"They are seldom deceived, for they will trust no body. They may alwayes deceive, for you must trust them, as for instance, if you travel, to ask a bill of Particulars is to purre in a wasps nest, you must pay what they ask as sure as if it were the assessement of a Subsidy." buy fish of Pickards, Flemmings, Normans, and Zealanders." And he sums up the riches of Holland thus:infiniteness of their Traffic and their unwearied industry "Their Excise is an unwasted mine, which with the is paid them by every part of the world, the sea yields The author also gives some very interesting in-them by two sorts of fishes onely, Herrins and Cod, formation on the seasons and produce of the fishing 60,000l. a year, for which they go out sometimes 7 or carried on by the Dutch all round Great Britain. 8,000 boates at once, and are able to set out twice as Among other things he tells us that they had no many ships: their merchandize amounting forty years less than 4,800 vessels employed in it; that ago (1624) to a million, whereas England which is twice as big in compass hath not half as much." vessels from Biscay, Galicia, and Portugal, then frequented the west coast of Ireland to fish for cod from April to July; and, if the following be true, we showed as little enterprise in those days as the Irish in more recent times. He says : "That which is more strange and greatly to our shame, they have 400 ships with fish, in which our men of Yarmouth within Ken, almost at land, do vend our herrings amongst us here in England, and make us pay for the fish taken upon our own coast ready money, wherewith they store their own country." The value of the fisheries around Great Britain is estimated thus: "During the warrs between the King of Spain and the Hollanders before the last truce, Dunkirke, by taking, spoiling, and burning the Busses (vessels) of Holland, and setting great ransome upon their fishermen, enforced them to compound for great summs that they might fish quietly for one year, whereupon the next year after the Fishermen agreed amongst themselves to pay a doller upon every last of herrins towards the maintenance of certain ships of warr to waft and secure them in their fishing, by reason whereof there was a record kept of several lasts of herrins taken that year; and appeared thereby that in one halfe a year there were taken 30,000 Lasts of herrins, which at 16, 20, 30 pound per last amounteth to 1,600,000, and at 16, 20, 30 pound the last they ordinarily sold; then transported into other countries, it cometh at least to 5,000,000Z., whereunto if we add the herrins taken by other nations, together with the Cod, Ling, Hake, and the fish taken by the Hollanders and other our neighbours upon the British coasts all the year long, the total will evidently arise to above 1,000,000l." Which is apparently a misprint for 10,000,000l. "Every orphan, servant, or poor man may venture their stock in fishing voyages, which affords them extraordinary encrease, and is duly paid according to the proportion of their gain." And Ashford, Kent. RALPH N. JAMES. THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN AND ELECTIONEERING TACTICS IN FORMER DAYS. Two letters, of which I send literal transcripts, will serve, I think, to give a good insight into much for the better by the passing of parliamena state of affairs which has been changed very tary reform in the year 1832, and by the enlargement of the constituency of the University. The originals are in my possession, and have not appeared in print. Their contents, which are curious, are as follows :— "Confidential. I. "T.C.D., 28 July, Noon [1827]. be ultimately favorable to me, not to lose precious time "My dear MacDonnell,-I implore you, if you mean to in wrestling with a shadow. North's standing, you know, can only be a simulacrum of standing-a show-a pageant-to swell the triumph of Mr. Boyton. I thereunderstanding, whether you ought not immediately to fore appeal to your good sense-to your straightforward take your line. North, depend upon it, has taken his. The election is now in your hands. How long it may be so, none of us can answer. Again and again I implore you to come to a decision, and if that decision is favorable to me, it will be effectual and conclusive; and will superadd the deepest political obligation to the earliest and warmest private friendship. "Yours importunately, "Revd Dr MacDonnell, &c." II. "Private and Confidential. "J. W. CROKER. [London, February 8, 1830.] "My dear MacDonnell,-Arrangements were on foot during the last week for sending Croker from the Ad "Though there