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, Boscawen, Hawke, Amherst, Wolfe. Who was this David Ramsay? His name is not in the list of officers of the South Fencibles, nor in the 1777 Army List,' nor in any biographical dictionary I have been able to consult. 6 W. S. 66 'CAPILLARIANS." This odd word occurs in a letter from Charles Lamb to Southey, dated 10 August, 1825, and printed in E. V. Lucas's grand edition of the works of Charles and Mary Lamb, vol. vii. (1905), p. 691. Lamb is represented as writing, "I call all good Christians the Church, Capillarians and all." The 'N.E.D.' quotes the passage for Capillarians," which it calls a nonce-word, without explaining it in any way; but is it mere ghost-word, transcribed and printed by mistake for "Capellarians," which would be a Lamb-like and therefore suitable name for Non-conformists in their character of Chapel-men as distinguished from Churchmen? 66 not a R. MARSHAM-TOWNSHEND. BAINES FAMILY.-Can any of your readers help me to trace the ancestry of John Baines, of Layham, Suffolk, who early in the eighteenth century married Elizabeth, daughter of the Rev. James Johnson, rector of Long Melford, Suffolk, to whose memory there is a monument in Long Melford Church? A. A. BAINES. ETHEL LEGA-WEEKES. WHY HAS ENGLAND NO NOBLESSE ?—No teacher or book easily accessible gives me any answer to the question why England it that our ancient nobility or baronage were nearly all killed in the Wars of the Roses, and that Henry VII.'s new nobles never got popular devotion? Was there not a statute passed under the Commonwealth, that delegalizes the titles of younger sons? T. WILSON. has no noblesse in the continental sense. Was Harpenden. 4TH LIGHT DRAGOONS' UNIFORM.-I should be glad if any one could inform me where to find a picture representing a captain in the 4th Light Dragoons between the years 1808 and 1814, and an exact representation or description of the uniform then worn. A. FRANCIS STEUART. "TWOPENNY "" FOR HEAD.-In the schoolboys' game of leapfrog, when the head is usual phrase, I believe, is still "Tuck in your bent down so that one can jump over it, the twopenny (or tuppenny)." Why has the head been so often called "tuppenny"? dictionaries I find no explanation of this In my collection of English and slang curious phraseology, about which I seek further information. J. LAWRENCE- HAMILTON, M.R.C.S. 30, Sussex Square, Brighton. Yeats published in The Boston Pilot, in 1887, BALLAD OF FRANCIS RÉNYI.—Mr. W. B. a ballad under the title How Ferencz BRISTOL MERCHANT ADVENTURERS' COM- city. Did any Bristol company bear arms as follows? "Two garbs, a chief chequy, in base a lamb." I can find no family which bore it. These arms appear in the neighbourhood of Bristol in 1630. G. A. T. Albany, N.Y. [Mr. John Latimer, the historian of Bristol, who died 4 January, 1904, published the previous year, through Arrowsmith of Bristol, The History of the Society of Merchant Venturers of the City of Bristol, with some Account of the Anterior Merchant Guilds.' Our American correspondent is likely to obtain from this work all the information he needs, as The Athenæum stated on 3 October, 1903: "Mr. Latimer has taken great pains to discover collateral evidence of the rise and development of the Bristol merchants."] POEM BY SIR THOMAS WYATT.—In reading through Wyatt's poems recently, I was struck with the resemblance of one lyric to a similar piece ascribed to Alexander Scot, the Scottish poet. I have no means of comparing dates at present, but I rather think that Scot preceded Wyatt. The name of the poem referred to is in both writers "Lo! what it is to love." I should be glad if any reader of 'N. & Q.' would offer an explanation of this curious parallel. Beylics. "LONNING." (10th S. iv. 29.) W. B. SIXTY years ago, about the year 1845, a small boy from the neighbourhood of London went on a visit to an uncle at Eskrigg, some three miles from Wigton in Cumberland. One morning he strolled through the garden into the lane beyond. The turn to the left led to the high road, and presented no interest; so he turned to the right. The lane was winding and long, and seemed interminable; so that, after observing nothing except a small donkey grazing there, he prudently turned back, and had almost reached the startingpoint, when he was suddenly aware of a young girl accompanied by two little brothers, who appealed to him in the enigmatic sentence: Hae ye seen oor coodie doon the lonnin?" Being hopelessly ignorant of the sense of the sentence, he had nothing to say but "No!" Nevertheless, he treasured up the sound of it, made haste back, and burst into the parlour with the cry, "Hae ye seen oor coodie doon the lonnin? What does it mean?" It was soon explained: the coodie was Cuddie (or Cuthbert), the equivalent