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):