Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 1.djvu/394

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io* s. i. APRIL 23, 190*.

the " curate linking awa' at it in his white sark," only the last word of which is ex- plained. But surely "linking" requires interpretation, and evidently Scott had in his mind three lines from the description of the witches' dance in ' Tarn o' Shanter ' :

Till ilka carlin swat and reekit, And coost her duddies to the wark, And linket at it in her sark.

The origin of "true-blue" as an epithet of Presbyterian, with the meaning of "staunch," is unknown to our editor, for his note is, " blue was the royal colour." If the history of Scotland in the seventeenth century is a sealed book to him, surely he knows that Scott writes, "Blue was the favourite colour of the Covenanters ; hence the vulgar phrase of a true-blue Whig" ; and he must remember what Butler says in ' Hudibras ' : " His

religion 'twas Presbyterian true-blue."^ A

familiar Scotch title prefixed to the Christian name of a clergyman was " Mess," as in ' Hob Roy,' "Mess John Quackleben." Here we find the very mysterious explanation of "muster." Did the annotator write "master," and when the printer turned that into " muster " did he fail to see anything amiss ? Several other misprints seem to argue the editor's inability to know whether a form of Scotch be correct or not. Burns calls Satan "Clootie" and "Auld Cloots," referring to the cloven hoof, and "hoof" is the meaning of "cloot" in Scott's "if they lost sae muckle as a single cloot," but the explanation given is "clout, rag." The Devil as Old Clo' is rich ! In the song of 'John Anderson' we find :

Your bonnie brow was brent,

where " brent " means " smooth, unwrinkled," and that is the idea in the lines quoted by the Bailie :

Brent brow and lily skin,

A loving heart and a leal within,

Is better than gowd or gentle kin.

But our annotator says "brent" is "burnt, i.e., sunburnt." I will add only one more blunder in some ways the most ludicrous. Andrew Fairservice gave his lawyer "four ankers of as gude brandy as was e'er coupit ower craig," where the concluding words mean " poured down the throat." On the authority of this annotator we are asked to understand them as meaning " rolled over a steep rock or precipice," which, in Andrew's eyes at least, would have been a shameful waste of good stuff.

And this editing is considered good enough for schoolboys and for Sir Walter Scott !

W. M.

STAMP COLLECTING AND ITS LITERATURE.

(See 2 nd S. ix. 482; 9 th S. x. 81, 172, 239, 333, 432, 470.) WRITING to 'N. & Q.' in August, 1902, 1 mentioned that Judge Suppantschitsch, of Vienna, claimed to have unearthed a reference to collecting in the Family Herald for 22 March, 1851. I find that the reference is in an advertisement :

"Postage Stamps. To collectors of the Used Postage Stamps. The Advertiser will give (in ex- change) four of the Penny Red Stamps for one Oval off the Stamped Envelopes. Any person that would collect a few would be kindly thanked by T. H. S.,. Smith's Library, 20, Brewer Street, Golden Square, N.B. The Ceiling of the Library is decorated with 80,000 Postage Stamps, in various Devices, and admitted to be the most novel Ceiling in England."

This advertiser, however, obviously aims not at a collection in the philatelic sense, but at a mere accumulation of used duplicates.

In the late Mr. J. K. Tiffany's ' Philatelical Library ' (St. Louis, privately printed, 1874), p. 94, is the entry " Part III. Articles on Stamp Collecting. *1. Annuaire scientifique, 1855. Stamp Collecting." The prefixed aste- risk shows that Mr. Tiffany had not seen the article in question, and I have failed to find it, or even an Anmiaire Scientifique in 1855. The only periodical of that name that I can trace is the Annuaire Scientifique, edited by P. P. Deherain, the first issue of which is dated 1862.

So far, then, it would seem that 1 N. & Q.' contains the earliest printed reference to philately. As nearly forty-four years have elapsed since its appearance, on 23 June, 1860, the note may be reproduced here :

'Postage Stamps. A boy in my form one day showed me a collection of from 300 to 400 different postage stamps, English and foreign, and at the same time stated that Sir Rowland Hill told him that at that time there might be about 500 varieties on the whole. This seems a cheap, instructive, and portable museum for young persons to arrange; and ret I have seen no notices of catalogues or specimens or sale, such as there are of coins, eggs, prints, plants, &c., and no articles in periodicals. A cheap- facsimile catalogue, with nothing but names of respective states, periods of use, value, &c., would meet with attention. If there be a London shop where stamps or lists of them could be procured, its address would be acceptable to me, and to a> score young friends. S. F. CRESWELL.

" The School, Tonbridge."

MR. CRESWELL seems to have met with no response, and the next references are found a year later in Beeton's Boy's Oivn Magazine :

" W. T. and J. F. C. should advertise in, say, for
 * heapness, the Daily Telegraph, for old foreign

oostage stamps. You cannot get them gratuitously. We know several collectors who have to pay for
 * hem." June, 1861.