A.C.
[We are obliged to our correspondent and also to our witty contemporary for this testimony to our omniscience, and show our sense of their kindness by giving them two explanations. The first is, the story which has been told of its originating with a person who kept a house for the sale of toys and rags in Norton Falgate some century since, to whom an old woman brought a large bundle of rags for sale, with a desire that it might remain unopened until she could call again to see it weighed. Several weeks having elapsed without her re-appearance, the ragman opened the bundle, and finding in it a black doll neatly dressed, with a pair of gold ear-rings, hung it over his door, for the purpose of its being owned by the woman who had left it. The plan succeeded, and the woman, who had by means of the black doll recovered her bundle of rags, presented it to the dealer; and the story becoming known, the black doll was adopted as the favourite sign of this class of shopkeepers. Such is the romance of the black doll; the reality, we believe, will be found in the fact, that cast-off clothes having been formerly purchased by dealers in large quantities, for the purpose of being resold to merchants, to be exchanged by them in traffic with the uncivilised tribes, who, it is known, will barter any thing for articles of finery,—a black doll, gaily dressed out, was adopted as the sign of such dealers in old apparel.]
Journal of Sir William Beeston.—In reply to the inquiry of "C." (No. 25. p. 400), I can state that a journal of Sir William Beeston is now preserved in the British Museum (MS. Add. 12,424.), and was presented to the national collection in 1842, by Charles Edward Long, Esq. It is a folio volume, entirely autograph, and extends from Dec. 10, 1671, when Beeston was in command of the Assistance frigate in the West Indies, to July 21, 1673; then from July 6 to September 6, 1680, in a voyage from Port Royal to London; and from December 19, 1692, to March 9, 1692-3, in returning from Portsmouth to Jamaica; and, lastly, from April 25 to June 28, 1702, in coming home from Jamaica to England. By a note written by Mr. Long on the fly-leaf of the volume, it appears that Sir William Beeston was baptized in Dec. 2, 1636, at Titchfield, co. Hants, and was the second son of William Beeston, of Posbrooke, the same parish, by Elizabeth, daughter of Arthur Bromfield. (See Visit. C. 19. Coll. Arm.) His elder brother, Henry, was Master of Winchester, and Warden of New College; and his daughter and heir Jane married, first, Sir Thomas Modyford, Bart., and, secondly, Charles Long, to whom she was a second wife. To this may be added, that Sir William received the honour of knighthood at Kensington, October 30, 1692, and was Governor of Jamaica from 1693 till 1700. In the Add. MS. 12,430. is contained a narrative, by Sir William Beeston, of the descent by the French on Jamaica, in June, 1694; as also the copy of a Journal kept by Col. William Beeston from his first coming to Jamaica, 1655-1680.
M.
Shrew (No. 24. p. 381.).—I know not whether it will at all help the inquiry of "W.R.F." to remind him that the local Dorsetshire name of the shrew-mouse is "shocrop" or "shrocrop." The latter is the word given in Mr. Barnes's excellent Glossary, but I have just applied for its name to two labourers, and their pronunciation of it is clearly the former.
I should be glad to hear any conjecture as to the final syllable. The only folk-lore connected with it in this part of the country seems to be that long ago reported by Pennant and others, viz. "Cats will kill, but not eat it."
C.W.B.
Trunck Breeches.—"X.Y.Z." (No. 24. p. 384) will also find the following in Dryden's Translation of Perseus:—
"There on the walls by Polynotu's hand,
The conquered Medians in trunk-breeches stand."