66

a

Ramsay. Edinburgh, printed for the Author, (in private hands) relating the same story
1779.” The volume is dedicated to his Grace, -in Norman - French-but attributing the
Henry, Duke of Buccleugh, Colonel of the erection of the pillars to Adam. Could any
South Fencibles of Scotland. It is embellished of your readers direct me to a common
with portraits of some distinguished naval source, English or continental ?
and military commanders, including Keith,

ETHEL LEGA-WEEKES.
Bosca wen, Hawke, Amherst, Wolfe.
Who was this David Ramsay? His name

WHY HAS ENGLAND NO NOBLESSE ?-NO is not in the list of officers of the South teacher or book easily accessible gives me Fencibles, nor in the 1777 · Army List," nor any answer to the question why England in any biographical dictionary I have been has no noblesse in the continental sense. Was able to consult.

W. S.

it that our ancient nobility or baronage were

nearly all killed in the Wars of the Roses, “CAPILLARIANS." - This odd word occurs and that Henry VII.'s new nobles never got

. in a letter from Charles Lamb to Southey, popular devotion? Was there not a statute dated 10 August, 1825, and printed in E. V. passed under the Commonwealth, that deLucas's grand edition of the works of Charles legalizes the titles of younger sons ? and Mary Lamb, vol. vii. (1905), p. 691.

T. WILSON. Lamb is represented as writing, "I call all Harpenden. good Christians the Church, Capillarians and all." The.N.E.D.' quotes the passage for

4TH LIGHT DRAGOONS' UNIFORM.-I should Capillarians,” which it calls a nonce-word,

be glad if any one could inform me where without explaining it in any way ; but is it to find a picture representing a captain in not a

mere ghost-word, transcribed and the 4th Light Dragoons between the years printed by mistake for “Capellarians," which 1808 and 1814, and an exact representation would be a Lamb-like and therefore 'suitable or description of the uniform then worn. name for Non-conformists in their character

A. FRANCIS STEUART. of Chapel-men as distinguished from Church- “ TWOPENNY FOR HEAD.-In the schoolmen?

R. MARSHAM-TOWNSHEND. boys' game of leapfrog, when the head is BAINES FAMILY:-Can any of your readers usual phrase, I believe, is still "Tuck in your

bent down so that one can jump over it, the help me to trace the ancestry of John Baines, twopenny

(or tuppenny).” Why has the head of 'Layham, Suffolk, who early in the been so often called “tuppenny,”? eighteenth century married Elizabeth, daughter of the Rev. James Johnson, rector dictionaries I find no explanation of this

In my collection of English and slang of Long Melford, Suffolk, to whose memory curious phraseology, about which I seek there is a monument in Long Melford Church? further information. A. A. BAINES.

J. LAWRENCE-HAMILTON, M.R.C.S. HYSKER OR HESKER. Will some yachts- 30, Sussex Square, Brighton. man who has recently visited these islets (about ten miles west from Rum) give a brief Yeats published in The Boston Pilot, in 1887,

BALLAD OF FRANCIS RÉNYI.—Mr. W. B. description of them? Is either of them inhabited ? When Lady Grange (whose sham

ballad under the title • How Ferencz funeral had been celebrated) was carried off [Francis] Rényi kept Silent. Soon afterby the Jacobites in 1732, she was kept here wards a lady published an independent for nearly a year, 1732-3, and then moved to version of the same subject in some London St. Kilda. See 'D.N.B.,' s.v. Erskine, James magazine under the title .This is the Story (1679-1754).

S. G. D.

of Rényi. The tale is about a young Hun

garian patriot who was shot by the Austrians TESTOUT. — Should the well-known rose because he refused to reveal the hiding-place Caroline Testout be called Tai-tout or Tes of his companions. Could any kind reader tout?

DELTA. help me to find this second version | Poole's

Index to Periodicals' I have searched in ADAM'S COMMEMORATIVE PILLARS.-At p. 96 vain. Mr. Yeats's poem has since appeared of the Early English Text Society's edition in his Wanderings of Oisin, and other of Cursor Mundi' (a Northumbrian poem of Poems' (1889).

L. L. K. the fourteenth century) there is a story of Lamech's sons making two pillars (one BRISTOL MERCHANT ADVENTURERS' COMof tile, the other of marble) inscribed with PANY. I desire information regarding the a record of the arts, crafts, and sciences of early Bristol companies, especially the early the age. I have seen a contemporary Ms. Merchant Adventurers Company of that

now

a

city. Did any Bristol company bear arms reproach, said: “Then I told the poor girl as follows? "Two garbs, a chief chequy, in a falsehood !". The lesson was a sharp one, base a lamb." I can find no family which and the small boy returned home with a muchbore it. These arms appear in the neighbour- enriched vocabulary, including pot only hood of Bristol in 1630.

