in Derby a couple of suits for him, taking KNOTS IN HANDKERCHIEFS: INDIAN CUSto do it the best part of a week. We had TOM (11 S. ii. 506).-This custom is supposed him seated on a big table in the kitchen-place, to have had its origin in the shoe-string and as he went on a good eye was kept on (or boot-lace), corrigia, suspended from "the cabbage " he made, for it was an article charters, in which the subscribing party of faith with all that the tailor “cabbaged" | made a knot. J. HOLDEN MACMICHAEL. all that he possibly could. There was not a village which could support a tailor. It was different with the cobbler, one being able to do all that was needful in patching, soleing, and heeling, as well as making for a couple of villages. Women needed but little in shoe and leather," for all rough work, indoor and outdoor, was done in pattens, which a handy cobbler made, all but the ring - irons fastened to the wooden sole. The itinerant tailor went to most of the farmhouses. The women folk helped each other to make their own clothes, but there was a dressmaker who cut out, and made bonnets. Most women made their own caps. THOS. RATCLIFFE. WESTMINSTER CHIMES (11 S. ii. 509). The Westminster chimes are, subject to a more or less different arrangement of the notes, so much like many other chimes that it seems rather open to doubt whether they were in fact arranged to an ancient hymn-notation. The words attributed to them I have long understood to be WALRUS AND THE CARPENTER' PARODY: SACKBUT (11 S. ii. 469, 496). -I may perhaps be permitted to record an anonymous witticism recalled to me by the mention of the sackbut. 66 When I was at Oxford ten years ago, the vogue of ping-pong was at its height, and in many a college room the game was kept up till far into the night, to the no small annoyance of those who desired either to sleep or to work. The nuisance became so pronounced that at length the Dean of a certain college affixed to the notice-board an intimation to the effect that "In future ping-pong will be considered as a piano, and is therefore prohibited after 11 P.M." (pianos were prohibited after that hour). The following day appeared beneath the official edict the following parody: "In future the buttery cat will be considered as a sackbut, and is therefore prohibited at all hour¬.” H. B. CORPSE BLEEDING IN PRESENCE OF THE MURDERER (11 S. ii. 328, 390, 498).-This superstition was not confined to the "vulgar." On 21 August, 1669, in a letter from Mr. Henshaw to Sir Robert Paston, there is the following item of news:— Monday I carried my wife and daughter to Greenwich which, though it was but a very little whale, is the Granpois [grampus], yet a very great fish; the skin, like that of all It Cetaceous animals, is like that of an eel's, and the flesh as white as a conger's; the humours of his body, though he was dead, were in a brisk ferthe iron that killed him, there yested out blood mentation, and out of a hole where they struck and oil like barm out of a barrel of new ale. put me in mind of some slain innocent which bleeds at the approach of his murderers; but the stench was so uncouth that it was able to discompose my meditations."-Hist. MSS. Com., Sixth Report, p. 367. The correspondent, Thomas Henshaw, was a barrister, and one of the first members of the Royal Society, and contributed several papers to the Philosophical Transactions; he also edited Skinner's Etymologicon Linguæ Anglicanæ,' 1671. The recipient was likewise a member of the Royal Society, and considered a person of great learning.' A. RHODES. 66 The querist should try Messrs. Joseph Baer & Co., booksellers, Hochstrasse 6, Frankfurt a. M., who as a matter of course make Frankfurt prints a speciality. L. L. K. Watt mentions a number of books by Artephius, but the 'De Characteribus Planetarum' does not appear among them. A single book by Artephius is included in the Edinburgh Advocates' Library. The catalogue spells the name "Artefius." I am inclined to believe that no copy of 'De Characteribus Planetarum' can be found in this country. Perhaps Germany, in and around Frankfort, would be the most likely place to look for it. Scotus. ELEPHANT AND CASTLE IN HERALDRY (11 S. i. 508; ii. 36, 115, 231, 353, 398).