of the Southern Neddy, the pet name for a donkey; and lonnin was the lane. Whereupon the small boy, with a keen sense of self reproach, said: "Then I told the poor girl a falsehood!" The lesson was a sharp one, and the small boy returned home with a muchenriched vocabulary, including not only Cuddie and lonnin, but a stee, a cleg, a byre, and kye, and many more. Moreover, from that day the idea of acquiring the senses of provincial words and antiquated expressions haunted him (as Wordsworth says) like a passion; and he lived to found the English Dialect Society, and to direct it till its work was done. And now in the 'English Dialect Dictionary' any reader may find the word loaning, known in eight dialects with something like fifteen variant forms, fully illustrated with a whole column of examples. And still, across the far expanse of fully sixty years, I hear the anxious tones of that fresh Cumbrian voice: "Hae ye seen oor coodie doon the lonnin?" WALTER W. SKEAT. 6 In the 'Scottish Dictionary' Jamieson quotes from Cartul. Aberd.' the phrase, "A lonyng lyand throw the mur betwix twa ald stane dykes," explaining that the extract bears upon an agreement of 1446. His definition of the term is "a narrow inclosed way." As a supplementary meaning he gives "The privilege of having a common through which cattle pass to or return from the places of pasture." Under the entry Loan, Lone, Lonning,' Jamieson both discusses and illustrates pretty fully. He conjectures that the word is allied to Eng. "lawn," but he shows conclusively that in its most familiar application it is practically an equivalent of "lane." The thing denoted is "An opening between fields of corn, near or leading to the homestead, left uncultivated, for the sake of driving the cattle homewards." The lexicographer adds, "Here the cows are frequently milked." This explains the reference in Jean Elliot's 'Flowers of the Forest':I've heard them liltin' at the ewe-milkin', Lasses a-liltin' before the dawn of day; But now they are moanin' on ilka green loanin'; The Flowers o' the Forest are a' wede away. It also shows how sadly adrift some interpreter is in the volume of 'Selections from Burns' for which Mr. Andrew Lang stands sponsor. Explaining "the kye stood rowtin' i' the loan," which occurs towards the close of The Twa Dogs,' Mr. Lang or a coadjutor says that the loan is the milking-shed! This is manifestly a case of allowing the context to suggest a meaning; it is "ingenious but not correct," as a Greek professor aforetime sometimes remarked with ambiguous commendation. Jamieson goes on to say that the term is used for “ THOMAS BAYNE. In her exquisite elegy 'The Flowers of the Forest' Jean Elliot has invested the word "loaning" with enduring vitality and charm. Twice, in her poignant lament for her countrymen who were slain at Flodden, there occurs to the Scottish ear the haunting phrase "on ilka green loaning." The use of the term "loaning" is entirely confined to the southern district of Scotland; north of Edinburgh one would never hear the word, which is peculiar to the Borders, colloquially used. "Loaning" is not therefore a synonym for lane in North-Country dialect." A path between fields is so designated in some of the southern counties of the northern kingdom. The outskirts of the Border towns and villages change but little, and these " green lanes, where lads and lasses have for generations kept tryst and plighted their troth, retain, though a hedge or wall may be on one or both sides, the old-time designation of the "loaning." In 'The Antiquary' Scott alludes to "the lang dike that gaes doon the loaning." Jean Elliot's green loaning," from its setting in her poem, was, no doubt, the grassy plot on which the cows were milked. In Mr. Quiller-Couch's Anthology of English Verse,' "loaning" is vaguely defined as a "field-path." 66 experience of the significance and meaning 105, Choumert Road, Peckham, S.E. This word is used several times by Robert Anderson in his Cumberland Ballads,' and is thus explained in the glossary: "Lonnin, a narrow lane leading from one village to another." Anderson was born at Carlisle in 1770, where he died in 1833, as I learn from the collected edition of his works published at Wigton. The volume bears no date, but must have appeared about the middle of last From The Bundles ov Oddities' century. (p. 6), in which a young woman describes her sweethearts, I give the following example :The neist was a Whaker, cawt Jacep, He turnt up the wheytes ov his een, An talkt about flesh an the spiritThowt I, what can Gravity mean? In dark winter neeghts, i' the lonnins, He'd weade thro' the durt buin his tnee; It cuilt his het heart, silly gander! And theer let him stowter for me! The word is used in Northumberland; and I can almost fancy I see the