Tace Latin for a Candle (Vol. i., p. 385).—I am not aware of "Tace is Latin for a candle" in any earlier book than Swift's Polite Conversation; but it must have been threadbare in his time, or he would not have inserted it in that great collection of platitudes:—
"Lord Smart. Well, but after all, Tom, can you tell me what is Latin for a goose?
"Neverout. O, my Lord, I know that; why, Brandy is Latin for a goose, and Tace is Latin for a candle."
H. B. C.
Members for Durham—why none prior to 1673-4 (Vol. ii., p. 8.).—Because Durham was an episcopal palatine, which had jurisdictions, and even, in olden times, a Parliament of its own. Several bills were brought in between 1562 and 1673, to give M.P.'s to both county and city; but an act was only passed in the latter year. The first writ was moved, it is said, in 1675; but the first return is dated in Whitworth, 1679. (Oldfield's Parl. Hist., iii. 425.)
C.
"A Frog he would," &c.—I am in my sixth decade, and pretty far on in it too; and I can recollect this jingle as long as I can recollect anything. It formed several stanzas (five or six at least), and had its own tune. There was something peculiarly attractive and humorous to the unformed ear and mind in the ballad, (for as a ballad it was sung,) as I was wont to hear it. I can therefore personally vouch for its antiquity being half a century. But, beyond this, I must add, that my early days being spent in a remote provincial village (high up the Severn), and the ballad, as I shall call it, being universally known, I cannot help inferring that it is of considerable antiquity. Anything of then recent date could hardly be both generally known and universally popular in such a district and amongst such a people. Whether it had a local origin there or not, it would be difficult to say but I never heard it spoken of as having any special application to local persons or affairs. Of course there are only two ways of accounting for its popularity,—either its application, or its jingle of words and tune. If I may venture a "guess," it would be, that it had originally a political application, in some period when all men's minds were turned to some one great politico-religious question; and this, not unlikely, the period of the Cavaliers and Roundheads. We know how rife this kind of warfare was in that great struggle. Or again, it might be as old as the Reformation itself, and have a reference to Henry the Eighth and Anna Boleyn.
"The frog he would a-wooing go,
Whether his mother would let him or no,"
would not inaptly represent the "wide-mouthed waddling frog" Henry—"mother church,"—and the "gleesome Anna" would be the "merry mouse in the mill." It may be worth the while of gentlemen conversant with the ballad literature and political squibs of both the periods here indicated, to notice any traces in other squibs and ballads of the same imagery that is employed in this. It would also be desirable, if possible, to get a complete copy of these verses. My own memory can only supply a part, or rather disjointed parts: but I think it probable that it may be easily obtained by persons resident in the counties bordering on North Wales, especially in Shropshire or Herefordshire, and perhaps in Cheshire or Staffordshire.
I should not have thought of troubling you with my own reminiscences as an answer to an antiquarian question, but for the fact that even these go further back than any information that has been sent you.
T. S. D.