G. A. T. Cuddie and lonnin, but a stee, à cleg, a byre, Albany, N.Y.

and kye, and many more. [Mr. John Latimer, the historian of Bristol, who Moreover, from that day the idea of died 4 January, 1904, published the previous year, acquiring the senses of provincial words and through Arrowsmith of Bristol, “The History of antiquated expressions haunted him (as the Society of Merchant Venturers of the City Wordsworth says) like a passion ; and he of Bristol, with some Account of the Anterior lived to found the English Dialect Society, Merchant Guilds.' Our American correspondent is likely to obtain from this work all the informa- and to direct it till its work was done. And tion he needs, as The Athenæum stated on 30ctober, now in the 'English Dialect Dictionary'any 1903 : “Mr. Latimer has taken great pains to dis- reader may find the word loaning, known in cover collateral evidence of the rise and develop eight dialects with something like fifteen ment of the Bristol merchants.”]

variant forms, fully illustrated with a whole POEM BY SIR THOMAS WYATT.-In reading column of examples. through Wyatt's poems recently, I was struck And still, across the far expanse of fully with the resemblance of one lyric to a similar sixty years, I hear the anxious tones of that piece ascribed to Alexander Scot, the Scottish fresh Cumbrian voice :.“Hae ye seen oor poet.. I have no means of comparing dates coodie doon the lonnin?” at present, but I rather think that Scot

WALTER W. SKEAT. preceded Wyatt. The name of the poem In the 'Scottish Dictionary'Jamieson quotes referred to is in both writers “Lo! what it from Cartul. Aberd.' the phrase, “A lonyng is to love." I should be glad if any reader of lyand throw the mur betwix twa ald stane *N. & Q.' would offer an explanation of this dykes,” explaining that the extract bears curious parallel.

W. B.

upon

an agreement of 1446. His definition

of the term is " a narrow inclosed way.' As Beplics.

a supplementary meaning he gives "The

privilege of having a common through which “ LONNING.”

cattle pass to or return from the places of (10th S. iv. 29.)

pasture.”. Under the entry "Loan, Lone,

Lonning,' Jamieson both discusses and SIXTY years ago, about the year 1845, a illustrates pretty fully. He conjectures that small boy from the neighbourhood of London the word is allied to Eng. “lawn," but he went on a visit to an uncle at Eskrigg, some shows conclusively that in its most familiar three miles from Wigton in Cumberland. One application it is practically an equivalent morning he strolled through the garden into "lane." The thing denoted is “An opening the lane beyond. The turn to the left led to between fields of corn, near or leading to the the high road, and presented no interest; so homestead, left uncultivated, for the sake of he turned to the right. The lane was winding driving the cattle homewards.” The lexiand long, and seemed interminable; so that, cographer adds,

“ Here the cows are freafter observing nothing except a small quently milked." This explains the reference donkey grazing there, he prudently turned in Jean Elliot's Flowers of the Forest':back, and had almost reached the starting- I've heard them liltin' at the owe-milkin', point, when he was suddenly, aware of a Lasses a-liltin' before the dawn of day; young girl accompanied by two little brothers, But now they are moanin' on ilka green loanin'; who appealed to him in the enigmatic sen.

The Flowers o' the Forest are a'wede away. tence : Hae ye seen oor coodio doon the It also shows how sadly adrift some interlonnin?". Being hopelessly ignorant of the preter is in the volume of Selections from sense of the sentence, he had nothing to say Burns' for which Mr. Andrew Lang stands but “No!". Nevertheless, he treasured up sponsor. Explaining “the kye stood rowtin' the sound of it, made haste back, and burst i the loan," which occurs towards the close into the parlour with the cry, "Hae ye seen of 'The Twa Dogs,' Mr. Lang or a coadjutor oor coodie doon the lonnin' What does it says that the loan is the milking-shed ! mean?". It was soon explained: the coodie This is manifestly a case of allowing the was Cuddie (or Cuthbert), the equivalent of context to suggest a meaning ; it is “inthe Southern Neddy, the pet - naine for a genious but not correct," as a Greek prodonkey; and lonnin was the lane. Wheroupon fessor aforetime sometimes remarked with the small boy, with a keen sense of self- ambiguous commendation.

Jamieson goes

16

on to say that the term is used for “. a narrow experience of the significance and meaning inclosed way, leading from a town or village, of the word.

