follows. The word was first used in 1599 [but this date should rather, according to the evidence given in 5th S. x. 215, be 1560]. Before that time they were called Tourengueux,* from the town of Tour. In that city was supposed to walk a night spirit called King Hugon, and one of the city gates was named King Hugon's Gate. Some Protestants having been seen passing this gate by night to their religious assemblies [more probably having been commonly seen to do so], they were nicknamed Hugonots. For more on this name and the occasion of it the writer refers us to Pasquier, Recherches, lib. vii. c. 52. The translator signs himself W. W., the author H. C. The latter shows so much more than tolerance the charity of a true Christian-that I would he could be identified with Henry Constable, the poet. But the very vague indications of his nationality, and these, indications which one might naturally expect in a work written in French and for Frenchmen, rather favour the belief that he was of that country. B. NICHOLSON. MAJOR ANDRÉ (5th S. xi. 7, 31.)—In reply to A. P. S. I have the portrait of Major André by Sir Joshua, bought by me at the sale of the Northwick collection. It represents a young man of about five-and-twenty, with a very handsome, energetic face and a red uniform. JAMES RICHARD HAIG. Blairhill by Dollar, Scotland. CELTS AND SAXONS (5th S. xi. 5.)-Possibly the writer in the Daily News was thinking of the following passage in Macaulay's History, chap. xiii.: "It would be difficult to name any eminent man in whom national feeling and clannish feeling were stronger than in Sir Walter Scott. Yet when Sir Walter Scott mentioned Killiecrankie he seemed utterly to forget that he was a Saxon, that he was of the same blood and of the same speech with Ramsay's foot and Annandale's horse. His heart swelled with triumph when he related how his own kindred had fled like hares before a smaller number of warriors of a different breed and of a different WILLIAM GEORGE BLACK. tongue."-Ed. 1864, vol. iii. p. 59. Alfred Terrace, Glasgow. VANDUNK CLARET (5th S. x. 429, 455, 477, 519.)-Many years ago I knew a country gentleman who expended much time and money in the production of "home-made" wines, which, as he unsatisfactory, probably cost more than port or never bottled any that were in the smallest degree sherry. Among the best was clary, which when about a year in bottle effervesced like champagne. It retained its strength and flavour several years, his kitchen garden, and was very careful in probut lost its effervescence. He grew the plants in curing the seed from what he said was the only trustworthy shop. Their height was from eighteen to twenty-four inches, and the flower resembled that of a white nettle, but was of a pale blue, with a strong and pleasant smell. I am unskilled in lachanology, and perhaps have been describing a commonly known plant, but I never saw it elsewhere nor met with the wine. The flowers mixed with mead took off the mawkishness which that wine usually has. THE FIRST TO ENTER A HOUSE ON CHRISTMAS Salmon states the virtues of clary, some of which MORNING (5th S. x. 483.)—MR. THISELTON DYER are fitter to be read than reprinted: "It cures all states in his paper, "Christmas in England," that dimness of sight and other infirmities thereof, and in some parts light-haired people who are the first scatters congealed blood. It is most commonly to enter a house on Christmas morning are sup- steept in wine, and so drunk: the seed is of the posed to bring ill luck. In Edinburgh a strong same virtues, and, being put into the eyes, clears prejudice exists among the old folk against light-them"! (Dispensatory, p. 64, London, 1702). haired people being the first to enter the house on Liddell and Scott has, "oppivov, a kind of sage, New Year's morning, where first footing is begun clary." I think it is not sage, but a salvia, as it immediately after the striking of the last hour of turns black and withers at the first frost. Was the year. This feeling exists in the Lowlands of clary used for wine in the olden time? Scotland also; and two sad stories were recently FITZHOPKINS. told me of the ill luck which is said to have actually fallen. On both occasions the old women so visited strongly at the moment expressed their regrets, and one said, "Eh, man! I wud raither hae lost five shillings than a fair-haired man first footed me." Some of the superstitious prejudices handed down from the old world are founded on reasonable grounds, but that against light-haired people has always been inexplicable to me in a Saxon land. I have long desired to know how and why it arose; can any one enlighten me? JAMES PURVES. * [The gueux of Tours.] Garrick Club. "THE LASS OF RICHMOND HILL" (1st S. ii. 103, 350; v. 453; 2nd S. ii. 6; xi. 207; 3rd S. xi. 343, 362, 386, 445, 489; 5th S. ix. 169, 239, 317, 495; x. 69, 92, 168, 231, 448.)