Replies to Minor Queries.
Tippet (Vol. ix., p. 370.).—P. C. S. S. cannot help thinking that tippet is nothing more than a corruption, per metathesia, of epitogium. Such, at least, seems to have been the opinion of old Minsheu, who, in his Guide to the Tongues, 1627, describes it thus:
"A habit which universitie men and clergiemen weare over their gownes. L. Epitogium, ab ἐπὶ and toga."
P. C. S. S.
Heraldic Anomaly (Vol. ix., p. 298.).—As your correspondent John o' the Ford wishes to be furnished with examples of arms now extant, augmented with a cross in chief, I beg to inform him that on the north side of St. John's Gate, Clerkenwell, immediately above the arch, are three shields: the centre one bearing a plain cross (the arms of the order); on the right, as you face the gateway, the shield bears a chevron ingrailed between three roundles, impaling a cross flory, over all on a chief a cross; that on the left is merely a single shield, bearing a chevron ingrailed between three roundles apparently (being somewhat damaged), in chief a plain cross. If the colours were marked, they are indistinguishable,—shield and charges are alike sable now. On the south side are two shields: that on the right has been so much damaged that all I can make out of it is that two coats have been impaled thereon, but I cannot discover whether it had the cross in chief or not; that on the left bears a chevron between three roundles, in chief a plain cross. This shield also is damaged; but, nevertheless, enough remains to enable one to make out the charges with tolerable certainty.
Tee Bee.
George Wood of Chester (Vol. viii., p 34.).—I think it very probable that this gentleman, who was Justice of Chester in the last year of the reign of Mary and the first of Elizabeth, will turn out to be George Wood, Esq., of Balterley, in the county of Stafford, who married Margaret, relict of Ralph Birkenhead, of Croughton, in Cheshire, and sixth daughter of Sir Thomas Grosvenor, of Eaton, Knight, ancestor of the present noble house of Westminster. If Cestriensis can obtain access to Shaw's History of Staffordshire, the hint I have thrown out may speed him in his investigations.
T. Hughes.
Chester.
Moon Superstitions (Vol. viii., pp. 79. 145. 321.)—The result of my own observations, as far as they go, is, that remarkable changes of weather sometimes accompany or follow so closely the changes of the moon, that it is difficult for the least superstitious persons to refrain from imagining some connexion between them—and one or two well-marked instances would make many converts for life to the opinion;—but that in comparatively few cases are the changes of weather so marked and decided as to give them the air of cause and effect.
J. S. Warden.
"Myself" (Vol. ix., p. 270.).—The inscription from a gravestone, inserted by G. A. C., brought to my mind a poem by Bernard Barton, which I had met with in a magazine (The Youth's Instructor for December, 1826), into which it had been copied from the Amulet. The piece is entitled "A Colloquy with Myself." The first two stanzas, which I had always considered original, are subjoined for the sake of comparison:
"As I walk'd by myself, I talk'd to myself,
And myself replied to me;
And the questions myself then put to myself,
With their answers I give to thee.
Put them home to thyself, and if unto thyself,
Their responses the same should be:
O look well to thyself, and beware of thyself,
Or so much the worse for thee."
T. Q. C.
Polperro, Cornwall.
I cannot inform G. A. C. by whom or in what year the lines were written, from which the epitaph he mentions was copied; but he will find them amongst
the Epigrams, &c., &c., in Elegant Extracts, in the edition bearing date 1805, under the title of a Rhapsody.
West Sussex.
Roman Roads in England (Vol. ix., p. 325.).—I think that in addition to the reference to Richard of Cirencester, Prestoniensis should be apprised of the late General Roy's Military Antiquities of Great Britain (published by the Society of Antiquaries), a most learned and valuable account of and commentary on Richard de Cirencester, and on all the other works on the subject; Stukeley, Horsley, &c. I have my own doubts as to the genuineness of Richard's work; that is, though I admit that the facts are true, and compiled with accuracy and learning, I cannot quite persuade myself that the work is that of the Monk of Westminster in the fourteenth century, never heard of till the discovery of an unique MS. in the Royal Library at Copenhagen about 1757. I suspect it to have been a much more modern compilation.
C.
Anecdote of George IV. (Vol. ix., pp. 244. 338.)—If Julia R. Bockett has accurately copied (as we must presume) the note that she has sent you, I am sorry to inform her that it is a forgery: the Prince never, from his earliest youth, signed "George" tout court; he always added P. If the story be at all true, your second correspondent, W. H., is assuredly right, that the "old woman" could not mean the Queen, who was but eighteen when the Prince was born, and could not, therefore, at any time within which this note could have been written, be called, even by the giddiest boy, "an old woman." When the Prince was twelve years old, she was but thirty.