amorous Quaker stumbling and trudging through the mire of "lonnins" that I knew fifty years ago. To the volume from which I have quoted "Cumberland Ballads, by are appended John Rayson of Aglionby," one of which is entitled Charlie M'Glen,' a notorious thief, of whom it is said : At neets i' the lonning he's seen at aw teymes. The word is also Scotch. JOHN T. CURRY. This word (or "loaning "), signifying a lane or narrow road, is in common use all over the north of England. See English Dialect Dictionary,' p. 633, where numerous examples are given of its use in Northumberland, Durham, Cumberland, Westmorland, Yorkshire, and Lancashire. At Alston, in Cumberland, where I spend great part of the and summer, we have "The Loaning "Loaning Foot," and at Garrigill, an adjoining village, "Lonning Head." The latter is thus described in Palmer's 'Tyne and its Tributaries,' London, 1882, p. 89: "Lonning Head means Lane head, by which latter name it is now becoming generally known. It stands at the top or head of a steep lane leading up from the south-east corner of the village-not such a lane as we may see in Surrey or Kent, shaded by thick hedges of hazel and sweet briar; instead there are here stone walls, and the roadway is like nothing so much as the stony bed of a torrent." During a visit to Dumfries some years ago I asked a lad how I could get to a certain point of the river that flows close by the town. Turn down so-and-so, he said, "and gang along the loanin'"; and the accent of my instructor, as well as my walk in the "loanin'". pronounced thus - that fine 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 - MAJOR MONRO (10th S. iii. 487).-There is an interesting account of this duel in Miller's 'St. Pancras, Past and Present,' pp. 269-73. The combatants were Lieut. Col. Fawcett, C.B., of the 55th Regiment, and his brotherin-law, Lieut. Munro (not Monro), of the Royal Horse Guards. Both were officers of some distinction, and Lieut. Munro, who had enlisted in the Blues nineteen years previously, had as a reward for his meritorious service received a commission in 1829, and was appointed adjutant of his regiment. The two gentlemen had married sisters, daughters of the principal medical officer at Jamaica, and at the time of the duel Col. Fawcett had one surviving daughter, while his opponent had five children. The cause of the quarrel was a reflection by the Colonel on Lieut. Munro's judgment in the management of some property entrusted to his care by Col. Fawcett while he was abroad. A challenge ensued, and the duel took place on 1 July, 1843, in a field near Maiden Lane (now Brecknock Road), leading from Camden Town to Highgate. Col. Fawcett fell mortally wounded, and was carried to "The Camden Arms," Randolph Street, where, notwithstanding the skilful attention of the two most distinguished surgeons of the day, Brodie and Liston, he died two days later. wards by Mr. Wakley, the coronerAn inquest was held immediately afterMr. John Cumberland, the friend of George Cruikshank, and publisher of Cumberland's British Theatre,' being the foreman of the jury. A verdict of wilful murder was recorded against the parties to the duel, but Lieut. Munro fled the country and was believed to have entered the Prussian service. Four years afterwards he surrendered himself to justice, and on 14 August, 1847, he was found guilty of wilful murder, and sentenced to the capital penalty, which, on a strong recommendation to mercy, was commuted to twelve months' imprisonment. Lieut. Cuddy, one of the seconds, was tried in 1843, but discharged, as the evidence was not held to be sufficient for a conviction. The unfortunate widow of the deceased officer was deprived, by a Government which was determined to put down duelling, of the pension. which, under the rules of the service, she would have received, and these stringent measures seem to have had the desired effect, as this was the last military duel to take place in England. W. F. PRIDEAUX. The history of the Munro-Fawcett duel is given in Walford and Thornbury, Old and New London,' v. 376, and in N. & Q.,' 8th S. ix. 230. The 'Report of the Trial,' by M. Strang, was printed in 1847, and there is a notice of it, with portraits, in The Illustrated London News, 21 August, 11 September, 1847. W. C. B. Lieut. Munro is probably identical with the Major James St. John Munro, of the 31st Foot, who is stated in Walford's County Families (1865) to have been the eldest son of General John Munro, E.I.C., of Teaninich, by Charlotte, youngest daughter of the Rev. Dr. St. John Blacker. He was born in 1810. J. HOLDEN MACMICHAEL. [J. R. F. G. refers to 'Annals of our Time,' under July, 1843; MR. R. L. MORETON to The Illustrated MR. C. S. WARD, and MR. J. WATSON also send London News of 8 July, 1843. MR. E. H. COLEMAN, replies.] PILLION FLAILS (10th S. iii. 267, 338, 375, 433).