J. GRIGOR. sometimes from one part of a village to 105, Choumert Road, Peckham, S.E. another"; and finally adds that “in some towns it is used to denote a narrow street."

This word is used several times by Robert At the present time, it is quite commonly is thus explained in the glossary : "Lonnin,

Anderson in his Cumberland Ballads,' and applied to the road leading from the highway to a farm steading. In his "Eminent a narrow lane leading from one village to Men of Fife' Conolly tells how one sea

another." Anderson was born at Carlisle in captain once hailed another in tropical 1770, where he died in 1833, as I learn from waters, and asked whence he had come. The

the collected edition of his works published answer given was "Foul-hugger," which at Wigton. The volume bears no date, but indicated an inland farm of East Fife, and it must have appeared about the middle of last straightway brought the response,

"What century. From “The Bundles ov Oddities' was your weather as you came down Auld (p. 6), in which a young woman describes her Leys loan?” The interlocutors were from the sweethearts, I give the following example :same hilly district of the East Neuk, and they The neist was a Whaker, cawt Jacep, were playing with the names of rural scenes

He turnt up the wheytes ov his een, familiar to them from boyhood.

An talkt about flesh an the spirit

Thowt I, what can Gravity mean?
THOMAS BAYNE.

Iu dark winter neeghts, i' the lonnins,
In her exquisite elegy The Flowers of the

He'd weade thro' the durt buin his tneo ; Forest' Jean Elliot has invested the word

It cuilt his het heart, silly gander!

And theer let him stowter for me! "loaning" with enduring vitality and charm. Twice, in her poignant lament for her The word is used in Northumberland ; and countrymen who were slain at Flodden, there I can almost fancy I see the amorous Quaker occurs to the Scottish ear the haunting stumbling and trudging through the mire of phrase “ on ilka green loaning." The use of “lonnins" that I knew fifty years ago. the term "loaning" is entirely confined to

To the volume from which I have quoted the southern district of Scotland ; north of are appended "Cumberland Ballads, by Edinburgh one would never hear the word, John Rayson of Aglionby," one of which is which is peculiar to the Borders, colloquially entitled Charlie M'Glen,' a notorious thief, used. “ Loaning” is not therefore

of whom it is said :synonym for lane in North-Country dialect.” At neets i' the lonning he's seen at aw teymes. A path between fields is so designated in the word is also Scotch. JOHN T. CURRY. some of the southern counties of the northern kingdom. The outskirts of the Border towns This word (or "loaning "), signifying a lane and villages change but little, and these or narrow road, is in common use all over the

green” lanes, where lads and lasses have north of England. See · English Dialect Dicfor generations kept tryst and plighted their tionary,' p. 633, where numerous examples troth, retain, though a hedge or wall may be are given of its use in Northumberland, on one or both sides, the old-time designation Durham, Cumberland, Westmorland, Yorkof the "loaning.” In ‘The Antiquary. Scott shire, and Lancashire. At Alston, in Cumalludes to "the lang dike that gaes doon the berland, where I spend great part of the loaning." Jean Elliot's "green loaning," summer, we have "The Loaning." and from its setting in her poem, was, no doubt, Loaning Foot," and at Garrigill, an the grassy plot on which the cows were adjoining village, Lonning Head."

The milked. In Mr. Quiller-Couch's 'Anthology latter is thus described in Palmer's Tyne of English Verse, "loaning" is vaguely and its Tributaries,' London, 1882, p. 89:defined as a “field-path.".

“Lonning Head means Lane head, by which During a visit to Dumfries some years ago latter name it is now becoming generally known. I asked a lad how I could get to a certain It stands at the top or head of a steep lane leading point of the river that flows close by the up from the south-east corner of the village-not town. Turn down so-and-so, he said, "and shaded by thick hedges of hazel and sweet briar;

such a lane as we may see in Surrey or Kent, gang along the loanin!”; and the accent of instead there are here stone walls, and the roadway my instructor, as well as my walk in the is like nothing so much as th stony bed of a " loanin' pronounced

thus - that fine torrent.' summer day, I shall never forget. For the See also Heslop's 'Northumberland Words, first time in my life I heard “loaning, » Atkinson's •Cleveland Dialect,' Ferguson's spoken in the musical Doric of the Scottish • Dialect of Cumberland,' and 'A Glossary of Border, and for the first time I had personal Provincial Words used in Teesdale,' in all of

6

а

"

which the word “lonnin" appears as mean-Town to Highgate. Col. Fawcett fell moring a lane.

