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Northern lape. Halliwell-Phillipps gives the verb as "to go slovenly or untidily, to walk about in the mud," in the E.D.S. Glossaries for Manley, &c., and Holderness it is similarly given "to besmear, &c.," and in Miss Jackson's Shropshire Word-Book we find "Lapesing, dabbling, as in water or slop." In the same page of Marston we find "Lappes up naught but filth and excrements" where the same word is used in this same sense.

trary, it is a I very much published " letter, as a certain distinguished writer might have said. I have met with it three times during the last fortnight. It appears this letter was printed in Chambers's edition of Burns (vol. ii. p. 51); also in the Ayr Observer in 1846. In the large sixvolume edition of Burns's Works, published in Edinburgh by Mr. Scott Douglas some three years ago, this letter is given (vol. v. p. 194). Lastly, in the 8. Taber-fac'd.-I can understand this in p. 272 memoir of the Hon. Henry Erskine, reviewed in to mean a face round, smooth, and hairless, like your columns shortly after its appearance in 1882, the surface of a taber; but this use of it in p. 240 this letter, and another from Burns to the Dean as an epithet for Lampatho does not seem to of Faculty, are printed; so that this is not a solitary agree with the other descriptive epithets so plenti- communication from the poet to that gentleman, as fully applied, but rather with Shakespeare's one writer affirms of it. Now it seems to me that "cittern-head." BR. NICHOLSON. the conductor of no paper such as “N. & Q.” can be P.S.--Since writing the above I have found, as expected to test or "verify" in every instance of regards 1, in R. Lovell's Nat. Hist., 1661, under this kind. Time would not admit of it. But our "Boar," "The genitalls help against the impo- painstaking Editor may well expect of his contritency of Venus," and under "Sow," "The same butors that they take some little care to ascertain [the milke] mixed with honey causeth coiture in that their facts are in order ere they communicate men and conception in women," and, thoroughly them. Some time ago, for example, a letter was supporting my suggestion, "The marrow applied sent in by a popular writer, and printed in helpeth bleare eyes, and causeth venery." "N. & Q." as hitherto unpublished, which a referexample of the use of the doctrine of antipathies Ience to such a well-known book as the Lives of the quote from the same, pp. 118-9, "[the lard] With Chancellors would have shown at once to be the ashes of womens haires it cureth St. Anthonie erroneously described. his fire [erysipelas]." They seem to have been used because St. Anthony was celebrated for his avoidance of women.

As an

A. F.

[The foregoing letter expresses so fully the feelings of the Editor upon the subject that he would gladly give it prominence. In the case of communications such as the so-called unpublished letter of Burns it is all but impossible for editorial supervision to exercise an adequate check.]

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AN UNPUBLISHED LETTER OF BURNS THE POET (6th S. ix. 25). So far from this being an unpublished letter of Burns, and appearing now for the W. V, F (6th S. viii. 522).—In discussing the first time in an Ulster paper, the letter is familiar possible interchange of the letters w, v, and f, to all Burns readers. So far back as 1846 it was PROF. SKEAT " protests against the current printed in the Ayr Observer, and was included in vague notions that any consonant can be 'corthe 1851 edition of The Life and Works of Burns, rupted' into any other." I am almost disposed to by Robert Chambers. Since then I cannot tell how "protest" against "corrupted" as, at least, too often it has been printed in the poet's correspond-hard a word for any interchange of either of these ence, down to the latest and most exhaustive of all the numerous editions of Burns, the six-volume Library Edition of William Paterson, Edinburgh, 1877-9. The political ballad referred to in the letter is the song beginning, "When Guildford good our Pilot stood," was on the American War of Independence, written in February, 1787, and incorporated in the edition then passing through the press, which the poet superintended during his residence in Edinburgh in the spring of that year. The only notice the ballad elicited was from the Rev. Hugh Blair, D.D., who remarked that "the ploughman bard's politics smell of the smithy." J. G.

Liverpool.

