Shirley Hibberd.
Saltcellar.—Can any of your readers gainsay that in saltcellar the cellar is a mere corruption of salière? A list of compound words of Saxon and French origin might be curious.
H. F. B.
Arms and Motto granted to Col. William Carlos.—Can any reader of "N. & Q." give the date of the grant of arms to Col. William Carlos (who assisted Charles II. to conceal himself in the "Royal Oak," after the battle of Worcester), and specify the exact terms of the grant?
μ.
Naval Atrocities.—In the article on "Wounds," in the Encyc. Brit., 4th edition, published 1810, the author, after mentioning the necessity of a surgeon's being cautious in pronouncing on the character of any wound, adds that "this is particularly necessary on board ship, where, as soon as any man is pronounced by the surgeon to be mortally wounded, he is forthwith, while still living and conscious, thrown overboard," or words to this effect, as I quote from memory. That such horrid barbarity was not practised in 1810, it is needless to say; and if it had been usual at any previous period, Smollett and other writers who have exposed with unsparing hand all the defects in the naval system of their day, would have scarcely left this unnoticed when they attack much slighter abuses. If such a thing ever occurred, even in the worst of times, it must have been an isolated case. I have not met elsewhere with any allusion to this passage, or the atrocity recorded in it, and would be glad of more information on the subject.
J. S. Warden.
Turlehydes.—During the great famine in Ireland land in 1331, it is said that—
"The people in their distress met with an unexpected and providential relief. For about the 24th June, a prodigious number of large sea fish, called turlehydes, were brought into the bay of Dublin, and cast on shore at the mouth of the river Dodder. They were from thirty to forty feet long, and so bulky that two tall men placed one on each side of the fish could not see one another."—The History and Antiquities of the City of Dublin from the Earliest Accounts, by Walter Harris, 1766, p. 265.
This account is compiled from several records of the time, some of which still exist. As the term turlehydes is not known to Irish scholars, can any of the readers of "N. & Q." say what precise animal is meant by it, or give any derivation or reference for the term?