— In La France Metallique,' by Jacques de Bie, Paris, 1634, the elephant occurs once, namely, on the reverse of a medal of Henri III. dated 1575 (plate 74). The motto is "Placidis parcit.' According to the Explication, p. 220, the elephant, passing through the fields, where are some sheep, turns up his trunk, to show that he has no intention of hurting them, while he treads on a serpent, which appears to have glided under his belly to hurt him. The interpretation is the clemency of the king towards his dutiful subjects, and his severity towards those who rebel against his commands. The elephant has no castle or any trappings whatever. 66 Mrs. Bury Palliser in her 'Historic Devices, Badges, and War-Cries,' 1870, gives the elephant as the device of the Caracciolo family of Naples; of the Malatesta family; of Rodolph, Duke of Swabia (motto " Vi parva non invertitur"); the elephant adoring the moon, of Caracciolo, Marquis of Vico (motto "Numen regemque salutant "); of Camillo Caula, a captain of Modena (motto Pietas Deo nos conciliat "); of Giustiniani Salimbene (motto "Sic ardua peto "); the elephant and broken tree, of Gio. Batt. Giustiniani, Cardinal of Venice (motto Dum stetit "); the elephant and dragon, of Sinibaldo and Ottoboni Fieschi (motto Non vos alabareis," Spanish, "You will not exult over us '-see p. 103); the elephant crushing flies, of Sisenando, King of the Goths (motto "Al mejor que puedo "); the elephant throwing his teeth to the hunters, of Count Clement Pietra (motto "Lasciai di me la miglior parte a dietro "); the elephant walking through a flock of sheep, of Philibert Emmanuel, Duke of 66 Savoy (motto "Infestus infestis"). See "The sovereign lords of Rimini and of a great part of Romagna had for their device an elephant, allusive, perhaps, to the bones of Hannibal's elephants, said to have been found at the Forli pass, near Fossombrone and Fano, of which they were lords." She speaks of an elephant, not an elephant's head. In no instance does she mention a castle on the elephant. ROBERT PIERPOINT. As a symbol this subject appears to extend back well over three centuries or more. InHycke-Scorner,' a black-letter morality of the earlier part of the sixteenth century, is a quaint woodcut of an elephant bearing a square turreted tower or castle. David Garrick's copy of this old morality was reprinted by Thomas Hawkins in his Origin of the English Drama,' 1773, 3 vols., and the illustration may be seen facing p. 72 in vol. i. The animal is depicted without harness or trappings. WM. JAGGARD. PUNS ON PAYNE (11 S. ii. 409, 453).—The following lines written by Hugh Holland, whose mother was a Payne, may interest the querist if they are not already familiar to him: Yet griefe is by the surer side my brother, THE BROWN SEX (11 S. ii. 505).-The quotation from M. G. Lewis's Negro Life in the West Indies' (London, 1845 edition, P. 25) is as follows :— "It seems that, many years ago, an Admiral of the Red was superseded on the Jamaica station by an Admiral of the Blue; and both of them gave balls at Kingston to the Brown Girls'; for the fair sex elsewhere are called the Brown Girls' in Jamaica." Elsewhere in Lewis's Journal' "brown girl" is used in the ordinary sense of the term; cp. "This morning a little brown girl made her appearance at breakfast, with an orange bough, to flap away the flies (ib., p. 31). Lewis's Journal' (12 December, 1815, p. 12) contains an interesting reference to Werthers Leiden,' showing that the English translations were read as late as 1815: "Little Jem Parsons [the cabin-boy] and his friend the black terrier came on deck, and sat themselves down on a gun-carriage, to read by the light of the moon. I looked at the boy's book (the terrier, I suppose, read over the other's shoulder), and found that it was The Sorrows of Werter.' I asked him who had lent him such a book and whether it amused him? He said that it had been made a present to him, and so he had read it almost through, for he had got to Werter's dying; though to be sure he did not understand it all, nor like very much what he understood; for he thought the man a great fool for killing himself for love. I told him I thought every man a great fool who killed himself for love or for anything else; but had he no other books but The Sorrows of Werter.' O, dear yes, he said, he had a great many more.' H. G. WARD. Aachen. FORES'S MUSICAL ENVELOPE (11 S. ii. 508). -There is a series of Fores's Comic Envelopes in the Guildhall Library. There are nine varieties: Courting, Musical, Dancing, Racing, Shooting, Civic, Military, Christmas, and Coaching. W. B. GERISH. 66 66 "YORKER' (11 S. ii. 505).