be nothing in Holland but Hops, mad-miralty. The Duke [of Wellington], anxious to oblige der, Butter and cheese, yet by fishing they have plentiful cfall manner of provision for necessity." "The Hollanders and other nations set forth with their Busses in June to find shcales of fish, and having found it, dwell amongst it till November, whereas we stay till the Herring come home to our roadsteads, and sometimes suffer them to pass by ere we look out, our Herring-fishing containing onely seven weeks at the most, and theirs twenty." One cause of the decline of the British fisheries he mentions : "Because the English fishermen dwelling on the sea coasts did leave off their trade of fishing in our seas, and went the halfe seas over, and there upon the seas did Lord Melville, who dislikes Croker, had persuaded the latter to accept the office of Treasurer of the Navy, held along with the Board of Trade by poor Vesey Fitzgerald, although it is 1,2007. a year less than the Secretaryship, which he has at present. Croker's acceptance of this would vacate his seat, and bring on a College Election. On Saturday last it was generally understood that the matter was finally arranged, and that Croker was to be Treasurer; and I was about to pack up my things, and from a high quarter that the plan was abandoned; and be off to Ireland. I received, however, an intimation to make assurance more sure, I went this day to Croker, told him my friends had evermore, and with justice, imputed to me that I was late in the field, and that if he was not able or willing to tell me something decided on the subject, I should be off this night in the Mail. He then informed me that he had been with the Duke, and begged of him to leave him where he was-at the Admiralty, and that the Duke had consented. He added something about the other office (a mere sinecure) having attracted the attention of the Finance Committee. He also told me he had written to Dublin, to ascertain how he stood in the College, and his chance of success, but had not yet received an answer. His course, however, is for the present determined, independently of the intelligence which Lloyd [afterwards Provost of Trinity College] may convey to him. You may shew this letter, though marked Private, to Griffin [afterwards Bishop of Limerick], and O'Brien [afterwards Bishop of Ossory], and Singer [afterwards Bishop of Meath]. I have not time to write to them today, but they shall hear from me by the next post. Do not let them, however, report more as coming from me than that Croker does not leave his present situation, and that we shall have no Election. I shall write to you in a few days an account of our position here, a critical one. You will read in the papers the lamentable catastrophe of poor Lord Graves. The indignation against the Duke of Cumberland is extreme. O Connell's debut was a poor thing. He excites very little attention, and will soon, I suspect, be heartily sick of the House of Commons. "My dear MacDonnell, "Ever most sincerely yours, "JOHN HENRY NORTH. "Rev Rich MacDonnell, Trinity College, Dublin." The foregoing letters were addressed to the Rev. Richard MacDonnell, D.D., F.T.C.D., who was appointed Provost of the College in 1852, and died in 1867-one by the Right Hon. John Wilson Croker, M.P. for the University of Dublin, and the other by John Henry North, Esq., who died in 1831, while M.P. for Drogheda, and Judge of the Court of Admiralty in Ireland. A contest for the representation of the University took place in the year 1827, and Mr. Croker was returned by a comparatively small majority over Mr. North. The Rev. Charles Boyton, whose name occurs in the first letter, was an active and well-known Fellow of the College. THOMAS DAVIDSON. Авива. In the Cornhill Magazine for December, 1860, appeared an anonymous poem, entitled "Ariadne at Naxos." There was nothing to indicate who its author was; but I distinctly remember the pleasure its perusal gave me, and it was a long time ere I could get out of my head the lines"From her couch of Orient forests From the chambers of her rest- And the lonely watcher there; Came to lighten her despair. Watching, weary, and forsaken." The secret of its authorship was not made public; but it is now no longer a secret, and certainly it never occurred to me to look for its author in the class-room of a Scotch university. Thomas Davidson's history has just been given to the world in a volume entitled The Life of a Scottish Probationer: being a Memoir of Thomas Davidson, with his Poems and Extracts from his Letters, by James Brown, Minister of