-From long residence in Richmond I am enabled to testify to the accuracy of MR. JOHN BELL's letter ("N. & Q.,” 5th S. x. 448). I was till his death most intimately acquainted with Mr. I'Anson of Prior House, and he frequently related to me the story of his sister's wooing by the brilliant barrister Leo. McNally, and the song addressed to her at her home, still named "The Hill." Unworthy as the BELL INSCRIPTION (5th S. x. 515.)—Is not "Rex J. T. M. "LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL" (5th S. xi. 28.) poetry was, it was luckily married to a pretty and attractive air, which soon gave it popularity, and gentis Anglorum" St. Edmund ? here, at its birthplace, immortality. The daughter of Leo. McNally married a banker at Richmond, and she, herself a fine musician, always proudly-JAYDEE may be assured that the two lines acknowledged her mother as the Lass of Richmond which he quotes from the above-named poem do Hill. The great singer Incledon, in a musical not require correction. Scott has simply taken tour he made early in this century, sang it here to a line of triplets to relieve the ear from too many the gratification of his audience, who never doubted iambics. It is quite usual in poetry to do so. their right to it. My own father, who had sung Does JAYDEE remember the nursery rhyme beit from his twentieth year even till his ninetieth ginning,birthday, always regarded it as a local production. "Dickery, dickery, dock, The I'Anson family still hold the Harmby property, and descendants of the Hutchinsons of The Hill still remain here, and will not relinquish their heirloom. I am sorry so many have been misled by traditions. I speak with the authority of eighty years on facts, and have no hesitation in we have a line of iambics followed by triplets, as signing my allegiance to the honour of my Rich- in Sir Walter's poem,— mond, Yorkshire, as the origin of the much disputed Lass of Richmond Hill. Richmond, Yorkshire. ANNE BOWMAN. "THE PROTESTANT FLAIL" (5th S. x. 451, 518.) -I have not yet had an opportunity of inspecting the plate referred to by D. P., but I can give your correspondent a description of a similar implement which I saw and handled not ten years ago, and which was sworn to in open court as being then actually in use. If I can make myself clear the illustration will confirm D. P.'s proposition that we must divest our minds of all notion of "a short loaded club," or what I may call the modern lifepreserver analogy. Let the reader imagine an ordinary round desk ruler, say eighteen inches long, only of hard, white boxwood. Each extremity is ring turned, to give a firm grip, so that either end can form the handle. Conceive this sawn across the middle and thus divided into two equal parts. These parts are then connected with two thongs of narrow leather, about three inches in length, one on each side of each piece, by two rivets, screws, or studs, to each end of the leather, making eight fastenings in all, or four on each side. If the reader can follow a word picture, necessarily difficult to convey without the aid of engraving, he must now figure to himself that the thongs extend for about an inch down each piece of wood from the clean central division, which will give a "play" of an inch to the loose leather. You get thus a weapon of nine inches long, capable of being folded and carried concealed in a moderate sized pocket, and, except in size, exactly similar to the agricultural implement known as a flail. The one I saw was produced on a trial for night poaching as a specimen of the armament with which a "strictly preserving" country squire had provided his gamekeepers. S. P. Temple. There we have the triplets before and the iambics "The clock struck one, and down she come, "And each | St. Clair was buried there | With candle, with | book, and with knell." In setting these lines to music the iambics would all be turned into trochees by placing the first syllable"And" before the bar, because it is unaccented. WM. CHAPPELL. (5th S. x. 269.)—This cross has no connexion with RALEIGH'S CROSS, BRENDON HILL, SOMERSET Sir Walter Raleigh. It is supposed to have been erected to mark the manorial boundary of the ancient family of Raleigh of Nettlecombe, and undoubtedly was in existence centuries before Elizabeth's time. Its date is probably temp. Ed. I. (cf. Pooley's Crosses of Somersetshire). The manor of Nettlecombe was, in the time of Hen. II., granted to Hugh de Raleigh, of Raleigh in the in that family until about the middle of the county of Devon, and to his heirs, and continued birth of Sir Walter Raleigh), when it passed fifteenth century (or nearly a century before the through heiresses to the Whalesborough and Trevelyan families, in which latter family it still remains. D. K. T. SOCIETY OF CHIFFONNIERS (5th S. x. 446.)