in six-four time, and of a pastoral character. the German house? Normandy is a cider The dance takes its name from its original country; it might therefore be haunted by accompaniment, loure being a kind of bag- the "gizer" either for apples or for mistletoe. pipe, very common in rural France, partiTHOMAS J. JEAKES. cularly in Normandy. Whether loure in turn derives its name from outre (a wineskin), with the article prefixed, or from lura (Lat.), a bag or purse, or from luur (Dan.), a pipe or flute, seems uncertain. In the Badminton 'Dancing,' Mrs. Grove says that the Spanish giga went by the name of loures. But the dance so named seems to be French in origin. GEORGE MARSHALL.

Sefton Park, Liverpool.

In A Supplementary English Glossary,' by T. Lewis O. Davies, M.A., I find the following:

"A dance. The scene to which the extract refers is laid at the Court of William and Mary: 'As soon as the minuet was closed, the princess said softly to Harry in French, "The Louvre, sir, if you please." This was a dance of the newest fashion, and was calculated to show forth and exhibit a graceful person in all the possible elegances of movement and attitude.'-H. Brooke, 'Fool of Quality,' ii. 99."

EVERARD HOME COLEMAN.

I lived in the neighbourhood of Banbury, Oxon, for ten years, and took great interest in the birds of the district. I never heard the word gizer, but the usual name then for the missel-thrush was Norman thrush.

B. D.

'DOWN AMONG THE DEAD MEN' (9th S. iv. 24).—I think it is quite evident that the artist who painted the picture, No. 11 in this year's Royal Academy exhibition, fully understood that "the poetical phrase of 'dead men "" applied to the empty bottles at a banquet. Indeed, the phrase so applied survives to the present day, although it is no longer customary, as was formerly the case, to place such derelicts of a feast under the MR. DENNY URLIN'S feet of the guests. objection is not obvious. In the time of the Cavaliers, and in days considerably later, gallant gentlemen did not consider their characters besmirched if they continued their carousals until they tumbled off their seats helplessly drunk, to lie among the dead men on the floor. F. A. RUSSELL.

MARRIAGE CUSTOMS AND DEFAULTING OMENS (9th S. iv. 5).-The giving of green stockings to an elder unmarried sister when the younger sister is married before her has been noticed in 'N. & Q.,' 1st S. ix. 398. The custom was mentioned to me by an aged Scottish lady in 1889. W. C. B.

MENILEK (9th S. iv. 7).-Dean Stanley, in his 'Jewish Church,' lecture xxviii., says, "This story gives to her the name Makeda, and represents her as bearing a child to Solomon (Melimelik)." He gives a reference to Ludolf, Æthiop.,' ii. 3, which is, perhaps, the one MR. HEMMING wants. C. S. WARD, Wootton St. Lawrence, Basingstoke.

"NORMAN GIZER" (9th S. iii. 486).-MR. MAYHEW'S communication of synonyms for the missel-thrush is most interesting. It would be well to have others, not only for the missel-bird, but for other of the Turdida. BARRY O'MEARA (9th S. iii. 261, 373).—Mr. I have met with pigeon-feldt (Middlesex)= ELRINGTON BALL'S evidence that Edward fieldfare. Other synonyms for the missel- Murphy was not a "Reverend" appears conbird are screech (Sussex), jaypie (Wilts), pen y clusive. He is not so styled in the inscrip"Edward llwyn (Welsh), draine, grande-, haute-, grosse- tion on his tomb, but simply grive (French). The common or song thrush Murphy, A.M." I was misled, in so describis called mavis, throstle, and grey bird (North- ing him, by the fourth edition of the 'Landed umberland); this last answers to Fr. grive, Gentry,' where--sub voce Ryan of Knocklyon from gris grey also tipsy. "Saoul comme-he appears not only as "Rev.,", but as une grive as drunk as a sow." Is it pretended that the " grey bird" (if the missel-thrush is ever so called) came over with the Conqueror, as the grey or Hanoverian rat is supposed to have done with

"D.D." and "Rector of Tartaraghan, co. Armagh." The "D.D." I knew to be incorrect, but "Rector of Tartaraghan" was so specific that I accepted it. He is further there stated to have been a “kinsman of Arthur Mur hv

the dramatist," which is also a vain flourish;
Arthur Murphy was a Roscommon man,
Edward Murphy a Tipperary man. Of
Edward Murphy's ancestry, beyond his father
John, I know nothing; but they were pro-
bably of the Ballinamore, co. Tipperary,
family.
SIGMA TAU.

