A WINTER SAYING (4th S. vi. 495.)-Very similar to this saying in Nottinghamshire is one which I heard the other day from a medical man in West Kent: "If before Christmas the ice will

bear a goose, after Christmas it will not bear a

duck."

H. P. D. [As a comment on the above, we append an occasional note from the Pall Mall Gazette of December 23.-ED.]

"Some people flatter themselves that because the frost has set in this year before Christmas Day, we shall have a mild winter after it; but this theory is not in accordance with past experience. Some of our most severe frosts have begun on the 21st of December. In 1565, says Holinshed, the one-and-twentieth day of December began a frost which continued so extremely that on New Year's Even people went over and alongst the Thames on the ice from London Bridge to Westminster. Some played at football so boldly as if it had been on dry land. Divers of the coast shot daily at the pricks set up on the Thames, and the people, both men and women, went on the Thames in greater numbers than in any street of London. On the 31st day of January, at night, it began to thaw, and five days after was no ice to be seen between London Bridge and Lambeth, which sudden thaw caused great floods and high waters that bare down bridges and houses and drowned many people in England, especially in Yorkshire.' In 1683 a hard frost set in early in December, and lasted till the 7th of February. On this occasion, the Thames being frozen, there was a street

upon it from the Temple to Southwark, lined with shops, and hackney coaches plied on the river. In 1762 a hard frost commenced on Christmas Day and lasted till the 29th of January, and carriages were again seen on the Thames; and in the same year the Rhine was frozen at Coblentz for nearly four weeks from the 21st of December. The great frost of the present century was the famous one of 1814, which lasted several weeks and put everybody to intense inconvenience. To add to this discomfort, London was wrapped in an extraordinary fog for a week in the early part of January of that year, which, among other misfortunes, caused the Prince Regent to lose his way when going to pay a visit to Lord Salisbury at Hatfield, and not to get further than Kentish Town."

ROBUR CAROLI (4th S. vi. 476, 533.)—“Cor | Caroli" is not a constellation, but a double star

situated in the constellation Canes Venatici.

G. T. PEAR TREE (4th S. vi. 476.)-The somewhat rustic-looking tenement which stands on the righthand side of the main road leading to Nazing, co. Essex, has borne from a remote period the appellation of "Pear Tree Farm." To this tenement or messuage (as I am informed) is appended about forty acres of land. This farm has most probably derived its name from a very old pear tree, the remains of which are now standing on the green opposite. But why the singular additional title of the sacred name of "God Almighty" is attached to it is beyond my knowledge to state, except that it might possibly have been connected with the ancient monastery of Waltham, either in part or whole, and so have been deemed sacred by the religious order of the Augustine brotherhood which bluff King Hall dissolved in

RIGHT TO QUARTER ARMS (4th S. vi. 476.)—In reply to W. M. H. C., I would repeat a solution of his difficulty given in a former number of "N. & Q.," though I am unable to refer to the exact page.

John Smith's eldest son dies s. p.; his second son succeeds, and leaves an only daughter; that daughter is the heiress in blood to her grandfather John Smith, and transmits his arms to her descendants. As long as the line of her descendants remains, John Smith's daughters (her aunts) can have no right to transmit the Smith arms to their issue. Their niece is the heiress through whom the right must first descend, and whose line must be extinct before her aunts become co-heiresses.

E. W.

BARON NICHOLSON (4th S. vi. 477.)-I quite agree with your editorial note. As an autobiography is in print, what more is wanted? Some account of his literary labours, however, would not be out of place in " N. & Q." He wrote and published in numbers Cockney Tales-very humorous, and quite free from anything offensive. He also published a novel, Dombey and Daughter. It had nothing to do with Dickens's story; the title was a mere ad captandum. He wrote also a pretty little poem called "The Derbyshire Dales," and some good imitations (not parodies) of Moore, Eliza Cooke, &c. I remember reading in The Times the advice of Mr. Commissioner Phillips after the delivery of the Baron's certificate-" Mr. Nicholson, one word at parting: in future confine your practice to your own court, and keep out of mine.' STEPHEN JACKSON.