— MR. R. P. HAMPTON ROBERTS inquires whether any more Transactions of this society have been published since "The Spoon," as others on culinary utensils were promised. I have not met with any subsequent lucubrations by Habbakuk O. Westman. This nom de plume was assumed by Thos. Ewbank, Esq., formerly Commissioner of Patents in the United States. He was author of a work on hydraulics-I presume of a more serious character-but I have not seen it. Ewbank's Hydraulics are referred to in "The Spoon," pp. 118 and 271. EXPERTO CREDE. BRASS TRAYS (5th S. x. 495.)-There is a pair of old-looking brass trays, such as A. J. K. describes, in the South Kensington Museum, and I BEDFORDSHIRE PROVERBS (5th S. ix. 345.) There is a winding stream at Hail Weston, near St. Neots, which is made useful in skin diseases, and in the comparison is "as crooked as Weston brook." The friend who tells me this has not been able to find any one in the neighbourhood of St. Neots who knows anything about the crookedness of Crawley. ST. SWITHIN. CLEVELAND FOLK-LORE (5th S. x. 287.)-In Anglesey they say that if you do not wear some new article of dress on Easter Day the birds will "drop" on you, which in that county makes the birds harpies at Easter, instead of angels as in Cleveland. R. P. HAMPTON ROBERTS. LENGTH OF A GENERATION (5th S. ix. 488, 518; x. 95, 130, 157, 197, 315, 524.)-With respect to the link with the past which MR. A. S. ELLIS mentions in the case of Mr. Horrocks, it is nothing less than astounding that a man living in Queen Victoria's reign should have been able to speak of his father as having been born during the Commonwealth, when Oliver Cromwell was actually alive in the flesh! MR. ELLIS, I observe, does not vouch for the truth of this statement; he merely says the tale as 'twas said to him." Is it a wellauthenticated fact? What says our good friend MR. THOMS? says I am sorry to intrude anything more of a personal nature on your readers with regard to this subject, but MR. ELLIS has fallen into a slight error, which I should like to correct. He that Lord Mendip could have said a good deal more than either MR. BOUCHIER or MR. HOWLETT will ever be able to say, even if they live to be centenarians, inasmuch as Lord Mendip died nearly 200 years after the birth of his grandfather. So far as I am concerned, if I were to live to be a centenarian (which I am sure I have little enough expectation of doing), it would be just 200 years from my grandfather's birth in April, 1738, to my hundredth birthday in February, 1939. and eldest surviving son of the latter, the Ven. Archdeacon Clive, is the gentleman referred to above. He was born in March, 1795, and is now, therefore, eighty-three. Though his birth was twenty years later than the death of his uncle, Lord Clive, in 1774, the fact still remains that only two generations are comprised within the period referred to. Lord Clive's lineal descendant, the Earl of Powis, his great-grandson, is in his sixtieth year, but here four generations are included in the same W. HUGHES. period. My ancestor, John Standerwick, died in 1568, and his descendant in the eighth degree, my father, died in 1876, the average for each generation being thirty-eight and a half years. But in the individual generations the most marked departures from the average occur. JOHN W. STANDERWICK. Sir J. William Hort, Bart., of Hortland House, in the county of Kildare, J.P. and D.L., died suddenly in London on the 24th of August, 1876. He was born July 6, 1791. It is noteworthy that the baronetcy, to which the late Sir William succeeded in 1807, was granted to his own father 109 years ago, and that his grandfather, Dr. Hort, Archbishop of Tuam, was born in the reign of Charles II. JOHN LANE. I have a cousin now living whose father was born in 1737. My cousin's grandfather might therefore easily have been born before the Revolution. E. H. A. WILLOUGHBY OF PARHAM (5th S. x. 387, 503.) If it is true, as stated by MR. C. F. S. WARREN, that "an erroneous writ creates a new barony," a curious question arises respecting the head of the ducal house of Northumberland. His predecessor, Hugh, third duke of the present creation, was called to the House of Peers, vitá patris, about the year 1814, as Baron Percy of 1299, under the idea, since abandoned as erroneous, that his father owned that barony in fee in right of his mother, tion arises whether (since the king can do no the first duchess. Such being the case, the queswrong) the act of the Crown in calling him to the Upper House created a new barony, with the date of 1814, or whether it really created in his favour a barony in fee, with the precedence of 1299. If the former supposition is true, the title died with him, as he had no son; but if the other supposition is correct, then the present duke would seem to have acted prematurely in disclaiming that ancient title, for, in the event of his male descendants failRobert, Lord Clive, was born Feb. 24, 1726, ing, it would pass to females, instead of becoming and a bronze statue of him by Marochetti adorns extinct. It should be remembered that it is not the Market Square of Shrewsbury. His brother impossible for the Crown to grant a peerage with William was born Aug. 29, 1745. The second [the fictitious precedence of an earlier date than the JONATHAN BOUCHIER. Though not altogether relevant to the question at issue, I cannot refrain from sending you a notice of a remarkable fact which has more than once been recently observed by me, viz., a gentleman passing the statue of his own uncle, who was born in 1726, 152 years ago. actual one; at all events, such a thing was occasionally done in Scotland. E. WALFORD, M.A. KENNET WHARF (5th S. x. 228, 393.)