BEN JONSON'S WORKS (9th S. iv. 29).-The use of Silva by the ancients, as an appropriate title for a miscellany, struck Jonson as specially apposite, and he paid the practice the sincere tribute of imitation. Thus the chips from his workshop-the views on many subjects prompted by his diverse reading. are grouped under the comprehensive title, 'Timber; or, Discoveries made upon Men and Matter. As they have flowed out of his Daily Readings, or had their Reflux to his peculiar notion of the Times.' To this the following explanation is appended :

"Rerum, et sententiarum, quasi "YAn dicta a multiplici materia, et varietate, in iis contenta. Quemadmodum enim vulgo solemus infinitam

arborum nascentium indiscriminatin multitudinem Sylvam dicere: ita etiam libros suos in quibus variæ et diversæ materiæ opuscula temere congesta erant, Sylvas appellabant antiqui, Timber-trees."

Similarly, the titles 'The Forest' and Underwoods' are explained in this address "To the Reader" prefixed by the author to

the latter:

"With the same leave the ancients called that kind of body Sylva, or "Yλn, in which there were works of divers nature and matter congested; as the multitude called timber-trees promiscuously growing, a Wood or Forest; so I am bold to entitule these lesser poems of later growth, by this of Underwood, out of the analogy they hold to the Forest in my former book, and no otherwise."

The adoption of 'Underwoods' as a title by the late Mr. R. L. Stevenson was unfortunate: first, because it suggested an unnecessary and, of course, perilous rivalry with Jonson-whose 'Underwoods' include some of the daintiest and most famous lyrics in the language-and, secondly, because there is no previous Forest,' to which the miscellany may stand related as a second and less ambitious group.

THOMAS BAYNE.

all go to prove yet more fully that the Latin
peta is older than the English peat. So I now
put the questiom in a new form. Can any
one produce an example of the form pete (or
peate) as an English word before the year
1500? In fact, any example of the use of the
word before the time of Drayton will be
thankfully received. WALTER W. SKEAT.

DEATH OF THACKERAY (9th S. iv. 47).—
There is no doubt that Thackeray died on
Christmas Eve, 1863. A copy of the inscrip-
tion over his grave in Kensal Green Cemetery
lies before me, which runs as follows:-
William Makepeace Thackeray,
Born July 18th, 1811,
Died December 24th, 1863.
Anne Carmichael-Smyth,
Died December 18th, 1864, aged 72,
His mother by her first marriage.

The grave is on the south side of the cemetery, the above simple inscription being carved on a flat stone embosomed in a framework of carefully trained ivy.

JOHN T. PAGE.

PATRONYMICS (9th S. ii. 445; iii. 32).—Allow me to contradict MR. PLATT's statement that "the Basque patronymic is uniformly ena.' Ena is but the equivalent of "the...of." En means of, and a is the definite article or demonstrative pronoun the, which determines the ofness of anything. It is without gender, and may be nominative, vocative, or accusative-in the singular number, of courseaccording to its context. In certain circumstances, therefore, it might be a patronymic, just as "the (...) of Adam is as much a patronymic, when son is understood, as "Adamson." Words like Pedrorena and Marticorena, adduced by MR. PLATT, meaning "the house of Peter and "the house of

If MR. AULD will read Bishop Taylor's life, Martico," are the names of places, properties,

he will find that " Golden Grove" was the seat of his great friend Lord Carbery.

Hastings.

EDWARD H. MARSHALL, M.A.

PEAT (9th S. iii. 483; iv. 37, 75).-I am very much obliged to those who have kindly given me such old examples of the use of the Latin forms peta and petaria; and I am not ashamed to say that I know less of Medieval Latin than of Middle English. But these examples

and estates. They may, of course, be taken as the surname of a family. Nearly all Basque surnames were once the name of a bit of land, describing it by some local feature. But there would be nothing characteristically or exclusively patronymic about such a name. It is merely a general genitival form, a possessive of the widest application. Modern Basque has no equivalent of the Teutonic and Keltic patronymics. Some fanciful writers, principally at Bilbao,

have lately tried to make up for this by house displaying the sign of "The Fool," using ar, tar, dar, properly meaning "native represented in the costume of a jester. Two of," or "dweller in, such and such a place," of the inmates (one possibly the father) are instead. I have always thought that the z looking out from behind the window-bars, in or ez at the end of such a name as Gon- the distance being a large house and trees. zalez (=by the lover of good) might be an old The last line of the first, third, fourth, Basque progenitive ending, equal to by in and fifth couplets refers to the extravagant begotten by" or in a child by his first youth "sticking in the horn," which latter word is explained to be symbolical of a debtor's prison by the last of the eight couplets, in which, after expatiating on his wild career, he says in lamentation:

wife."

