Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 1.djvu/153

 io*s.i. FEB. is, low.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

121

LONDON, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 190L

CONTENTS.-No. 7.

NOTES :"Cockshu f, time " Chauceriana, 121 Peg Wof fington's Letter " One-ninth Church," 124" Back an side go bare" "Hooligan" " Chis wick nightingales' Moon Folk-lore Original of Esther in ' Bleak House, 125.

QUERIES : "Diabread" "Quice" "Pannage an tollage " "My Lord the Sun" Napoleon at St. Helens Edward Young, " the painter of ill-luck " W. R. H Brown F. Kempland Epitaph by Shakespeare, 126 General Stewart's Portrait Death-sequence in Sussex Foscarinus Football on Shrove Tuesday W. Hawkins D.D. Hundred Courts ' The Children of the Abbey ' Honour of Tutbury Trial of Queen Caroline Roya Family Reign of Terror Marlborough and Shakespear Potts Family, 127 Dowdall's ' Traditionary Anecdote of Shakespeare 'Sicily, 128.

REPLIES: Chasuble at Warrington Church, 128 Raleigh's Head, 130 Privy Council under James I. St. Patrick ai Orvieto, 131 Fitzhamon Milestones, 132 Envelopes 133 -Mundy Pindar Family, 134 "Kissed hands" Pamela, 135 Shakespeare's "Virtue of necessity" Sadler's Wells Play alluded to by Wordsworth, 136 "P. P., Clerk of the Parish "Snowball St. Bridget' Bower Sir John Seymour's ^Epitaph Inscription on James II.'s Statue French Miniature Painter Ash Place-name, 137 "Bisk" Anatomie Vivante Salep, 138

HOTES ON BOOKS: 'Early EngHsh Printed Books in the University Library, Cambridge' Gordon's 'Ok Time Aldwych' Dixon's 'On Saying Grace ' Shiells'i 1 Story of the Token ' ' Ships and Shipping ' Con- gregational Historical Society's 'Transactions' 'The Keliquary.'

Eev. Canon Ainger.

Notices to Correspondents.

"COCKSHUT TIME."

IT is remarkable that this phrase, which i well known to mean " twilight," and occur in Shakespeare, has never been properly explained.

The account in ' H.E.D.' says : " From cock and shut ; perhaps the time when poultry go to roost and are shut up ; though some think it is the same as cockshoot, and refers to the time when woodcocks ' shoot ' or fly."

The account in Schmidt's ' Shakespeare- Lexicon ' is: "The time when the cockshut, that is, a large net employed to catch wood- cocks, used to be spread ; or the time when cocks and hens go to roost ; the evening twilight."

These must be considered together with cockshoot, well defined in 'H.E.D.' as "a broad way or glade in a wood, through which woodcocks, &c., might dart or ' shoot,' so as to be caught by nets stretched across the opening." To which is well and justly added (for it is material) that " the state- ments that the net itself was the cockshoot, and that the proper spelling is cock-shut, appear to be dictionary blunders." (No quo- tations support them.) It is further noted that cockshoot is often shortened to cockshot.

A little consideration of all the quotations will, I think, show that cockshot and cockshut

are both mere shortenings of cockshoot ; in- deed, the latter is the nearer of the two. It is not in the least degree likely that two such remarkable words as cock shoot and cock- shut should both have arisen independently from different verbs. The verb to shut has no place here ; nor is there anything, in any example, to support the idea of cocks (why not hens rather ]) going to roost.

This is as good as proved by the fact that Middleton, in his 'Widow,' Act III. sc. i., has " a fine cockshoot evening " with reference to the time of day, where he ought, by the false theory, to have said cockshut. And again, H. Kingsley calls the dusk by the name of cockshot time. Hence all three forms denote but one word.

Surely it is clear that cockshoot time was simply the time when the cockshoots were utilized ; and that is the whole of it. The cockshoots were not nets, but glades. The glades were left to set nets in. And, when it grew dusk, the nets (called cock shoot-nets) were set. Not even a woodcock would have been caught in a net at midday, when the danger was visible.

See some most interesting remarks in Newton's ' Dictionary of Birds,' where men- tion is also made of a cock-road, an equiva- lent term to cock-shoot, meaning, of course, a road or direction which the woodcock often takes, and derived (as in ' H.E.D.') from road, as is suggested also in Newton's note, where he rejects two bad shots at its origin which he quotes. Prof. Newton also quotes, from a book written in 1602, a passage which makes the whole clear enough, to the follow- ing effect. Woodcocks are described as being " taken in cock-shoote tyme, as yt is tearmed, which is the twylight, when yt ys no strange thinge to take a hundred or sixe score in one woodd in twenty-four houres." It is added
 * hat " another MS. speaks of one wood having

13 cock-shots." See ' Diet, of Birds,' p. 1044. I cannot help thinking that if guessers md refrained from mixing up the matter with the verb to shut, absurdly explained as 'going to roost," there would never have .risen any difficulty as to the true sense of he term. Much more might be said by way )f further proof ; but perhaps it is needless. WALTER W. SKEAT.

CHAUCERIANA.

1. For pite renneth sone in gentil herte.

his appears to have been Chaucer's favourite

ine and well it might be. It recurs in

hrea passages in the 'Tales,' A 1761, E 1986,

479, and in the Prologue to the 'Legend