—This is to correct a slight error into which MR. SOLLY has evidently fallen in regard to Downes's Wharf, which subsequently was "called the Leith and Glasgow Wharf," and which he states as the wharf from which the Newbury barges sailed, and as being in Thames Street. This is wrong. Downes's or Downes' Wharf was in Lower East Smithfield, and was the focus of the north of England and Scotch trade solely, I may say, for many years; while the Kennet-subsequently the Kent and Avon-trade was all above bridge, more recently at Steel Yard Wharf, where now crosses the South-Eastern Railway bridge in Upper Thames Street. W. PHILLIPS. IS SUICIDE PECULIAR TO MAN? (5th S. x. 166, 313.)-The following extract appeared first in the Shrewsbury Chronicle of Friday, Oct. 25, 1878. Thinking it would interest the readers of our parochial magazine, I caused inquiries to be made, and found the particulars to be strictly accurate. The owner of the dog does not, however, wish his name to appear: "SINGULAR BEHAVIOUR OF A DOG.-The following story is told in connexion with a valuable St. Bernard dog belonging to a gentleman who resides near to the town. It appears that a day or two ago the animal received a castigation for having chased a pig, and the dog took it so much to heart that it is said to have run and jumped into a deep pool of water, and, as the animal made no apparent effort to save itself, was drowned. The dog was valued at from 20l. to 307." BOILEAU. Of all the lower animals, the "fittest" to commit this act is the ape, and, until an instance be adduced thereof, supposed cases in any other animal are quite imaginary. R. "SUISSES" (5th S. x. 188, 315.)-This French word for a porter in some places became established in England. Over the lodge of the door-keeper of Ripley Castle, near Harrogate, there is written in old letters the direction, "Parler au Suisse." J. E. B. A water-carrier is still in Paris called an Auvergnat; a foreign banker, whatever his nationality, was formerly in London called a Lombard; and in our Midlands a peddler is often called a Scotchman. TREGEAGLE. BOSTON SOUNDED "BAWSTON" (5th S. x. 338, 357, 377, 526; xi. 34.)-I do not wish to prolong this discussion, but must beg leave to say, in reply to W. E. H., that not possessing a Lancashire notebook, I have not made the mistake which he suggests; that my examples of Lincolnshire dialect were written down within a few minutes of their During that walk I learned that the heavy leather gaiters worn by drain-diggers were called yants and splats. Yants comes near to the yanks of your contributor SAlf (p. 38). WALTER WHITE. THE LATE W. G. CLARK (5th S. x. 400, 407, 438; xi. 38.)-Perhaps it may be worth while noting that he was one of the Tres Viri Floribus Legendis (T. V. F. L.), the three Salopians who edited the Sabrina Corolla, the first edition of which was issued in 1850, a book as creditable to the scholarship of Shrewsbury as it is to that of nedy, D.D., formerly Head Master of Shrewsbury England. His two colleagues were B. H. KenSchool, and James Riddell, M.A., late Fellow and Tutor of Balliol College, Oxford. Mr. Clark was close of his life. For incidentally interesting personally known to me, but only towards the notices of him during his undergraduate career at Cambridge let me refer your correspondents to Five Years at an English University, by Charles Astor Bristed. JOHN PICKFORD, M.A. Newbourne Rectory, Woodbridge. EMBEZZLE (5th S. x. 461, 524; xi. 30.)-Four additional instances will be found in Archbishop Trench's Select Glossary, s.v. (4th ed., 1873, p. 84). He says, "There is a verb 'to imbecile,' used by Jeremy Taylor and others, which is sometimes confused in meaning with this." W. C. B. Rochdale. 66 WILL-O'-THE-WISP (5th S. x. 405, 499.)-Here is another name for the ignis fatuus, quite in analogy with those I have already sent you: hobgoblins, Will-with-wispe, or Dicke-a-Tuesday" Ghosts, (Sampson's Vow-Breaker, 1636, quoted in Nares). Will-with-wispe is to me a new varietal form of the name. The quotation is also eighteen years earlier than Gayton's Notes. Halliwell gives Dick-aDelver as East Anglian for the periwinkle. Dicken certainly means the devil, but there seems hardly any necessity to explain the Dick of Dick-a-Tuesday thus. As to the Tuesday element, I suspect some abbreviation or corruption. Halliwell also gives Jack of the Wad, which may be compared with the similar Somersetshire names already noted. ZERO. To "POOL" (5th S. x. 368, 503.)