples without the usual appendages of collar, &c. In addition to these, the same work contains etchings of the following brasses:—Gunby, Lincoln., two dogs with plain collars at the bottom of the lady's mantle, 1405. Dartmouth, Devon., 1403. Each of the ladies here depicted has two dogs with collars and bells at her feet.
The same peculiarities are exemplified on brasses at Harpham, York., 1420; and Spilsby, Lincoln., 1391. I will not further multiply instances, as my own collection of rubbings would enable me to do. I should, however, observe, that the hypothesis of S.S.S. (as to "these figures" being "the private mark of the artist") is untenable: since the twenty-three examples above alluded to are scattered over sixteen different counties, as distant from each other as Yorkshire and Sussex. Two examples are well known, in which the dog so represented was a favourite animal:—Deerhurst, Gloc., 1400, with the name, "Terri," inscribed; and Ingham, Norfolk, 1438, with the name "Jakke." This latter brass is now lost, but an impression is preserved in the British Museum. The customary explanation seems to me sufficient: that the dog was intended to symbolise the fidelity and attachment of the lady to her lord and master, as the lion at his feet represented his courage and noble qualities.
W. Sparrow Simpson.
Queen's College, Cambridge, April 22. 1850.
Fenkle Street.—A street so called in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, lying in a part of the town formerly much occupied by garden ground, and in the immediate vicinity of the house of the Dominican Friars there. Also, a way or passage inside the town wall, and leading between that fortification and the house of the Carmelites or White Friars, was anciently called by the same name. The name of Fenkle or Finkle Street occurs in several old towns in the North, as Alnwick, Richmond, York, Kendal, &c. Fenol and finugl, as also finul, are Saxon words for fennel; which, it is very probable, has in some way or other given rise to this name. May not the monastic institutions have used fennel extensively in their culinary preparations, and thus planted it in so great quantities as to have induced the naming of localities therefrom? I remember a portion of the ramparts of the town used to be called Wormwood Hill, from a like circumstance. In Hawkesworth's Voyages, ii. 8., I find it stated that the town of Funchala, on the island of Madeira, derives its name from Funcko, the Portuguese name for fennel, which grows in great plenty upon the neighbouring rocks. The priory of Finchale (from Finkel), upon the Wear, probably has a similar origin; sed qu.
G. Bouchier Richardson.
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, May 12. 1850.
Christian Captives (Vol. i., p. 441.)—In reply to your correspondent R.W.B., I find in the papers published by the Norfolk and Norwich Archæological Society, vol. i. p. 98., the following entries extracted from the Parish Registers of Great Dunham, Norfolk:—
Which sum was sent to Mr. Nicholas Browne, Registrar under Dr. Connant, Archdeacon of Norwich, Octr. 2d. 1680."
Probably similar entries will be found in other registers of the same date, as the collections appear to have been made by special mandate, and paid into the hands of the proper authorities.
E.S.T.
Passage in Gibbon (Vol. i., p. 348.).—The passage in Gibbon I should have thought was well known to be taken from what Clarendon says of Hampden, and which Lord Nugent says in his preface to Hampden's Life had before been said of Cinna. Gibbon must either have meant to put inverted commas, or at least to have intended to take nobody in.
C.B.
Borrowed Thoughts (Vol. i., p. 482.)—La fameuse La Galisse is an error. The French pleasantly records the exploits of the celebrated Monsieur de la Galisse. Many of Goldsmith's lighter poems are borrowed from the French.
C.
Sapcote Motto (Vol. i., pp. 366. and 476.).—Taking for granted that solutions of the "Sapcote Motto" are scarce, I send you what seems to me something nearer the truth than the arbitrary and unsatisfactory translation of T.C. (Vol. i, p. 476.).
The motto stands thus:—
"sco toot × vinic [or umic]
× poncs."
Adopting T.C.'s suggestion that the initial and final s are mere flourishes (though that makes little difference), and also his supposition that c may have been used for s, and as I fancy, not unreasonably conjecturing that the × is intended for dis, which is something like the pronunciation of the numeral X, we may then take the entire motto, without garbling it, and have sounds representing que toute disunis dispenses; which, grammatically and orthographically corrected, would read literally "all disunions cost," or "destroy," the equivalent of our "Union is strength." The motto, with the arms, three dove-cotes, is admirably suggestive of family union.
W.C.
Lines attributed to Lord Palmerston (Vol. i., p. 382.).—These lines have also been attributed to Mason.
S.S.S.
Shipster (Vol. i., p. 339.).—That "ster" is a feminine termination is the notion of Tyrwhitt in a note upon Hoppesteris in a passage of Chaucer (Knight's Tale, l. 2019.); but to ignorant persons it seems not very probable. "Maltster," surely, is not feminine, still less "whipster;" "dempster," Scotch, is a judge. Sempstress has another termination on purpose to make it feminine.