The letter which your correspondent has sent to you as an unpublished one by Burns has been going "the round of the papers" of late, and though it is of considerable interest it is very far from correct to describe it as "unpublished." On the con

three "consonants." On the contrary, I believe that these three letters have many powers or effects that are common to all three, and still more that are common to either two of them. It is, indeed, notorious that both ƒ and v, and v and w, are respectively constantly interchanged in the mouths of many thousands of us.

I venture upon this question because, having been formerly challenged upon it, I had already looked into it. I had once quoted " Heneverdon," mentioned by Westcote as a former name of what is now" Hemerdon," a hamlet of Plympton, Devon, as being a transplanted example of the wardines of the Wye and Severn district of Wiccia. In company with other local evidences, I had held it as showing a Mercian or Anglian colony in that part of West Wales, out flanking the West Saxon advance upon the Damnonian Britons. This was demurred from by another of this strict school of philologers, who does not believe our language has a

seated at Sundane Castle and other places. Early in the sixteenth century a branch settled at Sprowston, in Norfolk. They bore arms Or, a raven proper; and for a crest a squirrel sejant, cracking a nut proper, with the motto, Deus pascit corvos."

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will of its own, but holds that Englishmen have been tongue-tied for a thousand years by an artificial, ex post facto code of "laws," but who, in spite of this superstition, has himself contributed to historical topography some most valuable results of his own ingenuity. He objected that "Heneverdon " could not be awardine, because in "Domesday single Miles Corbet was the second son of Sir Thomas v between vowels normally represents not w but f Corbet, of Sprowston. (pronounced v)." I replied at once by an example was called to the Bar at Lincoln's Inn. His abiliHe studied the law, and which showed not only the change of the two con- ties early brought him into notice. In the year sonants to which he objected, but also all three of 1625, upon Mr. Gwynn's resigning the recorderthose now objected to by PROF. SKEAT. The ship of Yarmouth in his favour, the Corporation same name appears in a charter of Bp. Leofric unanimously elected him to that office, upon (Cod. Dip. 940) as "Doflisc"; in Domesday as condition that he became "a resident" within "Dovles"; in Exon-Domesday, "douelis" (be-six months; and, in fact, he then did so reside in tween vowels); and in late British Gazetteers, &c., as "Dawlish." I believe also I have since realized “Hemerdon" and "Heneverdon" in Domesday "Chemeworde," and in Exon-Domesday as "Chemeuuorda," Domesday forms common to the Mercian or Wiccian -wardines, and to the various clusters or showers of worthys, argued to have been Anglian colonies of Mercian conquests in the Saxon kingdoms.

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I do not, of course, doubt that the progress or changes of our language have had causes, which are more or less so intimately related to each other as to have tempted the word "laws" to them; but I hold that these artificial codifications have not yet comprehended anything like all of them; so that such codes are better for what they affirm than what they are too often assumed to deny.

=

THOMAS KERSLAKE.

Bristol. SILENT DARK (6th S. viii. 387). — I recommend to MR. PALMER'S attention on the subject of contrary meanings, the labours of the eminent scholar Dr. Abel of Berlin, and particularly the last, Gegensinn, published by Trübner, 1883. This contains a long list of Semitic words. I cannot myself give any examples of silent = dark, although I recognize it. These phenomena have been dealt with by me in Prehistoric and Protohistoric Comparative Philology, where the first table of equivalents was given. They result from the fundamental laws of speech language, connected with its origin in gesture or sign language. The special cases of Gegensinn have been copiously examined by Dr. Abel for several families of language, but more particularly for the Egyptian and Coptic languages, on which he has written in German and English. As a simple feature of the Semitic languages the occurrence has long been observed by the Arab and Oriental grammarians. Of late the discussion has extended to a wider philological

area.

HYDE CLARKE.