—With all respect, I venture to differ from PROF. SKEAT'S derivation of this word. I doubt if the prolific crop of new words referring to sport follows any scientific or known rules of philology. If they do, the derivation of yorker" from yarker, 'jerk," would certainly be at fault. In the first place, a jerk is expressly forbidden by the rules of cricket: L. L. K. A ball must be bowled. If thrown or jerked, the umpire shall call no ball.' No cricketer could therefore have applied the term "yarker to a fairly bowled ball. BOHEMIAN MUSICAL FOLK-LORE (11 S. ii. 485).-Tripping over a stone indicates in Hungary the site of buried treasure or lost property. ALFIERI IN ENGLAND (11 S. ii. 421, 532).— May I add to my reply that the dates given in the Vita' clearly show that the November when Alfieri left the Hague for England was in 1770. He left Turin in May, 1769. In the summer he was in Vienna; at Berlin until November; at Copenhagen in the winter. At the end of March he went to Stockholm, in May to Petersburg, and thence to Berlin. He was at Spa in August and September, and from there went to the Hague. Finer," in 1. 4 of the second paragraph of my reply, should be finir. Godalming. J. F. ROTTON. 66 A " yorker " is a ball which pitches close to the bat and passes underneath it, the batsman mistaking it for either a halfvolley or a full pitch, and consequently failing to come down upon it. Till the sixties of the last century it was called a "tice," because it enticed a batsman to hit when he should not do so. In the sixties the word yorker was introduced, and the ball in question is now known by no other name. The permission and development of overarm bowling may have had some influence on the cultivation of this most useful ball; in any case, there seems no reason to doubt LADY CONYNGHAM (11 S. ii. 508). This that its frequent use by a Yorkshire eleven lady is never named in the decorous pages of standard English histories. Even her husband the Marquis secures but the briefest notice, although his midnight ride to acquaint the late Queen Victoria with her accession to the throne surely deserved for him a better fate. Details of his wife's career will need to be looked for in the newspapers of the period or in the gossipy memoirs of social life published within the last few years. If I may be pardoned for naming works probably familiar, I would venture to mention the first three volumes of theGreville Journal'; Mrs. W. P. Byrne's Gossip of the Century,' Ward & Downey, gave it its present name. The word undoubtedly came into vogue as a noun: the verb to york was introduced a good deal later. 50, Albemarle Street, W. JOHN MURRAY. Is there not some mistake in PROF. SKEAT'S note? I am no authority on cricket, but I know what a jerk is, and I am sure that neither jerking nor throwing the ball has ever been allowed. Londoner, Hollander, and in German Schweitzer are well known, and not derived from verbs. Burgher," "crowder,' butcher," " hosier," potwalloper," "falconer," "potter," "barrister," 66 tenedish is a later doublet. Or the stan and tene may be cognate words which have arrived by different routes (cf. stank and tank). I do not know whether there has ever been an E. *stan, "tin," but L. stannum is represented in some of the Celtic languages (see Skeat, s.v. tin). The second element may be dish, though the E. liking for the ending -ish (e.g., squeamish for older squeamous, rubbish for older robows) and the vagaries of popular etymology make it unlikely. I should guess that both words may be due to some O.F. phrase such as vase (or escritoire) en estain doux." Cotgrave has "estaim doux, the best kind of Tynne; gotten in Cornwall." The naming of an object from the metal of which it is composed is common, e.g., a brass, a copper, a pewter, a tin. 66 ERNEST WEEKLEY. VISCOUNT OSSINGTON (11 S. ii. 508).— If MR. T. H. MILLER will refer to the collected volumes of Once a Week, he will find in the number for February, 1872, a cartoon of Viscount Ossington, entitled 'Mr. Speaker full length, in wig and robes, and wearing a cocked hat. The portrait is understood to have been an excellent likeness, and might The Romance of Bookselling: a History from the perhaps supply the lack of a photograph. W. SCOTT. 66 66 39 TENEDISH (11 S. ii. 286, 354, 493).