PALAMEDES.

"COMING OUT OF THE LITTLE END OF THE HORN" (7th S. iv. 323; vii. 257, 376).-Although it is now rather more than ten years since my previous reply, at the second of the above references-and when I presented to your original correspondent herein, MR. J. ELIOT HODGKIN, the curious emblematical picture to which I referred--the subject is doubtless still of considerable interest to many; and I have, therefore, much pleasure in making publicly known through your columns my recent find of the almost unknown ballad alluded to in the lines from Fletcher's Wife for a Month' (III. iii.), which bear upon the same, viz. :

Thou wilt look to-morrow else Worse than the prodigal fool the ballad speaks of That was squeezed through a horn. This amusing ballad is in the Roxburghe (ii. 138), Pepysian (ii. 92), and Huth (i. 96) collections, and is entitled 'The Extravagant Youth; or, an Emblem of Prodigality,' with the following as the moral of the sad story immediately below:

Tho' he was stout, he can't get out, in Trouble he'l remain:

Young men, be wise, your Freedom prize, bad company refrain.

It relates to a young and foolish gallant (the prodigal son), who, by his extravagance, squandered in riotous living the wealth which his miserly father had acquired by usury, and so led not only to his own arrest and imprisonment for debt in one of the Compter prisons, whence he was unable to get free, but also to his father's ruin and confinement in Bedlam as a lunatic. The ballad contains a well-executed woodcut, representing in the centre a youth falling head foremost into the mouth of a large bugle-horn, which has for its suspension a cord fastened in a bow, with tassels attached. Out of the little end of the horn another unfortunate individual is unsuccessfully endeavouring to extricate himself, his head and neck alone protruding. On the right-hand side stands an elderly man (probably intended for the sheriff) in a long furred gown and wearing a skull cap, with a female (the youth's mother?) on his left, and a young man (one of her sons?) on his right. On the other side is a mad

Now here an Example I must remain,
My freedom I never expect again;
Young Gallants, be warned, such ruine shun,
Which has both my Father and I [me] undone
All comforts now from us are flown,
My Father in Bedlam makes his moan,
And I in the Counter a Prisoner thrown:
This Horn is a Figure by which it is known.

There is no printer's name to the Rox-
burghe copy, but the Pepysian is "printed
for J. Deacon, in Guiltspur-street. In Black-
letter with one woodcut. Date as licensed
by Richard Pocock, 1685-1688." Of this
period is the costume of the figures shown in
the woodcut.

The subject of my late picture, as above-which may be contemporary with the date of the ballad, although I had previously considered it to have been executed between 1720 and 1760-as well as that of the much earlier one in his possession described by MR. HODGKIN, appears to be now, at length, W. I. R. V. pretty fully elucidated.

JOHN FREE, D.D. (3rd S. vii. 420; 4th S. iii. 336, 413). This eccentric character is described as Doctor in Divinity, vicar of East Coker in Somerset, Sir John Leman's Lecturer at St. Mary Hill in London, lecturer of Newington Butts, sometime Chaplain of Christ Church, afterwards Fellow of Hertford College, and, during the late rebellion, VicePrincipal of Alban Hall. (What rebellion? that of 1745) In May, 1764, he seems to have preached at St. Mary's, before the University, on 'The Analysis of Man,' adding to the sermon, in the printed copy, a curious detailed account of the (supposed) spontaneous combustion of one Grace Pitt, of Ipswich, in May, 1744. In 1761 he dedicates a discourse under the same title to the young King George III., in language of uncommon acerbity and insolence :

It is such a Sermon, as Your Majesty is not likely to hear from many of your Court-Chaplains; whose Discourses are seldom calculated so much for tion of George the Good......I bid Your Majesty the Information of George the Man, as the AdulaFarewel--only desiring Your Majesty not to forget a certain Petition, which otherwise may be re

membered to your Disadvantage by Him, who is King of Kings, and Lord of Lords, and in whose Hands Your Majesty is but an Atom.'