MILES CORBET (6th S. viii. 108, 153). The Corbets were an old family in Shropshire, where their descendants are still large landed proprietors,

that town, his house being in the Market Place; it is now known as the "Weavers' Arms"; and he was presented with his freedom without fine. Shortly after his election he was returned to Parliament, where he became a determined opponent of the Court, and took an active part in Parliamentary matters. In 1642, he was chairman of a committee which exercised the power of arrest by the sergeant-at-arms; and in the list of members who "advanced horse, money, and plate for the defence of Parliament," there is the entry, "Mr. Corbet will bring in fifty pounds." he was made Clerk of the Court of Wards. In In 1644, 1648 he was appointed one of the two Registrars of Chancery (which alone was worth 700l. a year) in the room of Col. Long, one of the suspected members. In 1643 the Corporation presented Mr. Recorder with a gratuity of 251. He was chairman of the Committee of Parliament for Scandalous Ministers, in which capacity it is said that when the Rev. T. Reeve, Rector of Aldborough and Coleby, who had been ejected for dissuading his parishioners from rebellion, was brought before him, Corbet told him he was an old malignant, and he would see him hanged for it"; he was, however, only confined as a prisoner at the gatehouse for three years. He had the principal management of the obnoxious office of sequestrations, the duties of which rendered him so unpopular that in 1652 he gladly went to Ireland, as one of the commissioners for managing the affairs of that country. He held the post last named until suspended under an accusation of malversation, from which, however, he was ably defended by Ludlow, who averred in Parliament that Corbet had "manifested such integrity" that "he impaired his own estate for the public service, whilst he was the greatest husband of the Commonwealth's treasure." He afterwards accepted the post of Chief Baron of the Exchequer in Ireland, and resigned the recordership of Yarmouth. At the Restoration he fled to the Continent, and settled at Hannau, on the Lower Rhine, with Okey and Barkstead companions in exile. Being induced to visit Delft, they were seized by Sir George

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Downing, and sent to England, where their arrival is thus noted by Pepys in his Diary :— "March 17th, 1662. Last night the Blackmore pink brought the three prisoners, Barkstead, Okey, and Corbet, to the Tower, being taken at Delfe, in Holland; where the captain tells us, the Dutch were a good while before they could be pursuaded to let them go, they being taken prisoners in their canal. But Sir George Downing would not be answered; altho' all the world takes notice of him for a most ungrateful villiane for his pains."

On April 16, Corbet and his fellow prisoners were tried and condemned for high treason; and the sequel is thus told by Pepys

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April 19th, 1662. Before we eat, I went to Aldgate, and at the corner shop (a draper's) I stood and did see Barkstead, Okey, and Corbet drawn towards the gallows at Tyburne; and there they were hanged and quartered: they all looked very cheerful, and I hear they all die defending what they did to the King to be just-which is very strange !"

There is an oil portrait of him in the possession of Fredk. Palmer, Esq., F.R.C.S., of Yarmouth; also an engraved portrait in an oval on the same plate with Col. Okey and Col. Barkstead, which has become very scarce. It has been copied by Richardson. There is also another portrait with his seal and autograph. He appears to have left a son, Miles Corbet, who, with his mother, took leave of him previously to his execution; but his family became extinct in Norfolk. In a rare tract, entitled Persecutio Undecima, 1648, Corbet is accused of having

"indicted a man for a conjuror, and was urgent upon the jury to condemn him upon no proof, but a booke of circles found in his study, which Miles said was a booke of conjuring-had not a learned clergyman told the jury that the booke was an old almanack."

Hone, in his Year Book, p. 57, mentions a work, entitled "A Briefe Relation of the Gleanings of the Idiotisms and Absurdities of Miles Corbet, Esq., Counsellor-at-Law, Recorder and Burgess of Great Yarmouth. By Anth. Birley. 1646." 4to. In the Harleian Miscellany, vol. vi. p. 36, is the following: "A most learned and eloquent speech spoken and delivered in the honourable House of Commons at Westminster. By the most learned lawyer Miles Corbet, Recorder of Great Yarmouth, and Burgess of the same, on the 31st day of July, 1647, taken in short-hand by Nestle and Tom Dunne, his clerks, and Revised by John Taylor." It was published in 1679, and was designed, in a fictitious speech, to expose the bom bast of the rebellious speakers and the misfortunes the nation laboured under in those times. See Palmer's Yarmouth (Manship), vol. ii. p. 342, F. D. PALMER.

et seq.

