1. That the wood-cut on the title page, which has been re-engraved for Mr. Halliwell's Notices of Fugitive Tracts and Chap-books, printed for the Percy Society, is one of the few representations we have of the old Ducking Stool.
2. That it is said that the Rev. Thomas Kerrich, the well-known librarian of the University of Cambridge, could repeat by heart the whole of the eight and forty pages of this strange gallimawfrey.
W. J. Thoms.
Hipperswitches (Vol. ii., p. 280.).—I saw a story which was copied into the Examiner of Oct. 5. from "Notes and Queries," entitled "Sir Gammer Vans." The correspondent who has furnished
you with the tale says that he is ignorant of the meaning of "hipper switches." Now hipper is a word applied in this part of the country to a description of osiers used in coarse basket making, and which were very likely things to be bound up into switches. A field in which they grow, near the water side, is called a "hipper-holm." There is a station on the Lancashire and Yorkshire railway, which takes its name from such a meadow. My nurse, a Cornwall woman, tells me hipper withies fetch a higher price than common withies in her country.
E. C. G.
Lancaster.
Cat and Bagpipes (Vol. ii., p. 266.).—A public-house of considerable notoriety, with this sign, existed long at the corner of Downing Street, next to King Street. It was also used as a chop-house, and frequented by many of those connected with the public offices in the neighbourhood.
An old friend told me that many years ago he met George Rose,—so well known in after life as the friend of Pitt, clerk of the Parliament, secretary of the Treasury, &c., and executor of the Earl of Marchmont,—then a bashful young man, at the Cat and Bagpipes.
I may mention that George Rose was one of the few instances which I have met with, where a Scotsman had freed himself from the peculiarities of the speech of his country. Sir William Grant was another. Frank Homer was a third. I never knew another.