EPIGRAM ON THE WALCHEREN EXPEDITION

(1st S. xi. 52; 4th S. v. 174, 497, 606; vi. 84, 144, 244.)-The controversy with regard to the correct version of this epigram is, I think, set at rest by the following extract from a letter addressed by Lord Palmerston to his sister, the Hon. Miss Temple, dated Feb. 27, 1810. (Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer's Life of Viscount Palmerston, 1870, i. 117):—

"Did you see the following epigram the other day in the Chronicle? if you did not it is a pity you should miss it, and I send it to you; it is by Jekyll:

'Lord Chatham with his sword undrawn,
Stood waiting for Sir Richard Strachan;
Sir Richard, eager to get at 'em,

Stood waiting-but for what ?-Lord Chatham!' "It is very good, I think, both in rhyme and point.” will be observed that Lord Palmerston states positively that the epigram is by Jekyll.

It

H. P. D. ROBERT DE COMYN, EARL OF NORTHUMBERLAND (4th S. vi. 457.)-S. will find some information

in Burke's Extinct and Dormant Peerage, ed. 1840, p. 135. The account therein given would not place him in the "first rank" among noblemen. H. W.

Robert de Comyn was Duke of Northumberland for the space of only one year, 1068-9, and was slain in Durham with most of his followers. ["The slaughter was made the fifth of the Calends of February, anno 1070." Milles' Cat. of Honour, p. 709).] See Sir H. Nicholas' Historic Peerage of England, revised by W. Courthope, Esq., 1857, p. 358.

D. C. E.

CUCUMBER (4th S. vi. 474.)-Cucumber from gherkin is only a false extension of the joke, as in the celebrated "pair of crocodiles" anecdote in Joe Miller. A. B., meeting C. D., detains him with a prolix narrative of the capital pair of gaiters he had picked up in Change Alley. C. D., to cut the matter short, facetiously suggests that he should call them his (pair of) alligators. Whereupon A. B. trots off delighted, and meeting E. F. retails that capital joke of C. D.'s about how the pair of gaiters that he had just purchased in Change Alley ought to be called a pair of crocodiles-"ha! ha!" "Well," said E. F., a pair of crocodiles? I don't see the joke." "No more do I now," said the hapless A. B., "but it seemed very funny when C. D. first said it!" So, as a joke may lose by repetition, a gherkin metamorphosed into a cucumber becomes pointless.

VERBUM SAP.

MR. JACKSON must excuse my saying that it is he who has spoiled this ancient joke, for to omit the cucumber is to omit the point. V.'s mistake is a mere putting the cart before the horse accidentally. The anecdote used to be told as follows:-King was pooh-poohing some man's etymologies with a "Nonsense! you may as well say my name is derived from cucumber." Well, so it is," was the quick retort: "Jeremiah KingJerry King-jerking - gherkin — cucumber!" Somehow I have always connected the story with a college dinner, but I really cannot say why. bad pun on Jerry King and gherkin would not have lived so long. In conclusion, will some one tell us how it is that young cucumbers are called gherkins? I do not see the etymology myself. P. P.

A

The derivation is not gherkin from Jeremiah King, but cucumber from King Jeremiah. Thus King Jeremiah, Jeremiah King, Jerry King, jerkin, gherkin, cucumber. R. S. CHARNOCK. Gray's Inn.

LOTHING LAND (4th S. vi. 476.)-Your correspondent R. T. C. may rest assured that there is no etymological connection between Lothing Land and Lothian and Lothringen. The latter (notwithstanding the termination -ingen) is simply a

corruption of Lotharingia, i. e. Lotharii Regnum. According to the Stat. Acc. Scot. the name Lothian is said to be from loch, but it is more probably derived from lud, lod=water. Polydore Virgil informs us that Laudonia (i. e. Lothian) in his time was an extensive district beginning at the Tweed, and stretching considerably beyond the city of Edinburgh. Lothing Land (in Domesday Ludingaland) anciently formed part of the hundred of Ludinga, which was afterwards called It may have had the Half Hundred of Mutford. its name from Lake Lothing, from the same root as the name Lothian. Sackling (Suffolk) says of Lothingland: "The Waveney washes its western side, while Oulton Broad and Lake Lothing form its southern boundary, which uniting with the Ocean near Lowestoft, insulate the district." R. S. CHARNOCK.

Gray's Inn.

P.S. Conf. the river names Lyd, Lud, Loddon, and local names commencing with Lud, Lod.