— In reply to SIR JAMES MURRAY'S query, Mr. HODGKIN proposes (11 S. ii. 354) to regard the first sy llable as Du. tenne, tin," and shows by a quotation (1569) that such vessels were made of tin. I think this is probably the right route. The definition of tenedish (1688) as a piece of Lead made like a Muscle shell, in which the black is kept moist to work withal," rather suggests a standish, e.g. atramentarium, an Ink-horn or Standish, or thing to keep black colour in (Gouldman, 1669). Standish, traditionally derived from stand-dish," is quoted by Prof. Skeat for 1557. It seems to have been a common word in the seventeenth century (Florio, scrittoio; Cotgrave, cabinet; Holyoak, atramentarium, &c.), and to have been popularly associated with stand (cf. inkstand) and dish. I do not think it has any necessary connexion with either. It appears to have been the metal table inkpot which replaced the older portable inkhorn. Miège (1679) has "standish, un grand écritoire, comme ceux qui sont faits d'étain." Now O.F. estain could have given M.E. *stain, *sten, and, if introduced a second time after the disappearance of the -8-, *tain or *ten. The aphetic form tain, used of the tinfoil applied to the back of a mirror, has passed into E. (see 'N.E.D.,' 8.v. tain). It seems possible that standish may be for *staindish, *stendish, influenced by stand, and that Notes on Books, &c. Earliest Times to the Twentieth Century. By Frank A. Mumby. (Chapman & Hall.) TRAVELLERS in the bypaths of literature will remember the incident recorded in Le Paradis des Gens de Lettres,' in which the writer is led by his celestial guide to the house from which the one-eyed publisher distributed with lavish hands twenty-pound notes as payment for a sheet of sixteen printed pages to the crowd of happy authors who thronged the garden of his mansion. By these generous gifts the publisher felt himself purged and absolved from any sin against the Light, and in this excellent volume Mr. Mumby has traced the steps which have led to this desirable rapprochement between writer and publisher, and the means by which the dream of Asselineau has nearly approached fulfilment. corrected Osborne with a It may be safely said that in the commercial world there is no class that merits more highly the confidence of the public than that which is The proengaged in the production of books. duction of books is necessarily allied with the history of bookselling, it is pleasant to recall the production of literature, and in considering the satisfactory relations that have usually existed between publisher and author. Pope may have occasionally satirized a bookseller, but his association with Lintot is entirely to the credit of both parties. Johnson knock-down blow, but towards no one had he friendlier feelings than towards poor Tom Davies or that nonpareil of publishers, Robert Dodsley. In later times the name of Murray is inseparably which Scott placed in Constable and Ballantyne woven with that of Byron; and if the confidence had unfortunate results, it was based upon the friendship that existed between them. In reading such a book as Mr. Mumby's, one's predominant feeling is that if the bookseller has not to shed sunshine on the often dreary life of the exactly created a Paradise, he has done much professional author. A In this fact perhaps lies the romance which Mr. Bibliography of Publishing and BookMumby finds in the history of the Trade." selling' by Mr. W. H. Peet, reprinted, with addiIf we refer to the great dictionary which ought tions, from these columns, forms an Appendix to to lie at the elbow of every literary man, we find the book. This is excellent as far as it goes, but it that "romantic" connotes something in the way goes only a very short distance. Foreign works on of chivalry and adventure. Chivalry may the subject are not included. 'Book-Prices Current' pertain more to the man than the bookseller, but finds a place, but not Book-Auction Records,' the spirit of adventure cannot be wanting in those which often contains biographical and other who daily launch their barks upon unknown seas. contributions on bookselling and booksellers. BigA really good history of these venturesome heroes more and Wyman's Bibliography of Printing,' has long been a desideratum, and Mr. Mumby though incidentally mentioned on p. 460, should within his limits has in a very meritorious manner have been inserted in the body of the work, as attempted to fill the void. He would, however, have it contains hundreds of references to the bookdone better to call his book a History of Pub-producing trade, and also a capital biography lishing in England,' for beyond a general sketch of of the late Bernard Quaritch, with an engraved what he terms the Beginnings of the Book portrait representing him as he was known to his World," the contents of the volume are almost friends and customers in the seventies and eighties. wholly confined to an account of the London Smith's Obituary' (see p. 464) was not rebook-trade. The