Great Yarmouth.

DURHAM (6th S. viii. 468).-Should not we read Cambridge instead of Durham in this query? Nicholas Saunderson, a native of Thurlston, in Yorkshire, who was deprived not only of sight

but of his eye-balls by small-pox when he was a year old, became so eminent as a mathematician that the University of Cambridge conferred on him the degree of M.A. by royal mandate, and he was then chosen Lucasian Professor of Mathema

tics in November, 1711, which appointment he held till his death in April, 1739. His life is in most biographical dictionaries. W. E. BUCKLEY.

Nicholas Saunderson, born not in Durham, but at Thurlstone, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, was blind from within a year after his birth. William Emerson, also an eminent mathematician, was born at Hurworth, in Durham; but he was not blind. See Chalmers's Biog. Dict.

Wallsend,

R. R. DEES.

THE FAMILY OF BAYLEY, OF THORNEY (6th S. viii. 389).—If your correspondent FR. BAYLEY does not already know Agnew's French Protestant Exiles, he will find a clue at vol. ii. p. 307. I believe the first refugee lived at Whittlesea, where there was a French Protestant Church before 1685 (Agnew, vol. i. p. 10), and I have been told that both at Whittlesea and Thorney there was for a time a considerable French colony. The original founder of the Whittlesea-Thorney family was, I believe, of good French patrician origin, and, as I have understood, leaving France before the actual revocation of the Edict of Nantes, he managed to come away with some means, and became a centre round which later on many of his friends and coreligionists collected. He had, as Agnew shows, two sons, (1) John, (2) Philip, from the younger of whom Sir Emilius Bayley is descended. The registers at Whittlesea and Thorney, which are, I understand, well kept, will probably give your correspondent most of the information which he desires.

E. C. B.

In answer to FR. BAYLEY'S query with reference to the descendants of Sir Emilius Bayley, I am one of the grandchildren of the late John Bayley, of Thorney, Cambridgeshire, and can, if wished, give the names and other particulars of the three generations that have resided at Thorney, many of them buried in Thorney Abbey. C. GIRDLESTONE. 2, Halloway Place, Old London Road, Hastings. "JOHN INGLESANT " CHURCH (6th S. vii. 341, 387, 457).—I do not AND LITTLE GIDDING know why MR. ELLACOMBE says (at the latter reference) that the late Capt. Hughes, R.N., was married to "the last of the Ferrar family." His father, Edw. Hughes, married Rosetta Ferrar, the only child of Capt. Hugh Ferrar and his wife Mary, née Ferrar, he having married a cousin. Mr. and Mrs. Hughes (Rosetta Ferrar) had four children, two sons and two daughters, one of the former

being the Capt. Hughes of your correspondent. One of the daughters married a Cheyne, and by him became the mother of the present well-known Capt. Cheyne, R.N.

The Mary Ferrar who married her cousin Capt. Hugh Ferrar was born 1739, her only brother (who lived to marry) being John Ferrar, greatgrandson to John, and great-grand-nephew to Nicholas, of Little Gidding. This John Ferrar's descendants are the present representatives of the family at Huntingdon, with the same arms (Or, on a bend cotised sable three horseshoes of the field) and crest. If MR. ELLACOMBE is anxious on the subject I shall be happy to give him information. MICHAEL FERRAR.

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The derivation of this word is from opós and Taîs. The correct spelling is, therefore, orthopaedic. C. F. S. WARren, M.A.

THE GLASTONBURY THORN (6th S. vi. 513; vii. 217, 258; ix. 16). The variety of Crataegus oxyacantha known to cultivators of choice trees as præcox of gardens has been very widely distributed, and has afforded entertainment to many observers. On the damp clay of my own arboretum at Hermitage, five miles north of London, it proved sufficiently hardy to endure the assaults of a few hard winters between the years 1869 and 1878, being occasionally caught by frost when richly clothed with new leafage of the most tender tone of golden green, in the months of December and January. During the time of its occupation of Hermitage it produced its flowers at the season of Christmas once only, and that occurred on old Christmas Day in the year 1877. The bloom was abundant, and was supported with an ample breadth of pale green leafage. An observer of the characters of trees has no difficulty in identifying the true Glastonbury thorn by its leaves at any season. The leaves are of a lighter tone of green than those of the common whitethorn; they are very much larger, and the stipules have a leaf-like character. As a garden or shrubbery tree it is as useful as any thorn, and its habit of growth renders it peculiarly interesting. When advantaged by some amount of shelter, it will usually (in the climate of London) produce new leaves in the month of December and flowers in the month of