-I think pool is a misprint for tool. To tool a coach is the slang term for driving a coach, and hence to tool railway traffic may mean to carry it on, to manage, to conduct it. ST. SWITHIN. BALCONY OR BALCONY (3rd S. ix. 303, 380, 519; 5th S. x. 299; xi. 39.)—As to the pronunciation of this word, I may mention that those who throw the accent on the second syllable have the authority of Cowper, as the following stanza from The Diverting History of John Gilpin will testify : "At Edmonton his loving wife From the balcony spied Her loving husband, wondering much As to its origin I quote the following passage from MR. BERNHARD-SMITH, by the way, is wrong in claiming Byron as an authority for the short o in balcony. He has clearly misread and misquoted the passage from Marino Faliero. It is from the first scene of the last act (vol. xii. p. 180 of the edition of 1833), and runs thus : "Guards! lead them forth, and upon the balcony Of the red columns," &c., the line being one of eleven syllables, like the two before and the one after it, and like so many of the lines in Shakspere. If Byron had intended the o to be short he would have written "and on the balcony," as MR. BERNHARD-SMITH quotes him; but he wrote upon the balcony," because in this way he made the o long. C. T. B. Byron makes the o long twice in Beppo: in the first instance (stanza 11) making it rhyme to Giorgione, in the second (stanza 15) to that name and Goldoni. C. T. B. [Old-fashioned people speak of the doom of St. Paul's.] the first time, who found that his partridge pudding ALLEY FAMILY (5th S. x., 388, 455.)—A friend writes: 66 : No Alleigh (Alley) ever held a bishopric in Ireland. My ancestor was born at Wickham, in Bucks; educated at Eton, and graduated at Cambridge; became Divinity Lecturer at St. Paul's, London, and Bishop of Exeter, 1561; a high favourite with the Queen, who gave him yearly a silver cup in token of respect. He lies near the high altar in Exeter Cathedral, with inscription, acerrimus propugnator veritatis,' &c. was thirty-fifth bishop, and reigned nine years." R. N. Beechingstoke, Wilts. He WATCH-CASE VERSES (5th S. x. 66, 135; xi. 19.)—The lines beginning "Absent or dead," &c., are by Pope, and occur in his Epistle to the Earl of Oxford. G. F. S. E. [This answers CHILI'S query.] LOCAL WEIGHTs and Measures (5th S. x. 283, 345, 394.)-The following quotations from Best's Rural Economy in Yorkshire in 1641 (Surtees Society) illustrate the above subject: "Wee have allwayes of a stricken bushell of corne, an upheaped bushell of meale, i.e., sixe peckes, or very neare."-P. 103. "If the miller bee honest you shall have an upheaped bushell of tempsed meale of a stricken bushell of corne; and of meale that is undressed, an upheaped bushell and an upheaped pecke."-P. 104. A "FUSSOCK" (5th S. x. 349, 521)-pronounced fuzzock here, not fussock-is a stupid person, one of confused, tangled brain, for the inside of the head, analogous to the epithet "fuzzy" for the outside a "head of fuzzy hair." Favourite word with boys of Richmond Grammar School twenty-land's steeardes......did wryett and send Richard Cootes five years ago. Richmond, Yorkshire. R. "Md that the 10th of Jully, 1608, the Earle of Cumber and William Parke, yeoman, to gett one pecke sealled with our standard, but this pecke to conteyne stryken with a strykell as mutche as our standerd pecke holdeth be with our standerd but upeheaped (Extract from the upeheaped, because their measuers at Skipton is ussed to Corporation Books of Richmond)."-P. 104, note. Castelnau, Barnes. G. LAURENCE GOMME. "RAINING CATS AND DOGS" (5th S. viii. 183; x. 299.)—In seeking the origin of many popular sayings it should be borne in mind how prone our English sailors, and perhaps others beside them, are to turn the sayings of the French sailors into some English which sounds like the French. Is THE METROPOLITAN CATHEDRAL" (5th S. x. there not a French word catadoup or catadoupe, 226, 375, 397, 419, 525.)-May I point out that meaning a waterfall? and, if so, will not this the same person is archbishop "respectu episcoaccount satisfactorily for the saying that it rains porum quorum princeps est," and metropolitan cats and dogs? Moreover, κaтa Sogav has nothing" respectu civitatum in quibus constituuntur episto do with a heavy rainfall; it will apply as readily to the fisherman who enclosed a great multitude of fishes, or to the sportsman shooting in Sussex for copatus" (Lyndw., lib. v. tit. 15, gl. f.). Commonly and correctly we speak of London as the "capital," not the metropolis, of England. St. Paul's, London, |