Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 1.djvu/118

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NOTES AND QUERIES. do* s. i. JAN. so,

word is often used," more particularly in the case of burials :

"1741-42, Jan* 23 d . Sarah Ebherop, a Collectioner.

"1762, July 20 th . Jno. Apsalon of y e pah of Hitchenden, Collectioner."

In the reply given at p. 98 it is explained that it applies to a person permanently in receipt of parochial relief. Many legacies have been left to the poor not taking col- lection.

I cannot find the word in any of the many dictionaries to which I have referred.

EVERAKD HOME COLEMAN. 71, Brecknock Road.

See under 'Collection' in 'N.E.D.'

W. C. B.

"AS MERRY AS GRIGGS " (9 th S. xii. 506;

10 th S. i. 36). The following quotation from a poet and accurate observer of nature may be of interest :

All about the fields you caught His weary daylong chirping, like the dry High-elbowed grigs that leap in summer grass. Tennyson, ' The Brook.' HlPPOCLIDES.

If it is remembered that " grigs " are grass- hoppers the explanation is simple enough.

E. W.

Dr. Brewer ('Phrase and Fable') explains this proverb :

"A grig is the sand-eel, and a cricket. There was also a class of vagabond dancers and tumblers

who visited ale-houses so called Many think the

expression should be ' Merry as a Greek.' "

Halliwell (' Diet, of Archaic Words ') is very decided in stating that grig is a corruption of Greek. RICHARD LAWSON.

Urmston.

Dickens uses this expression in 'The Old Curiosity Shop,' ch. 1. In alluding to the company of rats Quilp says : " I shall be as merry as a grig among these gentry."

In Teniple Bar for January is an article on Thomas Hearne, the antiquary. The writer, the Rev. W. E. Crothers, says that Hearne in his ' Diary ' states " that the phrase ' as merry as a grig' should perhaps be 'as merry as a Greek.' " JOHN T. PAGE.

West Haddon, Northamptonshire.

The saying was in constant use when I was a lad in Derbyshire, but here I have not known it used except by myself. It is indicative of merry dispositions and lively antics. "We were all as merry as griggs." Gnats dancing in the sun were " as merry as griggs," and so were " cheese- jumpers " said to be as they moved and jumped on the cheeseboards in provision shops. Anything

having lively motion was "a grigg," and tadpoles were included in the list. Along the roads after a shower of rain appeared lively insects, which were known as "fish- flies," and these "danced like griggs" in the sun as long as the lanes remained wet.

THOS. RATCLIFFE. Worksop.

GRAMMAR : NINE PARTS OP SPEECH (9 th S. xii. 504). Between fifty and sixty years ago these lines were current at a school in Nottingham, and that they were of Trans- atlantic origin was never so much as hinted. Is there a Board-School child in these days that would venture to call a, an, and the "articles"? ST. S WITHIN.

The rimes sent you by MR. COLEMAN I learned when I was eight years old, and attending Mrs. Attwood's school at Fairfield, Croydon, in 1865. I think they were printed in our grammar, but I forget what particular book this was.

JOHN HOBSON MATTHEWS.

Monmouth.

VETO AT PAPAL ELECTIONS (9 th S. xii. 89, 174, 396). The Roman correspondent of the Tablet, in the issue of that paper dated 9 January, says that, out of the twenty-one cardinals in Curia, eighteen recently met as the official councillors of the Pope, and decided (1) that the veto is abusive in its origin, and (2) that it has never become a " consuetudinary right." In connexion with the second point they referred to the election of 1555, when Cardinal Caraffa was elected in spite of the veto of Charles V. They con- cluded by recommending the Pope to render the veto impossible in future by inflicting excommunication on any one bearing a veto to a Conclave from any civil authority.

JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT.

FIELD-NAMES, WEST HADDON, co. NORTH- AMPTON (10 th S. i. 46). The field-names of West Haddon which MR. JOHN T. PAGE has contributed are of much interest. I send notes on a few of them ; they must be regarded as suggestions only, not as positive statements of opinion. Many names depend on local circumstances which a stranger to the neighbourhood can by no means grapple with. It should be borne in mind that when similar names occur in far separated places it by no means follows they have been alike in origin.

Several of the names in MR. PAGE'S list seem to be derived from those of former owners or tenants, but this does not always follow as a matter of course. Priestlands at Red burn,