February. A severe frost will put a stop to its precocious movements, and it may not recover its looks for a month or more; but, so far as I have observed, the severest frost to which we are liable will not cause any permanent injury.

As regards the origin of this variety, the inquirer must give heed to a note in Loudon's Arboretum, vol. ii. p. 834:

"It is well known that the hawthorn grows from stakes and truncheons; one of the finest trees in Scotland, viz., that at Fountain's Hall, having been originated is nothing compared with that of Mr. John Wallis, in that manner......The miracle of Joseph of Arimathea timber surveyor of Chelsea......who exhibited to the Horticultural and Linnæan Societies, in 1834, a branch of hawthorn, which, he said, had hung for several years in a hedge among other trees; and, though without any root or even touching the earth, had produced, every year, leaves, flowers, and fruit." It has been my good fortune to see this tree in what I consider a condition not less interesting than unique. On the same branches were the ripe berries and the dead leaves of the preceding year, and the new leaves and new flowers of the time. It carried the produce of two seasons, not leaves and the new golden green leaves, the scarlet in a few scraps, but in profusion; the old brown berries and the white flowers being mingled throughout. This interesting state of things was figured in the Gardeners' Magazine of Dec. 21, 1878. SHIRLEY HIbberd.

In the Dorset County Chronicle for Jan. 17, 1884, there is a long and interesting account of a so-called holy thorn at Sutton Poyntz, near Weymouth, which is said to come into leaf and mysteriously blossom exactly at midnight on old Christmas Eve. The tree in question is in an orchard belonging to Mr. Joseph Robert Keynes, and on Saturday, January 5, at least 250 persons repaired to the spot to witness the performance. Various lanterns revealed the positive fact that the tree, which had been in bud during the day, was now breaking into blossom, and, as time passed by, little boughs here and there fully blossomed, although not exactly at twelve o'clock. The crowd, who had paid twopence apiece gate-money, and were becoming impatient at being refused a single sprig, at last climbed up the fence and tore off small boughs, until the master and his man were compelled to use their long sticks. Then a regular rush was made by some roughs, and the tree, after sad mutilation, was well-nigh destroyed. The writer, on paying a second visit at daybreak, found the tree still in foliage, but the blossom had entirely died away. According to Mr. Keynes's information, only two persons have had to do with the tree, viz., (1) his wife's grandfather, Nathaniel Brett, who planted it about seventy years ago, and (2) Stephen Galpin, the parish clerk. was a cutting which came originally from the holy thorn at Glastonbury. EDWARD MALAN.

The tree

BALLET (6th S. viii. 468).—The following quotation for the use of this word may probably interest your correspondent:

"Shee has told all: I shall be Ballated,

Sung up and downe by Minstrills? Gentlemen,
Tho' my successe fell short of my intent,
Let it meete faire construction."

T. Heywood, A Challenge for Beavlie, 16:6,
p. 23, vol. v., ed. J. Pearson, 1874.

F. C. BIRKBECK TERRY.

FIRST NUMBERED HOUSES IN LONDON (6th S. viii. 466).-If the houses of New Burlington Street, built in 1764, were the first to be numbered in London, the city of Lincoln anticipated the metropolis by some years in adopting this very useful plan. A row of red-brick houses facing the west front of Lincoln Cathedral are still known as the

HORN (6th S. ix. 28).-" Hyrne (f.), a hyrne or corner, from horn, cornu, a horn-shaped angle. Nos. 1, 308, 408, 461" (Kemble's Cod. Dip. iii. 32). "Horn, German, a peak, e. g., Matterhorn, Schreckhorn, Wetterhorn" (Taylor's Words and Places, p. 327). F. W. WEAVER.

