Minor Notes.
Lilburn or Prynne?—I am anxious to suggest in "Notes and Queries" whether a character in the Second Canto of Part iii. of Hudibras (line 421), beginning,
"To match this saint, there was another,
As busy and perverse a brother,
An haberdasher of small wares,
In politics and state affairs,"
Has not been wrongly given by Dr. Grey to Lilburn, and whether Prynne is not rather the person described. Dr. Grey admits in his note that the application of the passage to Lilburn involves an anachronism, Lilburn having died in 1657, and this passage being a description of one among
"The quacks of government who sate"
to consult for the Restoration, when they saw ruin impending.
CH.
Peep of Day.—Jacob Grimm, in his Deutsche Mythologie, p. 428., ed. 1., remarks that the ideas of light and sound are sometimes confounded; and in support of his observation he quotes passages of Danish and German poets in which the sun and moon are said to pipe (pfeifen). In further illustration of this usage, he also cites the words "the sun began to peep," from a Scotch ballad in Scott's Border Minstrelsy, vol. ii. p. 430. In p. 431. he explains the words "par son l'aube," which occur in old French poets, by "per sonitum auroræ;" and compares the English expression, "the peep of day."
The Latin pipio or pipo, whence the Italian pipare, and the French pépier, is the ultimate origin of the verb to peep; which, in old English, bore the sense of chirping, and is so used in the authorised version of Isaiah, viii. 19., x. 14. Halliwell, in his Archaic Dictionary, explains "peep" as "a flock of chickens," but cites no example. To peep, however, in the sense of taking a rapid look at anything through a small aperture, is an old use of the word, as is proved by the expression Peeping Tom of Coventry. As so used, it corresponds with the German gucken. Mr. Richardson remarks that this meaning was probably suggested by the young chick looking out of the half-broken shell. It is quite certain that the "peep of day" has nothing to do with sound; but expresses the first appearance of the sun, as he just looks over the eastern hills.
L.
Martinet.—Will the following passage throw any light on the origin of the word Martinet?
Une discipline, devenue encore plus exacte, avait mis dans l'armée un nouvel ordre. Il n'y avait point encore d'inspecteurs de cavalerie et d'infanterie, comme nous en avons vu depuis, mais deux hommes uniques chacun dans leur genre en fesaient les fonctions. Martinet mettait alors l'infanterie sur le pied de discipline où elle est aujourd'hui. Le Chevalier de Fourilles fesait la même change dans la cavalerie. Il y avait un an que Martinet avait mis la baionnette en usage dans quelque régimens, &c.—Voltaire, Siècle de Louis XIV. c. 10.
C. Forbes.
July 2.
Guy's Porridge Pot.—In the porter's lodge at Warwick Castle are preserved some enormous pieces of armour, which, according to tradition, were worn by the famous champion "Guy, Earl of Warwick;" and in addition (with other marvellous curiosities) is also exhibited Guy's porridge pot, of bell metal, said to weigh 300 lbs., and to contain 120 gallons. There is also a flesh-fork to ring it.
Mr. Nichols, in his History of Leicestershire, Part ii. vol. iii., remarks,
"A turnpike road from Ashby to Whitwick, passes through Talbot Lane. Of this lane and the famous large pot at Warwick Castle, we have an old traditionary couplet:
"'There's nothing left of Talbot's name,
But Talbot's Pot and Talbot's Lane.'
"Richard Beauchamp Earl of Warwick, died in 1439. His eldest daughter, Margaret, was married to John Talbot Earl of Shrewsbury, by whom she had one son, John Viscount Lisle, from whom the Dudleys descended, Viscount Lisle and Earl of Warwick."
It would therefore appear that neither the armour nor the pot belonged to the "noble Guy"—the armour being comparatively of modern manufacture, and the pot, it appears, descended from the Talbots to the Warwick family: which pot is generally filled with punch on the birth of a male heir to that noble family.
W. Reader.