The name of Lothringen (Lorraine) has nothing to do with the German word loth, plummet, or with the accidental fact that the region which bears the name "adjoins Champagne, a level country." Lothringen is Lotharingia. The present Lothringen is a small part of a region that was named Lotharingia because it was assigned to the Emperor Lothar (Lothaire in Gibbon's Decline and Fall) when, on the death of Lewis the Pious (Charlemagne's son), the empire was divided among his three sons-Lothar, Charles (king of the West Franks), and Lewis (king of the East Franks). JOHN HOSKYNS-ABRAHALL. Combe Vicarage, near Woodstock.

"CERTOSINO" (4th S. vi. 475.)-I never heard or met with the word. But it may be a diminutive of Certosa, the Italian word for a Carthusian convent. In the Certosa, near Florence (now dissolved), various trades were carried on. There was a laboratory, a distillery of Chartreuse and peppermint-water, &c. &c., a shoemakers' shop, a tailors' ditto, &c. As a carpenters' workshop was on the premises, the inlaying of ivory and ornamental wood (a common occupation in Italy) may have formed a part of the conventual industry; and such work, as well as other labour, may have been called certosino work, or in Italian lavoro certosino. There does not seem to me any mystery about the term.

JAMES HENRY DIXON.

ANCIENT SCOTTISH DEED (4th S. vi. 453.)—The deed given by J. M. is doubtless interesting, but I have one in photozincograph lying before me, earlier by one hundred and twenty-one years, and deserving of notice in your columns, as believed to be the earliest document in the vernacular extant. It is an award of an ancestor of mine, Andrew Mercer, Lord of Meiklour, in a disputé

between Robert Stewart, Earl of Fife and Menteith, and John Logie, son and heir of Sir John Logie, Knight, relative to the lands of Logie and Strathgartny in Perthshire. It was given in presence of King Robert II. and his son John, Earl of Carrick, and is dated May 15, 1385.

The original is in the charter chest of Sir William D. Stewart, Bart., of Murthly, and a copy was published in the Edinburgh Evening Courant of March 15 last by a correspondent who signed himself J. A. R., and termed it "the oldest writing yet discovered in the Scotch language."

I understand that the fac-simile of which I am possessed is to be found in the Red Book of Grantully. W. T. M.

ROYAL TYPOGRAPHY (4th S. vi. 299, 443.)-It is well known that somewhere between the years 1840 and 1850 Her Majesty and Prince Albert occasionally employed themselves by etching upon copper. They received practical instruction in the art from Mr. Hayter, afterwards Sir George Hayter, who attended every morning at Windsor Castle for the purpose. If a private copper-plate press was made use of for striking off impressions of the plates produced, it would be at Windsor Castle, and not at Buckingham Palace, as stated by II. F. P.; but there is some doubt as to the existence of such a thing, and certain it is that Mr. John Burgess Brown, a bookseller and copper plate printer of Windsor, was regularly employed by the royal artists to produce impressions of the plates as they were etched. As secrecy was desired, he was careful to see that the same quantity of proof paper which he had given to his workman was received back in the shape of impressions. It seems, however, that the latter, perhaps without ulterior object, struck off a waste or trial proof or two of each on card or ordinary paper. These he pasted, as curiosities, in a sort of album, to the number of sixty-three, and in this state they were seen by a Mr. Jasper Tomsett Judge, of Windsor. This person managed, after some haggling, to purchase the lot for the sum of five pounds, and having cleaned and mounted them, proposed to recoup himself by their exhibition and by the sale of an analytical list, under the title of A Descriptive Catalogue of the Royal Victoria and Albert Gallery of Etchings. At this the royal artists were greatly annoyed, and gave instructions to their solicitor to file a bill in Chancery against Strange, the publisher of the catalogue, on the ground that the etchings referred to had been wrongfully obtained.

The subsequent proceedings-which certainly appear to have been harshly oppressive against the offending parties-with a list of the etchings, and a large amount of curious matter, are minutely set forth in a publication entitled

"The Royal Etchings.' A Statement of Facts relating to the Origin, Object, and Progress of the Pro

of George twelfth Marquis of Winchester werePAULET OF AMPORT (4th S. vi. 6.)-The brothers

"1. Norton Paulet, M.P. for Winchester, married, but died s. p. 1759."

2. Henry P., capt. in the Army, died unmarried 1743. 3. John P., in the Army, died unmarried in Germany. 4. Charles P., capt. R.Ñ., died unmarried 1762. 5. William P., in the Navy, died unmarried 1772. 6. Herbert P., capt. in the Army, died unmarried 1746.

7. Francis P., died a minor at Cambridge 1742."-Debrett's Peerage, 1825. CHARLES RUSSELL.

Camp, Aldershot.