St. James's Street Church, Paisley, &c. born at Oxnam Row, near Jedburgh, on July 7, Thomas Davidson, the son of a shepherd, was 1838. What he had to contend against in his too brief life, Mr. Brown has told us with a sympathetic, but withal discriminating, pen. in the spring of 1859, when in his twenty-first Ariadne at Naxos was written by Davidson year. It was written as a competition poem in the Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres Class in the University of Edinburgh, then presided over by so famous a man as the late Prof. Aytoun. If the competition resulted but in gaining to Davidson the second prize, there were congenial spirits around him whose instincts were perhaps truer than those of the more highly gifted occupant of the chair. Without Davidson's knowledge the poem was sent to the editor of the Cornhill Magazine; but I shall best narrate the incident in Mr. Brown's own words (p. 36) :— "The appreciation of the worth of their fellowstudent's performance was so enthusiastic on the part of Davidson's friends that one of them sent his Ariadne' to Thackeray. He did so without the knowledge of the author, who would certainly have shrunk from so bold a proof-sheet was sent to him for correction. The poem step. Davidson's astonishment was unfeigned when the appeared in the number of the magazine for December, 1860, with an illustrative engraving, and occupying a place of honour. The gratification of the young author in seeing his verses so worthily introduced to public notice was soon followed by the honest pride of having earned his first literary honorarium. A welcome remittance of ten guineas was sent to him, and was valued, income of a student, but because it was a substantial not only because it was no mean addition to the slender token of the estimate in which the unsought contribution of a nameless man was held by the distinguished editor.” Besides Ariadne at Naxos," Mr. Brown has given other specimens of Davidson's muse. following is one of them : "THE COURSE OF FEIGNED Love never DID The BROAD BEANS IN LEAP YEAR.-I was assured in a very earnest manner by a gardener a few months back that in leap year broad beans grow the wrong way-that is, the seed is set in the pods in quite the contrary way to what it is other years. The reason of this, he said, was "because it was the ladies' year; they (the beans) always lay the wrong way in leap year." I do not know whether people really believe this, but a great many of them say that it is a fact. "WHITE-STOCKINGED HORSES."-There is a certain amount of good or bad luck attached to horses having one or more white feet or legs. I do not know whether this has been noted in “N. & Q.,” but I have no doubt it is well known to many of your readers. It is very lucky to own a horse whose fore legs are both equally "white stockinged"; but if one fore and one hind leg on the same side are white, it is unlucky. It is unlucky when one leg only of the four is "white stockinged," but if opposite legs, as off fore and near hind, are white, very lucky. A versified set of instructions on buying white-footed horses runs thus: "One white foot-buy a horse; Two white feet-try a horse; Three white feet-look well about him; Worksop. BEEF-EATER.—In my edition of Todd's Johnson it is said that this word is a corruption of F. beaufetier, a man who waits at a beaufet or sideboard. It is given as a guess, and the guesser was Mr. Steevens. For years, most books on etymology have been in the habit of citing this as a curious corruption in language. Even Max Müller cites it in his excellent Lectures on Language. It is usual, however, to correct Mr. Steevens's beaufet and beaufetier to buffet and buffetier. Instead of being a curious corruption, it is, to my mind, a proof of the gross fabrication which an English public will swallow. That it has been repeated ad nauseam only proves the reckless credulity with which any explanation is accepted, provided only it be ingenious, which is regarded as much more important than being true. I deny the whole story, and will only accept it if it can be proved. I know of no authority for any spelling but beefeater, which I take to mean an eater of beef, and, Commons. "The Will of John Hedges, Esqre, who dy'd about the Till their manners are mended And do strictly command (Of which witness my hand), That nought I have got Be brought into hotchpot, But I give and devise As much as in me lies To the son of my Mother, To have and to hold All my Silver and Gold, Of his Brother,-JOHN HEDGES. Finis." The handwriting of the above cannot be much less than a century old. As special mention is made of the testator's possession of a fee-farm rent in Yokefleet, called also Infleet, which is a township in the parish of Howden, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, it may be presumed that the transcriber was of that locality. I find also on another flyleaf in the same volume this reflection :— "No Heart is more susceptible of tender impressions than mine, nor is my resolution strong enough to hold he is, has often made me his captive." out against the force of Female charms: Love, weak as Reform Club. HENRY CAMPKIN, F.S.A. "SIEGE OF BELGRADE."