Glasgow.
[In the Board-room of the workhouse of St. Margaret's, Westminster, is a portrait of Margaret Patten, which corresponds with the picture just described, and bears the following inscription:
"Margaret Patten, aged 136: the Gift of John Dowsell, William Goff, Matthew Burnett, Thomas Parker, Robert Wright, John Parquot, Overseers, anno 1737."
Margaret Patten was buried in the burial-ground of what was then called the Broadway Church, now Christ Church, and there is a stone on the eastern boundary wall inscribed, "Near this place lieth Margaret Patten, who died June 26, 1739, in the Parish Workhouse, aged 136." In Walcott's Memorials of
Westminster, p. 288., we are told "she was a native of Lochborough, near Paisley. She was brought to England to prepare Scotch broth for King James II., but, owing to the abdication of that monarch, fell into poverty and died in St. Margaret's workhouse, where her portrait is still preserved. Her body was followed to the grave by the parochial authorities and many of the principal inhabitants, while the children sang a hymn before it reached its last resting-place.">[
Etymology of "Coin."—What is the etymology of our noun and verb coin and to coin? I do not know if I have been anticipated, but beg to suggest the following:—Coin, a piece of cornered metal; To coin, the act of cornering such block of metal.
In Cornwall, the blocks of tin, when first run into moulds from the smelting furnace, are square; and when the metal is to be fined or assayed, the miner's phrase is, that it is to be coined; for the corners of the moulded block are cut off, and subjected to the assay; and the decree of fineness proved is stamped on the now cornerless block—thereafter called a coin of tin. It is, I conceive, by no means a violent supposition that such coins of tin were current as money very many ages before either silver, gold, copper, bronze, lead, tin, or any other metal moulded, stamped, engraved, or fashioned into such coins as we now know had come into use. We know to what far-back ages the finding of tin carries us, its find being entirely confined to Cornwall; its presence near the surface in an ore readily reduced and easily melted making its reduction into the metallic state possible in the very rudest state of society and of the arts.
C. D. Lamont.
Greenock.
[See Dr. Richardson for the following derivation:—"Fr. coigner, It. cuniare, Sp. cunar, acuñar, to wedge, and also to coin. Menage and Spelman agree from the Latin cuneus. 'Cuneus; sigillum ferreum, quo nummus cuditur; a forma dictum: atque inde coin quasi cune pro monetâ.' An iron seal with which metal is stamped; so called from the shape. And hence money is called coin (q. cune, wedge).—Spelman." The Rev. T. R. Brown, in an unpublished Dictionary of Difficult Etymology[[1]], suggests the following:—"Fr. coign, a coin, stamp, &c.; Gaelic, cuin, a coin. Probably from the Sanscrit kan, to shine, desire, covet; kanaka, gold, &c. The Hebrew ceseph, money, coin, is derived in like manner from the verb casaph, to desire, covet. The other meaning attached to the French word coign, viz. a wedge, appears to be derived from quite a different root.">[