retail bookseller, to whom printed in Willis's Current Notes for February, literature owes so much, is only seen dimly in the 1853: there is only a short notice of the book, background; and of the many eminent London with a few extracts relating to booksellers and and provincial representatives of that branch of stationers. The Bibliography needs some revision, the trade, only Mr. Quaritch and Messrs. Sotheran and we trust that Mr. Peet will devote himself to appear to be mentioned by name, and that per- its republication in a fuller and more eclectic form. haps more by virtue of their having published various works than in recognition of their high distinction as purveyors of ancient and modern learning. To deal with all branches of the trade would be impossible in a book of reasonable size, but we feel some regret in finding no description of a very interesting offshoot from the parent trunk. One or two short sketches of the chapbook trade have been written, but the subject has never been thoroughly explored, though during the eighteenth century the only providers of literature in the remoter hamlets of the country were the "Walking or "Travelling Stationers," who carried their wares from the printing presses in Aldermary Churchyard or Bow Churchyard, whence on one fine afternoon Boswell, who had been fired with the ambition of writing a story in the style of Jack the Giantkiller, carried off the splendid collection of chapbooks which is now housed in the Library of Harvard University. It is to these humble benefactors, and to their successors, such as Drewry of Derby and Dicey of Northampton, that we owe the preservation of the old Elizabethan legends, such as Tom Thumb and Tom Hickathrift, Jack Horner and Long Meg of Westminster, and they would seem to merit a slight niche in the memorial which is perhaps too much devoted to the aristocrats of the Trade. This, after all, is a minor matter, and it gives us pleasure to testify to the general value of the book, the wide range of information that it conveys, and the agreeable manner in which it is written. The few slips we have noticed are unimportant. In referring to Swinburne's Atalanta in Calydon ' it might have been stated that though the title-pages of the first two editions are identical, the earlier is in quarto and the later in foolscap octavo, so that there is no possibility of confusion between the two. Moxon did not publish 'The Statue and the Bust-and, it may be added, 'Cleon'-till 1855, though, from Mr. Mumby's language on p. 304, it might be inferred that Browning's connexion with that publisher ceased on Messrs. Chapman & Hall issuing ChristmasEve and Easter-Day' in 1850 (there was then no "collected edition" of Browning's question of a works). IN The National Review for January Episodes of the Month' and Two Elections and a Moral' by Politicus deal frankly with the position of the Unionist party, the election which was recently concluded, and the results attained. It is not surprising to find that Mr. Balfour's introduction of the Referendum at the last moment before the conflict began is described as a "painful blunder," and it is further stated that under Mr. Balfour there is little or no hope of the Unionist party regaining its influence in the State," as he is out of touch with the man in the street." In 'Sea Law made in Germany' Mr. H. W. Wilson considers Mr. T. G. Bowles's Sea Law and Sea Power," recently published · A and the official answers to its indictments. main point in the discussion concerns British food-supplies in time of war, a subject of the gravest importance. Dr. Elizabeth Chesser says many things about The Health of the Nation which are doubtless true, but the practical application of such regulations as she suggests is the difficulty. Having given in the last number of the Review a speech by Mr. Bonar Law, the editor now publishes one by Mr. Lloyd George delivered at the Paragon Music-Hall, Mile End, on 21 Nov. An account of the Portuguese Revolution follows, being regarded as Lloyd-Georgeism in Practice. Most of the heroes of that outbreak are denounced as poltroons, and bribery and place-hunting are rampant. While it is not difficult to see the failures and ludicrous aspects of the Revolution, a view of the previous régime and its disastrous incompetence might be useful to give us a fair idea of the possibilities of the country and temper of the people. Lady Helen Graham's 'Impressions of Ober-Ammergau in 1910' form a pleasant but not very significant study in a sentimental vein. |