RICHARD WELFORD. tally wounded, and was carried to * The Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

Camden Arms," Randolph Street, where, notYes, “lonnin'" is a synonym for lane withstanding the skilful attention of the two about Durham. There is “ Pelton lonnin'”

most distinguished surgeons of the day, near Chester-le-Street; and I think that Brodie and Liston, he died two days later. a lane was usually called a "lonnin” at

An inquest was held immediately afterHoughton-le-Spring about 1861. J. T. F.

wards by Mr. Wakley, the coroner Mr. Winterton, Doncaster.

John Cumberland, the friend of George

Cruikshank, and publisher of Cumberland's Halliwell, in his Dictionary of Archaic British Theatre,' being the foreman of the and Provincial Words,' and Thomas Wright, jury. A verdict of wilful murder was rein his Dictionary of Obsolete Words, corded against the parties to the duel, but explain this word to mean in the north of Lieut. Munro Aled the country and was England a lane or by-road. The latter also believed to have entered the Prussian service. adds that a place for milking cows is called a Four years afterwards he surrendered himself "loaning." EVERARD HOME COLEMAN.

to justice, and on 14 August, 1847, he was 71, Breckpock Road.

found guilty of wilful murder, and sentenced “Lonning” is a well-known synonym for to the capital penalty, which, on a strong lane in Westmorland and also in Durham recommendation to mercy, was commuted to county. In St. Oswald's Churchyard at twelve months' imprisonment. Lieut. Cuddy, Durham, Lane Head, Middleton, Teesdale, one of thọ seconds, was tried in 1843, but appears as Lonning Head; and in several discharged, as the evidence was not held to Westmorland title-deeds a lane bounding a

be sufficient for a conviction. The unforclose of land is described as a lonning."

tunate widow of the deceased officer was S. H. deprived, by a Governinent which was de

termined to put down duelling, of the pension The quotation would be more correctly which, under the rules of the service, she written, "He joost ganged doon t lonnin would have received, and these stringent tappey lappey, To say a thing has " gaen doon t read lonnin

measures seem to have had the desired effect, is a jocular form of saying it has been swallowed.

M. N.

as this was the last military duel to take

place in England. W. F. PRIDEAUX. [R. B-R, W. B. H., SIR HERBERT MAXWELL, MISTLETOE, MR. J. PLATT, Sr. SWITHIN, and MR.

The history of the Munro-Fawcett duel is J. H. STEPHENSON also thanked for replies.] given in Walford and Thornbury, 'Old and

New London,' v. 376, and in “ N. & Q., gth S. MAJOR MONRO (10th S. iii. 487); --- There is Strang, was printed in 1847, and there is a

ix. 230. The 'Report of the Trial,' by M. an interesting account of this duel in Miller's notice of it, with portraits, in The Ilustrated "St. Pancras, Past and Present,' pp. 269-73. London News, 21 August, 11 September, 1847. The combatants were Lieut.-Col. Fawcett,

W. C. B. C.B., of the 55th Regiment, and his brotherin-law, Lieut. Munro (not Monro), of the

Lieut. Munro is probably identical with the Royal Horse Guards. Both were officers of Major James St. John Munro, of the 31st Foot, some distinction, and Lieut. Munro, who had who is stated in Walford's County Families enlisted in the Blues nineteen years pro: John Munro, E.I.C., of Teaninich, by Char

(1865) to have been the eldest son of General viously, had as a reward for his meritorious service received a commission in 1829, and lotte, youngest daughter of the Rev. Dr. was appointed adjutant of his regiment. The St. John Blacker. He was born in 1810. two gentlemen had married sisters, daughters

J. HOLDEN MACMICHAEL. of the principal medical officer

at Jamaica, (J. R. F. G. refers to 'Annals of our Time,' under and at the time of the duel Col. Fawcett London Neios of 8 July, 1843. MR. E. H. COLEMAN,

1 July, 1843; MR. R. L. MORETON to The Illustrated. had one surviving daughter, while his oppo- Mr. C. S. WARD, and MR. J. Watson also send nent had five children. The cause of the replies.] quarrel was a reflection by the Colonel on Lieut. Munro's judgment in the management PILLION : FLAILS (10th S. iii. 267, 338, 375, of some property, entrusted to his care by 433).—I have seen the observations on fails, Col. Fawcett while he was abroad. A chal, though rather late in the day, and if you care lenge ensued, and the duol took place on to hear the voice of the fail from Little 1 July, 1843, in a field near Maiden Lane England beyond Wales, I can bear witness to (now Brecknock Road), leading from Camden the truth of the statement that in out-of-the

of use.

