Westminster Hall.
—The following extract from the Issue Roll of Michaelmas Term, 9 Hen. VII. 1493, may be interesting to some of your readers, and will perhaps lead to a speculation on the nature of "the disguisyings" alluded to:—
"To Richard Daland, for providing certain spectacles, or theatres, commonly called scaffolds, in the great hall at Westminster, for performance of 'the disguisyings,' exhibited to the people on the night of the Epiphany, as appears by a book of particulars; paid to his own hands, £28, 3s. 5-3/4d."—Devon's Issue Roll, 516.
Possibly the next entry, which is in Michaelmas in the following year, of a payment of five marks yearly "to John Englissh, Edward Maye, Richard Gibson, and John Hamond, 'lusoribus Regis' otherwise called in English the players of the king's interludes, for their fees,"—has some connexion with "the disguisyings."
DESSAWDORF.
Meaning of "Log-ship."
—If you have a spare corner, can you grant it to me for the origin of a word which describes an article used in every sailing and steam vessel in the world, and yet perhaps not one sailor in a thousand knows whence it is derived. I allude to the word "log-ship," the name of the little wooden float (quadrant-shaped) by which, with a line attached, the vessel's speed is ascertained. Before the invention of the line with "knots" on it, a "chip," or floating-scrap, was thrown overboard forward, and the "master," or whoever it might be, walked aft at the rate which the vessel passed the "chip," judging of his pace from experience. Hence the term "log-ship," or "chip," which is its true name.
A. L.
West Indies, Aug. 11. 1851.