Milton Vicarage, Evercreech, Bath,

According to the Rev. Isaac Taylor's Words and Places, p. 327, ed. 1875, this word means a peak, and he instances Matterhorn, &c. M.A.Oxon.

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Horn in Kinghorn meant the king's quay or "Number Houses," from being the first thus dis- landing, by which route he travelled to the north tinguished in the city. These houses were erected of the Forth, now Kirkcaldy. Dreghorn was also in 1748 by Precentor Trimnell, as part of his scheme for the improvement of the minster pre-west of Galloway. Now Irvine is the port. a port or landing-place for vessels from all places EDMUND VENABLES.

cincts.

E. B.

PERCY (6th S. ix. 29). The portrait of Alan Percy, dated 1549, representing him with a book in one hand and a glove in the other, is in the Guildhall at Norwich. He was a benefactor to that city (Cooper's Athence Cantabrigienses, i. 206).

J. INGLE DREDGE.

In Evans's Catalogue of British Portraits, vol. ii. s.a., p. 316, No. 20247, there is this notice:

"Percy, Alan, third son of Henry, fourth Earl of Northumberland; rector of St. Anne, Aldersgate, and St. Mary-at-hill, London; Warden of Trinity College, Arundel; great benefactor to the City of Norwich; first master of St. John's College, Cambridge, 1516; died 1560; 4to. 2s. 6d. W. C. Edwards (engraver)." The painter of the portrait from which the engraving is taken is not mentioned. ED. MARSHALL.

THE PARNELL PEDIGREE (6th S. viii. 509).-The will of John Parnell, father of C. S. Parnell, M.P., is not without interest. It runs: "This is the last will of me, John Parnell, of Avondale, Esq. I make no provision for my wife, she being amply provided for from other sources. I make no provision for my daughter......who has grievously offended me." After providing for four other daughters, he mentions "my second son Charles, to whom I leave my Avondale estate," other lands in county Wicklow, houses in Stephen's Green, Dublin, "and a small farm in Kildare." "I leave my eldest son, John Parnell, all my property in Colures, co. Armagh, with instructions that he should manage it himself and make the most of it." After providing for his son Henry, he appoints his uncle, Sir Ralph Howard, and his dear friend Robt. Johnson, of Summer Lodge, Dunblane, N.B., joint trustees of his will and guardians of his children, adding, "I absolutely forbid any interference on the part of my wife or any of her relatives with the management of my children or property. I make my son Charles heir-at-law to all intents and purposes." It is noteworthy that the testator ignored all the second Christian names of his sons, probably thinking little of the Tudor and Stuart lineage, and that he chose for his trustees an Englishman and a Scotchman. The THE LAST DOGE OF VENICE (6th S. viii. 407, 525). will was dated June 30, 1859, and the testator-AS STRIX can hardly be said to have obtained died four days later, in the Shelbourne Hotel, in Stephen's Green, Dublin. Administration was granted to Sir Ralph Howard, of 17, Belgrave Square, London, baronet, curator, or guardian of the children. The personalty was sworn under 8,000l. In spite of the provisions of the will, his widow, Mrs. Parnell, brought up the children.

W. MAZIERE BRADY.

RIGHT TO QUARTER ROYAL ARMS (6th S. viii. 407, 523).—I cannot find that the Dukes of Marlborough and Leeds have any right to quarter the royal arms, and neither is given in the list of those peers entitled to do so in Burke's Peerage for 1884, P. cxxiv. From that list is omitted the name of Lord de L'Isle and Dudley, now senior representative of the Manners family.

EDMUND M. BOYLE.

a satisfactory reply to her query, I venture to offer the loan of a small sheet of photographs of the Doges, from Alvise Mocenigo (1570) to Lodovico Manin (1797), copied from the pictures in the Ducal palace, and bought in Venice years ago. It may bring about the identification of the festivalgiving gentleman, who, however, can hardly have been the last doge, as the costumes are described

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