Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 1.djvu/529

. i. MAY 28, 1904.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

437

Knott was then a young Fellow of Brasenose, and afterwards vicar of St. Saviour's, Leeds. W. D. MACRAY.

BATTLEFIELD SAYINGS (10 th S. i. 268, 375). "Linesman" (i.e., Capt. M. H. Grant, of the Devonshire Regiment), in his deservedly well- known 'Words of an Eye-Witness' (Black- wood & Sons, tenth impression, 1902, p. 12), tells us that during the advance at the battle of Colenso,

" when we had entered that spitting, humming zone of rifle-fire, the like of which no living soldier had ever before \yitnessed, a bullet skimmed along the top of a man's head, just grazing the skin, and

flicking off the hair in its course ' I 've just had

a free 'air-cut, mates ! ' was the only observation heard by the officer who witnessed the ghastly jest."

Again, on p. 104, at the battle of Vaal Krantz, an officer of the Rifle Brigade,

"hit in the leg rolled over, and, no doubt, as

wounded men will, gave vent to the sort of senti- ments which made Kipling's Highland sergeant so greatly dread a battle, 'It does make the men s\veer awfuV Whereupon the colour-sergeant of his com- pany rushed to his assistance, and commenced feeling for the wound in the neighbourhood of the stomach. On being somewhat sharply put right about this by the sufferer, the non-commissioned officer made the following deathless* reply : ' Beg parding, sir ; from yer langwidge I concluded you was 'it in the habdomen ! ' "

M. J. D. COCKLE.

BASS ROCK Music (10 th S. i. 308, 374). I regret that at the second reference I wrote 1681 instead of 1688. It was in 1675 that the colonel of the Royal Scots, Lord George Douglas, was created Earl of Dumbarton.

I think Ray wrote of "Tantallon Castle and the Bass Rock" as constituting one naval and military position, and that he had in mind the tradition that the old Scots march dates from the attack on Tantallon by James V., which took place in October, 1528. The castle and the rock being only about a couple of miles apart, ships passing through the channel had to run the gauntlet of artillery fire from both sides. Tantallon is described in ' Marmion.'

The old saying

Ding doun Tantallon Big a brig to the Bass,

expressed proverbial impossibilities.

Some interesting notes about the taking of Tantallon by the Cromwellites in 1651 are to be found in ' Cromwell's Scotch Cam- paigns,' by W. S. Douglas, 1899 edition, pp. 230-4. Rawson Gardiner, in his ' Corn-

amongst a myriad of other good things of the war, this story has already appeared in the pages of that rosy organ the Sporting Times."
 * Author's note : " I say deathless, partly because,

monwealth and Protectorate,' vol. ii. p. 70, when referring to 1652, does not mention Tantallon by name :

" Every other fortress in Scotland holding out for the King had fallen ; but after the castles of Dum- barton, Brodick, and the Bass had fallen into the hands of the invaders, Dunottar continued to resist their efforts."

The old Scots march is thus mentioned by Monro, in his ' Expedition,' 1637 :

" We were as in a dark cloud, not seeing half our actions, much less discerning either the way of our enemies or the rest of our brigades ; whereupon, having a drummer by me, I caused him beat the Scots March till it cleared up, which recollected our friends unto us."

W. S.

LATIN QUOTATIONS (10 th S. i. 188, 297).

6. "Oves et boves et cetera pecora campi." See the Vulgate of Psalm viii. 7 (8), " Oves et boves universas, insuper et pecora campi."

7. " Contra negantem principia non est dis- putandum." In the 1621 edition of the ' Florilegium Magnum seu Polyanthea,' 4d, I find, col. 875, under ' Disputatio,' " Dispu- tanduin non est contra negantes principia, nee contra eos, qui absurda et dissentanea dicunt, nee contra paralogismos sophisticos," quoted from ' Simp, in pr. Phys.,' c. 15. I have no text of Simplicius's commentary on Aristotle's 'Physics' at hand to verify the reference.

37. " Unam semper amo, cujus non solvor ab hamo." Binder ('Nov. Thes. Adag. Lat.') quotes this from Eiselein's 'DieSprichworter und Sinnreden des deutschen Volkes in alter und neuer Zeit,' 1838. Does Eiselein give the source 1

43. "Scripsit Aristpteles Alexandra de Physicorum libro editum esse quasi non editum." See Aristotelis Epist. vi. (p. 174 in Hercher's ' Epistolographi Gneci,' Paris, 1873). EDWAKD BENSLY.

The University, Adelaide, South Australia.

THE LAST OF THE WAR Bow (10 th S. i. 225, 278). A later instance of this occurs in Forbes - Mitchell's ' Reminiscences of the Mutiny,' p. 76. In the siege of Lucknow, the author says,

"there was a large body of archers on the walls, armed with bows and arrows, which they dis- charged with great force and precision, and on White raising his head above the wall an arrow was shot right into his feather bonnet. Inside of the wire cage of his bonnet, however, he had placed his forage cap, folded up, and, instead of passing right through, the arrow stuck in the folds of the forage cap, and 'Dan,' as he was called, coolly pulled out the arrow, paraphrasing a quotation

from Sir Walter Scott 'My conscience,' said

White, 'bows and arrows! Have we got Robin Hood and Little John back again ? The sight has