—Notwithstanding the MS. note referred to by DR. RIMBAULT in a recent number, I cannot think that G. A. Stevens was the author of "Winifreda," as he had barely attained his sixteenth year when that song was first printed in 1726. Neither is it easy to imagine that the commonplace lines quoted in Reed's Biographia Dramatica, vol. i. p. 687., from Stevens's poem called "Religion, or the Libertine Repentant," and "Winifreda," could have been the production of the same person. We learn also from Reed, that, owing to a pirated edition of Stevens's songs being published at Whitehaven, he in 1772 printed a genuine collection of them at Oxford. This book I never met with. Should it contain Winifreda, I shall be satisfied: if not, we may still say of the mysterious author, "Non est inventus."
BRAYBROOKE.
Querelle d'Alleman (Vol. iii, p. 495.),
not d'Allemand, as your correspondent MR. BREEN has written it; this saying deriving its origin from the Allemans, a powerful family of the Dauphiné, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and having no reference whatever to the national character of the Germans, as will appear by the following extract from the Revue Historique de la Noblesse, voce ALLEMAN:—
"Durant le 13e et le 14e siècle, la région montagneuse qui s'élève entre le Drac et l'Isère était presque en totalité le domaine d'une immense famille de seigneurs qui portaient tous le nom d'Alleman.... Jamais souche féodale ne produisit plus de rameaux, et nulle part les membres d'une même famille ne se groupèrent autour de leurs chefs avec un soin plus jaloux.... Ils se mariaient entre eux, jugeaient entre eux leurs différends, et en toute circonstance se pretaient les uns aux autres un infaillible appui. Malheur à l'imprudent voisin qui eût troublé dans son héritage ou dans son honneur le plus humble des Alleman. Sur la plainte de l'offensé, un conseil de famille était réuni, la guerre votée par acclamations, et l'on voyait bientôt déboucher dans la plaine de Grenoble les bandes armées qui guidaient au châtiment de l'agresseur les bannières d'Uriage et de Valbonnais."
Hence, from the ardour with which this family avenged the smallest injury, came the saying, "Faire une querelle d'Alleman;" to which Oudin, in his Curiosités Françoises, gives the following interpretation:—
"Querelle d'Alleman, fondée sur peu de sujet et facile à appaiser."
Having reference to the same family was also the proverb, known in the Dauphiné, "Gare la queue des Alleman," applied to those entering upon some difficult enterprise; in other words, "mind the consequences."
In Le Roux de Lincy's Livres des Proverbes Français, vol. ii. p. 15., I find the following:
"Arces, Varces, Granges et Comiers,