“THERE WAS A LITTLE MAN" (4th S. vi. 511.) MR. JACKSON is careless as to the measure of this old nursery rhyme. His last line would neither read nor sing in time. It ought to be

"And shot him through the head.”

The first and second verses are constantly sung in Percy Society's Tracts) which is not so generally the nursery; but there is a third verse (see the known. There is in the same collection another short ballad, which goes to the same measure

"There was a little man, and he wooed a little maid,"

where the little maid, with a most housewifely prudence, desires to know his means of support in marriage, and asks-

"Will the love that you're so rich in
Make a fire in the kitchen,

Or the little God of Love turn the spit?"

493.)-There is a remarkable coincidence in this narrative, which I mention with a desire to elicit some fuller information, tending to identify Parson Avery as an emigrant from England, and a settler in North Carolina-probably the pastor of a congregation composed of Presbyterians emigrating from Newbury in Berkshire," one of the thousands of families who, in 1635, retired to New England," and possibly founders of Newberne (Newberie ?) in the above-named state.

THE SWAN-SONG OF PARSON AVERY (4th S. vi.

The Avery family were connected with the clothing trade in Newbury, Berks, at that date. They were Presbyterians, and the name has only been extinct for a few years. Latterly they were Blackwall Hall factors in Cateaton Street, and a branch settled at Marlbro in Wilts. Dr. Avery, the second treasurer of Guy's Hospital, was related to the Averys of Newbury. They used the arms confirmed by Cooke to Wm. Avery of Fillingby, co. Warwick-viz. ermine on a pale engrailed azure, three lions' heads couped or.

PATCHIN (4th S. vi. 249, 399, 486.) - Pannus, the Latin equivalent of patch, is used by Pliny of "a substance that grows on the tree gilops besides the acorns." (Pl. 16, 8, 13, § 35.) May not, therefore, the "legend "We've got another little chap at 'ome as this one 'ere ain't even so much as a patch upon " ("N. & Q." p. 399) mean this " one 'ere is no more to be compared with "the little chap at 'ome," than is the parasite upon the oak with the acorns? Or may not a simpler elucidation be found in the practice of mending tattered garments? The patch should be as like as may be to the material to be patched. Hence, when one person is very much unlike another, he may properly be said to be " patchin for him." EDMUND TEW, M.A.

no

Addison makes mention of baby's corals in No. 1. of the Spectator, where, drawing a fanciful portrait of himself, he says:

"The gravity of my behaviour at my very first appearance in the world seemed to favour my mother's dream; for, as she has often told me, I threw away my rattle when I was two months old, and would not make use of my coral till they had taken the bells from it."

The Spectator appeared in 1711, and its author was brought into the world with the gravity and solemnity in the text recorded in 1672; so this takes us back two hundred years in the history of the coral and bells. JULIAN SHARMAN.

ECSTATICS (4th S. vi. 475.)-Last year there was published a very able and interesting work descriptive of the town and vicinity of Gheel, the Bedlam of Belgium. The title of the book is Gheel, the City of the Simple, by the author of Flemish Interiors, Chapman and Hall, 1869. It is dedicated to that distinguished philanthropist and Belgian savant, the late Dr. Ducpétiaux. Perhaps this might be of service to your inquirer.

EDMUND JOY.

SAMPLERS (4th S. vi. 500.)-Presuming that M. D. does not desire to confine the specimens of sampler poesy for which he asks to such as are obtainable in the dwellings of the humbler classes, I send some lines worked on a sampler by one of my aunts at the age of nine :—

"Jesus, permit thy gracious name to stand
As the first work of Arabella's hand!
And while her fingers on the canvas move,
Engage her tender thoughts to seek thy love.
With thy dear children may she have a part,
And form thy image on her youthful heart.

"MARY ARABELLA PEARSON.
"July 11th, 1801."

I shall be glad to know if any of your correspondents have met with these lines elsewhere, as my aunt, who was taken to her rest just nine years later, was from an early age accustomed to versify in the style of the above.

J. A. PN.

THE BOY-BISHOP OF THE PROPAGANDA FOR

CHRISTMAS (4th S. vi. 491.)-As MR. MACCABE has recently furnished two notes upon Christmas Customs and Boy-Bishops, I write to say that the custom exists even in our time at the Propaganda College of Rome of choosing on Christmas Eve (by ballot) a boy-bishop. The practice is said