a

way places flails are still used. There are some partly erroneous forms I am sorry to farms near us in South Pembrokeshire to hear it, but it does not affect the truth of my which no road leads, only a cart-track across argument, and PROF. SKEAT tacitly admits fields, or à soft, macadamless lane; the as much by amplifying his own. For he now threshing machine would have much ádo to says that in Anglo-Saxon d and ô were never reach them unless in a drought or a hard interchangeable at any early time. This, of frost, and the sheaves of their harvest must course, would cover the fifth and sixth ceneither be carted to a hospitable neighbour's turies, from documents of which period the farmyard, or threshed at home by hand. Saxon word Ongle and the Welsh one Eingył

I have known a woman to thresh here. A have come down to us. PROF. SKEAT also couple of years ago a small farmer brought suggests that I turn to the .N.E.D.' in order his corn to our barn, and when we looked in to learn that the degraded vowel in bôra as we passed, the daughter was wielding a (=bán) was never seen or heard of before second flail with her brother, but it is not 1300. But a reference to the ‘N.E.D.' could usual, for when we looked over the half-door, not prove all that; and in view of the fact the girl laughed and stopped.

that there is an occasional interchange in all One or two larger farms here (none are the Old Low German dialects between å and really large) had a fixed threshing machine 6 (vide Helfenstein, u.s., p. 44), I prefer to worked by horses; these have now gone out think that the emergence of ô for à, in Eng

M. S. CLARK. land in the thirteenth century, was the Robeston Wathen, Narberth.

triumph of a tendency, that had always The following paragraph from The Athe-existed sporadically, and that it was not a næum of 10 September, 1881, bears on the sudden and general change of the nature of use of the flail:

a vocal epidemic. “A correspondent sends a piece of folk-lore de- tion in endeavouring to correct his spelling

PROF. SKEAT twits me with my presumprived from a Swiss villager...... When any one is pass. ing a barn where the threshers are at work, he may of an Anglo-Saxon word ; but that is not know how many persons are handling the fail by quite accurate. It is the etymon of an Angloattending closely to the rhythm of the threshing Saxon word that I ain trying to deal with. If two are employed, the flails seem to say, 'Barthol. Barthol!" if three threshers are at work, the sound Angul, the alleged etymon, with å and u, is is · Bartholo, Bartholo! if four, Bartholomä, repudiated by the sixth-century Welsh Bartholomä ! if five, ‘Bartholomäus, Bartholo. word Eingyl, which indicates à or ô, and by mäus !' This is the reason, we are gravely in the Anglo-Saxon forms Engle, Engle, which formed, why the Apostle Bartholomew obtained the are cases of hidden umlaut. In concluding honour of being the patron saint of threshers."

my remarks on this subject, I would repeat ELLEN MASTERS.

that the etymon postulated by these three Ealing.

forms is angil.

A. ANSCOMBE. “ ENGLAND, " “ ENGLISH": THEIR PRONUN

4, Temple Road, Hornsey, N. CIATION (10th S. iii. 322, 393, 453, 492).—The “ VESCALION" (10th S. iv. 28).- This is a verbal forms to which PROF. SKEAT objects fearful wild-fowl of a ghost-word. Its origiu were tendered with others in proof of the becomes obvious when an appeal is made general proposition that degradation of a from "Bohn's foot-note to Cicero on Old into o was not a criterion of the quantity of Age'" to the sixty-ninth Rambler. “Reward that vowel, and not as proof that Ộ and å in the vescalion by conquest, by the pleasures literary Anglo-Saxon were interchangeable. of victory," should, of course, be reward The forms I gave amply supported my state the vexation of contest by the pleasures of ment, the truth of which is not disputed ; | victory. To judge by this sample, Bohn's and they show that Prof. SKEAT's argument foot-notes to Cicero on Old Age' would was a contingent one, as I said, and that it seem to be a curious performance. could not stand alone. They were drawn

EDWARD BENSLY. from Helfenstein's Comparative Grammar Uppingham. of the Teutonic Languages,' p. 63, where, under the head-line Old and Middle Eng. Rest, rest, perturbed spirit!”. The passage

Here is a ghost-word with a vengeance ! lish,' may be read, “ The Anglo-Saxon à is in the Rambler runs as follows: “By spirit sometimes retained in late Saxon, sometimes and vigour we may force a way and reward inclines to 0." A list of twelve pairs of words the vexation of contest by the pleasures of is then given showing the wavering of a and

victory."

Sr. SWITHIN. Ô in what Helfenstein calls late Saxon, or Old English. It is in this list that hâlic, CALDWELL FAMILY (10th S. iii. 468).-I canhólic, appear. If Dr. Helfenstein included not answer C. T. E.'s questions directly. But

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