C.
General Fraser (Vol. ix., p. 161.).—The communication of J. C. B. contains the following sentence:
"During his interment, the incessant cannonade of the enemy covered with dust the chaplain and the officers who assisted in performing the last duties to his remains, they being within view of the greatest part of both armies."
As some might suppose from this that the American army was guilty of the infamous action of knowingly firing upon a funeral, the following extract from Lossing's Pictorial Field Book of the Revolution, lately published, is submitted to the readers of "N. & Q." It tells the whole truth upon the subject. It is from vol. i. p. 66.:
"It was just sunset in that calm October evening, that the corpse of General Fraser was carried up the hill to the place of burial within the 'great redoubt.' It was attended only by the members of his military family, and Mr. Brudenel, the chaplain; yet the eyes of hundreds of both armies followed the solemn procession, while the Americans, ignorant of its true character, kept up a constant cannonade upon the redoubt. The chaplain, unmoved by the danger to which he was exposed, as the cannon-balls that struck the hill threw the loose soil over him, pronounced the impressive funeral service of the Church of England with an unfaltering voice.[[2]] The growing darkness added solemnity to the scene. Suddenly the irregular firing ceased, and the solemn voice of a single cannon, at measured intervals, boomed along the valley and awakened the responses of the hills. It was a minute gun, fired by the Americans in honour of the gallant dead. The moment information was given that the gathering at the redoubt was a funeral company fulfilling, amid imminent perils, the last breathed wishes of the noble Fraser, orders were issued to withhold the cannonade with balls, and to render military homage to the fallen brave."
I may add, for the information of English readers, that Lossing's Pictorial Field Book of the Revolution is a work of great general accuracy, written by a gentleman who travelled thousands of miles to collect the materials. The drawings for the work were drawn, and the numerous woodcuts engraved, by him. They are the finest woodcuts ever produced in this country.
Uneda.
Philadelphia.
Footnote 2:[(return)]
Burgoyne's State of the Expedition, p. 169. Lieutenant Kingston's Evidence, p. 107.
The Fusion (Vol. ix., p. 323.).—The Orleans branch, though it derives its eventually hereditary claim to the throne of France from Louis XIII., as stated by E. H. A., have later connexions in blood with Louis XIV. The Regent Duke married Mdlle de Blois, the legitimated daughter of Louis XIV. Louis-Philippe's mother was great-granddaughter of Louis XIV. by another line.
C.
"Corporations have no souls" (Vol. ix., p. 284.).—This saying is to be found in Coke's Reports, vol. x. p. 32.:
"A corporation aggregate of many is invisible, immortal, and rests only in intendment and consideration of the law. They cannot commit treason, nor be outlawed, nor excommunicate, for they have no souls, neither can they appear in person, but by attorney."
Erica.
Apparition of the White Lady (Vol. viii., p. 317.).—Some account of the origin of this apparition story is given at considerable length by Mrs. Crowe in the Night Side of Nature, chapter on Haunted Houses, pp. 315. 318.
John James.
Avington Rectory, Hungerford.
Female Parish Clerk (Vol. viii., p. 338.).—The sexton of my parish, John Poffley, a man worthy of a place in Wordsworth's Excursion, was telling me but a few days ago, that his mother was the parish clerk for twenty-six years, and that he well remembers his astonishment as a boy, whenever
he happened to attend a neighbouring church service, to see a man acting in that capacity, and saying the responses for the people.
John James.
Avington Rectory, Hungerford.
I have just seen an extract from "N. & Q." in one of our local papers, mentioning Elizabeth King as being clerk of the parish of Totteridge in 1802, and a question by Y. S. M. if there were any similar instance on record of a woman being a parish clerk? In answer to this Query, I beg to inform Y. S. M. that in the village of Misterton, Somerset, in which place I was born, a woman acted as clerk at my mother's wedding, my own baptism, and many years subsequently: I was born in 1822.
Wm. Higgins.
Bothy (Vol. ix., p. 305.).—For a familiar mention of this word (commonly spelt Bothie), your correspondent may be referred to the poem of The Bothie of Toper-na-fuosich, a Long-Vacation Pastoral, by Arthur Hugh Clough, Oxford: Macpherson, 1848. The action of the poem is chiefly carried on at the Bothie, the situation of which is thus described (in hexameter verse):
"There on the blank hill side, looking down through the loch to the ocean,
There with a runnel beside, and pine trees twain before it,
There with the road underneath, and in sight of coaches and steamers,
Dwelling of David Mackaye, and his daughters Elspie and Bella,
Sends up a volume of smoke the Bothie of Toper-na-fuosich."
