Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 1.djvu/621

 ws.LJrsE25.i9M.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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LINKS WITH THE PAST (10 th S. i. 325, 414). To the note concerning Lady Burdett-Coutts at the former reference, the following extract from the Standard of 22 April, recording the celebration of that venerable lady's ninetieth birthday, should be added as promising to be of special interest in any future enumeration of " links with the past " :

" The Baroness Burdett-Coutts was the recipient of hearty congratulations from a very wide circle of friends. Her table at the luncheon was decorated with baskets of flowers received from her friends and employes, but the most interesting gift was an offering of magnificent La France roses from ' the youngest Baroness to the oldest Baroness,' brought in person by the Baroness Clifton (daughter of the late Earl of Darnley), who has just turned four years of age."

For the sake of precision, it is to be added that " the oldest baroness " was born 21 April, 1814, and "the youngest baroness" 22 Jan., 1900. ALFRED F. ROBBINS.

LATIN FOR "ROPING" A HORSE (10 th S. i. 448). A laqueus among the Romans was a lasso or snare by which wild animals, game, &c., were caught by the neck :

Turn laqueis captare feras et fallere visco Inventum, et magnos canibus circumdare saltus. Virg., Georg. I., 11. 139-40. J. HOLDEN MACMlCHAEL.

WILLIAM PECK (10 th S. i. 348, 434). See 3 r l S. v. 434, 507.

CHAS. F. FORSHAW, LL.D.

AINOO AND BASKISH (10 th S. i. 264, 297, 432). RED CROSS may be interested to know that I met in Gottingen last November a son of Dr. J. Campbell, who told me that " the learned author is still living." I have never read the book in question, but heard of it from Mr. W. Webster in 1888. The com- parative philologist ought to travel with a phonograph all over the world when neither too old nor too young, and to dp so rapidly, so that his impressions as to similarities, <fcc., may not fade before they are utilized.

E. S. DODGSON.

I shall feel very grateful if RED CROSS will kindly give me the extracts he speaks of upon the above subject.

(Miss) A. H. LONG.

Woodfield, Kilcavan, King's Co.

BARBERS (10 th S. i. 290, 375). My friend MR. ANDREWS will find several excellent poems on barbers in the ' Poetical Register ' for 1810-11, published by F. C. & J. Rivington in 1814. CHAS. F. FORSHAW, LL.D.

Bradford.

Many paragraphs have appeared in 'N. &, Q.' under the head of women and lady barbers,

from which MR. ANDREWS may obtain some information. See 7 th S. xi., xii. ; 8 th S. v.

EVERARD HOME GOLEM AN. 71, Brecknock Road.

ALEXANDER PENNECUIK, GENT. (10 th S. i. 386). I have a copy of the second edition of 'The Historical Account of the Blue Blanket ; or, Craftsmen's Banner,' Edin- burgh, 1780, in which the publisher states that the author was "a burgess and guild brother in the Good Town," but does not say to which of the incorporations he belonged. These were Surgeons, Goldsmiths, Skinners, Furriers, Hammermen, Wrights, Masons r Tailors, Baxters, Fleshers, Cordiners, Web- sters, Waulkers, Bonnetmakers. The author's 11 Epistle Dedicatory to the Craftsmen of the Fourteen Incorporations" is dated "Edin- burgh, August 1, 1722." Was he related to- Alexander Pennecuik, M.D., the author of a ' Description of the Shire of Tweeddale : with a Collection of Select Scottish Poems/ Edinburgh, J. Moncur, 1715? This Dr. Pennecuik seems to have been a son of Alex- ander Pennecuik of Newhall, Midlothian, who was a surgeon in the Scots army in 1644. In ' The Domestic Annals of Scotland 7 an account is given of a fierce fight between two bands of gipsies at Romanno in 1677, and we are told that soon after it took place the laird of Romanno, "a quaint physician named Pennecuik, who wrote verses," erected a pigeon-house on the scene of the conflict, and placed the following inscription over the door :

The field of gipsy blood which here you see A shelter for the harmless dove shall be.

W. S.

THE CHESHIRE CAT IN AMERICA (10 th S. i. 365). Several explanations have been offered of the proverbial phrase "to grin like a Cheshire cat." At least three distinct origins are claimed for it, one of which is that cheese was formerly sold in Cheshire moulded like a cat, the allusion being to this grinning cheese-cat (1 st S. ii. 377, 412). No evidence, however, is forthcoming that this cheese- formed cat was really represented with a grin, or what might have been mistaken for one, such as is depicted in ' Alice in Wonder- land.' In Holland's 'Cheshire Glossary' it is claimed that the grin of the wolf in the arms of the Earls of Chester is unmistak- able, and that the frequent occurrence of these arms in Cheshire might have suggested the saying, "as the wolf's head might easily have been mistaken for that of a cat." But the resemblance between a wolf's head and a cat's head is hardly so obvious as to render