-The alliterative description ("An Austrian army awfully arrayed") has often been noticed. The following Greek version has lately appeared in the St. Edward's School Chronicle, No. 30, Nov., 1876, p. 248, Oxf., 1876 *Ανδρων ἀνῆλθεν αἶνος αἰχμητῶν ἀγών, ALPHA. CHARLES I.'S DIAMOND SEAL.-There is a remarkable story of a seal which King Charles highly valued, in Herbert's Memoirs of the Two Last Years of King Charles. He says, p. 101, that one night at Windsor, when the king wound up his two watches, "he missed his Diamond-Seal, a Table that had the King's Herbert says that they sought for this seal every- "he cast his eye to one end of the room, and saw something sparkle, and pointing with his Finger, bade Mr. Herbert take a candle and see what it was; by good Providence it was the Diamond, which he took up, and found his Majesty's Arms in it, and with joy brought it to the King." Tavernier, who was at Paris with Charles II., took with him to Persia a diamond with the arms of an English prince cut upon it (see his Travels, La Haye, 1718, vol. i. p. 541), and is believed to have sold it to the Prime Minister of the Shah of Persia. Bishop Warburton seems to have been the first to suggest that the seal which Tavernier sold in Persia was King Charles's favourite seal, and says, in a letter to Dr. Birch, dated July 12, 1739 (Nichols's Literary Illustrations, ii. 107), “I EDWARD SOLLY. THE REGICIDES.-The following is from a piece of newspaper bound up in a Bible, dated 1621, in my possession: "This day Jan. 30 (we need say no more than say the moneth) was doubly observed, not only by a solemn Fast, Sermons & Prayers at every Parish Church, for the Precious blood of our late pious Soverain King Charles the First of ever glorious memory; but also by public dragging those oudous Carcasses of Oliver Cromwell, Henry Ireton, and Jon Bradshaw to Tiburn. On Munday night Cromwell and Ireton in two several Carts were drawn to Holborn from Westminster, after they were digged up on Saturday last, and the next Morning Bradshaw; to-day they were drawn on Sledges to Tiburn, all the way (as before from Westminster) the universal outcry of the people went along with them. "When these their Carcasses were at Tyburn they angles of that Triple Tree, where they hung till the Sun were pull'd out of their Coffines and hang'd at the several was set; after which they were taken down, their heads cut off, and their loathsome Trunks thrown into a dust hole under the Gallows. "And now we cannot forget how at Cambridge, when Cromwell first set up for a Rebell, he rode under the Gallowes, where his horse corvetting threw his cursed Highness out of the Saddle just under the Gallowes (as if he had been turned off the Ladder), the Spectators then observing the place, and rather presaging the present work of this day than these monstrous Villanies of this day twelve years. But he is now again thrown under the Gallows (never more to be digged up), and there we leave him.-London, Printed by R. Hodgkin sonne, 1661." J. C. LETHBRIDGE. Granville House, Granville Park, Lewisham. HAYDON'S CORRESPONDENCE, &c. -In Mr. F. W. Haydon's recent volumes (ii. 368) on B. R. Haydon's correspondence and table-talk, there occurs the statement that Hodgson, the eminent classical scholar, on his marriage, wrote to Byron, saying, "Inveni fortune.' Byron read to Hobhouse, and on coming to this said, 'I am glad of it. I hope you'll now drink your own port.'" Haydon was notoriously a bad writer, and there can be little doubt but that the words written in the MS. as having been used by Byron should be read as "Inveni portum." This simple emenda tion brings out Hodgson's reference to the wellknown Latin couplet, commencing with those words, which was discussed in the fifth volume of the First Series of "N. & Q.," and explains Byron's punning_allusion to Hodgson's drinking his own port. I may add that Hodgson's character is treated with much greater respect by writers of sounder judgment and discretion than the noble poet. W. PRIDEAUX COURTNEY. 