-I have seen the observations on flails, though rather late in the day, and if you care to hear the voice of the flail from Little England beyond Wales, I can bear witness to the truth of the statement that in out-of-the way places flails are still used. There are farms near us in South Pembrokeshire to which no road leads, only a cart-track across fields, or a soft, macadamless lane; the threshing machine would have much ado to reach them unless in a drought or a hard frost, and the sheaves of their harvest must either be carted to a hospitable neighbour's farmyard, or threshed at home by hand. I have known a woman to thresh here. A couple of years ago a small farmer brought his corn to our barn, and when we looked in as we passed, the daughter was wielding a second flail with her brother; but it is not usual, for when we looked over the half-door, the girl laughed and stopped. One or two larger farms here (none are really large) had a fixed threshing machine worked by horses; these have now gone out M. S. CLARK. of use. Robeston Wathen, Narberth. The following paragraph from The Athenæum of 10 September, 1881, bears on the use of the flail : "A correspondent sends a piece of folk-lore derived from a Swiss villager......When any one is passing a barn where the threshers are at work, he may know how many persons are handling the flail by attending closely to the rhythm of the threshing. If two are employed, the flails seem to say, Barthol. Barthol!' if three threshers are at work, the sound is Bartholo, Bartholo!' if four, Bartholomä, Bartholomä!' if five, Bartholomäus, Bartholomäus! This is the reason, we are gravely in formed, why the Apostle Bartholomew obtained the honour of being the patron saint of threshers." ELLEN MASTERS. some partly erroneous forms I am sorry to hear it, but it does not affect the truth of my argument, and PROF. SKEAT tacitly admits as much by amplifying his own. For he now says that in Anglo-Saxon á and ô were never interchangeable at any early time. This, of course, would cover the fifth and sixth centuries, from documents of which period the Saxon word Ongle and the Welsh one Eingyl have come down to us. PROF. SKEAT also suggests that I turn to the 'N.E.D.' in order to learn that the degraded vowel in bôn (= bán) was never seen or heard of before 1300. But a reference to the 'N.E.D.' could not prove all that; and in view of the fact that there is an occasional interchange in all the Old Low German dialects between a and 6 (vide Helfenstein, u.s., p. 44), I prefer to think that the emergence of 6 for a, in England in the thirteenth century, was the triumph of a tendency that had always existed sporadically, and that it was not a sudden and general change of the nature of a vocal epidemic. PROF. SKEAT twits me with my presumption in endeavouring to correct his spelling of an Anglo-Saxon word; but that is not quite accurate. It is the etymon of an AngloSaxon word that I am trying to deal with. Angul, the alleged etymon, with a and u, is repudiated by the sixth-century Welsh word Eingyl, which indicates â or ổ, and by the Anglo-Saxon forms Engle, Engle, which are cases of hidden umlaut. In concluding my remarks on this subject, I would repeat that the etymon postulated by these three forms is ângil. A. ANSCOMBE. 4, Temple Road, Hornsey, N. "VESCALION" (10th S. iv. 28).-This is a fearful wild-fowl of a ghost-word. Its origin becomes obvious when an appeal is made from "Bohn's foot-note to Cicero on Old Age"" to the sixty-ninth Rambler. "Reward the vescalion by conquest, by the pleasures of victory," should, of course, be "reward the vexation of contest by the pleasures of victory.' To judge by this sample, Bohn's foot-notes to Cicero on Old Age' would seem to be a curious performance. Ealing. "ENGLAND," ""ENGLISH": THEIR PRONUNCIATION (10th S. iii. 322, 393, 453, 492).—The verbal forms to which PROF. SKEAT objects were tendered with others in proof of the general proposition that degradation of a into o was not a criterion of the quantity of that vowel, and not as proof that and d in literary Anglo-Saxon were interchangeable. The forms I gave amply supported my statement, the truth of which is not disputed; and they show that PROF. SKEAT'S argument was a contingent one, as I said, and that it could not stand alone. They were drawn 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 â 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 ô." 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." ST. SWITHIN. 6 in what Helfenstein calls late Saxon, or Old English. It is in this list that hálic, holic, appear. If Dr. Helfenstein included EDWARD BENSLY. CALDWELL FAMILY (10th S. iii. 468).—I cannot answer C. T. E.'s questions directly. But |