In 1766 we find him putting forth "The Plan of a Free University, to be founded in England by her Imperial Majesty the Empress of all the Russias, with the assistance of the Revd. Dr. Free." This was to have its site in the village of Newington Butts. The building was to be after a design of Inigo Jones, with Gothick cloysters" in front, the pillars of which should resemble the bodies of small palm trees. Scholars of all nations and religions_were to be received. For their use Dr. Free drew up a "Specimen of an Universal Liturgy, in English, French, and Latin." This consists of the daily Offices, reduced by excision and otherwise to a Unitarian basis, so as to comprehend Persians, Turks, and Jews. At this time he was conducting a boarding-school for foreigners at Newington Butts, without giving the least Offence to their Religion." From the note in the Third Series it appears that he died 9 Sept., 1791. RICHARD H. THORNTON.

Portland, Oregon.

SHAGREEN (9th S. iv. 68).-If GUINEVERE can get at a file of the Irish Naturalist, she will find, in a volume of 1897 or 1898, some meagre notes enough about shagreen, which I wrote for the Dublin Microscopical Society and they thought worth printing. The art of making it is not lost, but still exists in great perfection in Japan. The best shagreen is white or dyed, and may be left rough or filed down and polished. The latter is the sort used for toys and trinkets. White shagreen is chiefly produced by Trygon sephen, an East Indian stingray. The black shagreen used by our sword-cutlers is the skin of a dogfish of the Atlantic (Centrophorus). It is stained. Artificial shagreen was made, and probably still is, of horses' and asses' skin, and there is plenty of it yet. I am writing on a cheap blotting-book lined with it.

W. F. SINCLAIR, late I.C.S.

recollections of mine, and wishing to help GUINEVERE should better and more reliable information be wanting, I called upon two tradesmen whose names at once occurred to me and inquired whether they used shagreen in their trade. The firms are Messrs. Asprey of New Bond Street, and Messrs. Leuchard & Son of Piccadilly, both of whom showed me articles made of shagreen. The former firm further informed me that they had recently covered a table for the King of Siam and made a writing set in shagreen for a Russian grand duke; the latter that they kept in stock writing sets, jewel-cases, &c., covered with shagreen, and both stated that, so far from regarding it as a lost art, they were prepared to execute at once orders in that material. As to GUINEVERE'S further question, it might be solved by reference to any encyclopædia. I gather from the Encyclopædia Britannica' and other authoritative sources that the name itself is derived from the Persian sághri, the back of a beast of burden ; that common shagreen consists of the skins of various species of sharks and rays, prepared similarly to parchment; that the best, or Persian shagreen is a kind of tanned parchment with an artificial grain embossed on it by pressing into the substance while in a damp state the small round seeds of a species of goosefoot. Probably, as the name denotes, horses' or asses' skin was first used for the purpose, and a variety of leather made from such skins, of a green colour and with a granulated appearance, is prepared in a similar way to parchment; and here again, while the leather is still soft, the seeds of a species of Chenopodium are embedded in it, and the surface is afterwards shaved down so that the characteristic granular appearance is obtained, and the material is then dyed with oxychloride of copper. Shagreen is not an expensive substance in itself, but the cost is much increased in consequence of the hardness of the material, and the skill required in using it. I understand that France is the chief seat of the manufacture, and that the quality and colour of modern shagreen are not equal to those of the same material fifty years ago.

F. A. RUSSELL.

Shagreen is described in Webster's 'Dictionary' as the skin of a horse or an ass :—

One of my earliest recollections is of the shagreen case in which my maternal grandmother used to carry her spectacles some forty-five years ago. I have just seen an exactly similar case in a Piccadilly tradesman's shop. From time to time, up till quite recently, I have seen exposed for sale writing-grained so as to be covered with small round pinPrepared skins of horses, asses, mules, &c., cases, cigar-cases, spectacle-cases, and such-ples or granulations. The skin is steeped in water, like articles, undoubtedly covered with sha- scraped and stretched on a frame; small seeds are green, and I was not aware until I saw forced into it; it is then dried and the seeds are GUINEVERE'S query that preparing shagreen shaken out, leaving the surface indented. The skin as a lost art was in question. Being inter- is afterwards polished, soaked, and dyed." ested in the matter, owing to these early

I have in my collection a pinchbeck watch