This sort of verse, by the way, is thus humorously spoken of by Professor Wilson in his dedication, "to the King," of the twelfth volume of Blackwood (1822):
"What dost thou think, my liege, of the metre in which I address thee?
Doth it not sound very big, verse bouncing, bubble-and-squeaky,
Rattling, and loud, and high, resembling a drum or a bugle—
Rub-a-dub-dub like the one, like t'other tantaratara?
(It into use was brought of late by thy Laureate Doctor—
But, in my humble opinion, I write it better than he does)
It was chosen by me as the longest measure I knew of,
And, in praising one's King, it is right full measure to give him."
Cuthbert Bede, B.A.
King's Prerogative and Hunting Bishops (Vol. ix., p. 247.).—The passage of Blackstone, referred to by the Edinburgh Reviewer, will be found in his Commentaries, vol. ii, p. 413., where reference is made to 4 [Cokes'] Inst. 309. See also the same volume of Blackstone, p. 427. It is evident that Bishop Jewel possessed his "muta canum." See a curious account of a visit to him by Hermann Falkerzhümer, in the Zurich Letters, second series, pp. 84 &c.
H. Gough.
Lincoln's Inn.
Green Eyes (Vol. viii., p. 407.; Vol. ix., p. 112.).—Antoine Heroet, an early French poet, in the third book of his Opuscules d'Amour, has the following lines:
"Amour n'est pas enchanteur si divers
Que les yeux noirs face devenir verds,
Qu'un brun obscur en blancheur clere tourne,
Ou qu'un traict gros du vissage destourne."
(Love is not so strange an enchanter that he can make black eyes become green, that he can turn a dark brown into clear whiteness, or that he can change a coarse feature of the face.)
Uneda.
Philadelphia.
Brydone the Tourist (Vol. ix., pp. 138. 255. 305.).—
"On lui a reproché d'avoir sacrifié la vérité au plaisir de raconter des choses piquantes."
In a work (I think) entitled A Tour in Sicily, the production of Captain Monson, uncle to the late Lord Monson, published about thirty years ago, I remember to have read a denial and, as far as I can remember, a refutation of a statement of Brydone, that he had seen a pyramid in the gardens or grounds of some dignitary in Sicily, composed of—chamber-pots! I was, when I read Mr. Monson's book (a work of some pretensions as it appeared to me), a youngster newly returned from foreign travel, and in daily intercourse with gentlemen of riper age than myself, and of attainments as travellers and otherwise which I could not pretend to; many of them were Italians, and I perfectly remember that by all, but especially by the latter, Brydone's book was treated as a book of apocrypha.
Traveller.
Descendants of John of Gaunt, Noses of (Vol. vii., p. 96.).—Allow me to repeat my Query as to E. D.'s remark: he says, to be dark-complexioned and black-haired "is the family badge of the Herberts quite as much as the unmistakeable nose in the descendants of John of Gaunt." I hope E. D. will not continue silent, for I am very curious to know his meaning.
Y. S. M.
"Put" (Vol. vii., p. 271.).—I am surprised at the silence of your Irish readers in reference to the pronunciation of this word. I certainly never yet heard it pronounced like "but" amongst educated men in Ireland, and I am both a native of this country and resident here the greater part of my life. The Prince Consort's name I have
occasionally heard, both in England and Ireland, pronounced as if the first letter was an O—"Olbert"—and that by people who ought to know better.
Y. S. M.
"Caricature; a Canterbury Tale" (Vol. ix., p. 351.).—The inquiry of H. as to the meaning of a "Caricature," which he describes (though I doubt if he be correct as to all the personages), appears to me to point to a transaction in the history of the celebrated "Coalition Ministry" of Lord North and Fox; in which—
"Burke being Paymaster of the Forces, committed one or two imprudent acts: among them, the restoration of Powel and Bembridge, two defaulting subordinates in his office, to their situations. His friends of the ministry were hardly tasked to bring him through these scrapes; and, to use the language of Wraxall's Memoirs, 'Fox warned the Paymaster of the Forces, as he valued his office, not to involve his friends in any similar dilemma during the remainder of the Session.'"
A. B. R.
Belmont.