15, Queen Anne's Gate, Westminster. nor elsewhere have I met with the phrase " shortday money." CUTHBERT Bede. CANDLEMAS EVE AND DAY. "It was at one time customary on Candlemas Eve [Feb. 2, Friday next], in the villages bordering on the Trent, to decorate not only churches, but houses, with branches of box, and to light up a number of candles in the evening, as being the last day of Christmas rejoicings. 'On Candlemas Day Throw candles away,' Newark. J. U. THE WADSLEY TOMBSTONE.-The representation is a popular proverb of the following day."-More Notof a bat, ball, and wickets, on the gravestone of tinghamshire Gleanings, by J. P. Briscoe. the deceased cricketer Keeton, has exercised the minds of newspaper readers and correspondents for a month past, and we are at last told the matter is to drop, and the stone to remain. The agitation the "carving" seems to have caused in some breasts, to judge by the letters, must have been very great for so small a subject, and what the grievance really was it would be hard to say. I refer to it in " N. & Q." merely to ask if it is a very unusual thing to put carved representations of a man's calling on his monument. During the summer of last year I saw, in Llanrwst Churchyard, a harp carved on a tombstone, over the grave of a manufacturer of the instrument, but just now I cannot call to mind any other instance. A. R. Croeswylan, Oswestry. [In Highgate Cemetery there is a carved marble monument to the memory of the famous cricketer Lilywhite. It represents a wicket struck by the ball, and Lilywhite as "bowled out." It has been there for several years. A writer in the Times of Saturday, the 20th inst., says that the most extraordinary example of an emblematic tomb is that of Sir Thomas Parkyns, in the chancel of Bunny Church, Notts. Sir Thomas had a great reputation as a wrestler in the Midland Counties, and the monument in question, erected in the middle of the last century, consists of a statue which represents him in the cap and dress of a wrestler, and in the attitude of wrestling with Death for an opponent.] "OWNED "RECOGNIZED.-A servant girl, a native of South Devon, and who still lives in that part of the county, saw recently a gentleman of this place at her master's house, without knowing who he was. Last week she saw him again, but at his own door, and said to a servant at his house, whom she had called to see, "I owned (=recognized) your master directly. He was at Dshort time ago." Owned is frequently used in this WM. PENGELLY. sense in South Devon. a NEOLOGISM: "BUDGET."-A writer in the Monthly Review, vol. ii. p. 227 (1790), in criticizing a work entitled Observations on Mr. Dundas's India Budget, refers to "what is very vulgarly indeed termed the budget," and stigmatizes the word as 66 a nasty tinkerly word, which we wish to banish from the polite and political circles." W. PRIDEAUX COURTNEY. 15, Queen Anne's Gate, Westminster. CURIOUS EPITAPH.-The following inscription, containing a singular physiological fact, is on a tombstone in the churchyard of St. Paul's, Bedford : There is no error in copying the figures. H. G. W. CHRISTIAN NAMES.-To the strange names which have appeared in "N. & Q." I add the following, about the most uncommon and curious, Agmondesham Pickayes. He was servant to Robert, Earl of Lindsey, 1642. EMILY COLE. Teignmouth. SHORT-DAY MONEY.-Early in the past Decem"Here lies interred the body of Patience, the wife of ber, a Rutland woman (a poor widow) said to me,ters. She died in childbed ye 6th day of June, anno 1717, Shadrach Johnson. By her he had 12 sons and 12 daugh"I can't make up my coal club this week; but, aged 38 years." if you can wait a little, please God, I shall get my short-day money." This phrase is new to me, and I believe that it has not yet been mentioned in "N. & Q." Its meaning is obvious. In most parishes widows have the privilege (or excuse) of going round to the inhabitants on St. Thomas's Day, Dec. 21, which is the shortest day of the year, in order to ask for alms. On Dec. 19, 1857, I made a note in these pages (2nd S. iv. 487) on "Gooding on St. Thomas's Day," as observed in Staffordshire, with a mention of "St. Thomas's Dole" and "Doleing Day." I may here add that this information, obtained "from a correspondent of ' N. & Q.,' was quoted in the Antiquarian Gossip of the Month," given in the Leisure Hour, Dec. 23, 1876, p. 826; but neither in that article 66 ORNITHOLOGICAL NOTE.-The Jay. I once heard a Berkshire lass say, "We calls 'em yaupingirls in our part.” X. P. D. |