Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 10.djvu/193

 10 s. x. AUG. 22, 1908.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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patriotic " old-country " touch with the Royal Governor of the Province. Says Drake, the clearest of local Boston anti- quaries (and their number is legion) : " The sign of this hostelry was the effigy of the Lord Protector Cromwell, and, it is said, hung so low that all who passed were com- pelled to make an involuntary reverence."

The continuing New England admiration for Oliver Cromwell as a statesman of the front rank was not lost on Thomas Carlyle, for, in order that his unmatched collection of Cromwell printings should not come under the auctioneer's baton, or any of its volumes get scattered, he, long before his death, presented the whole to Harvard University, accompanied by a curious epistle, pathetic- ally humble indeed, printed entire, I fancy, in one of the back volumes of the Massa- chusetts Historical Society's Proceedings. J. G. CUPPLES.

Brookline, Mass.

DEVILLE (10 S. ix. 450; x. 91). I have a dim recollection of reading, or hearing about a man named Deville who earned a certain reputation as a lecturer or demon- strator in connexion with phrenology some- where in the forties of last century. In that reminiscence I am helped by Robert (other- wise "Satan") Montgomery, who in one of his satires, ' The Age Reviewed,' girds at Gall and Spurzheim in some slashing lines. He pictures Gall as scratching his pate in bed and feeling some outward lumps, which he assumed to be organs of his inward brain, and resolved to have some plaster heads to show them plainly. Then Spread the mapp'd out skulls thro' Scotia's towns, And Glasgow sawnies bump'd their dirty crowns ; Then foggy Spurzheim croak'd in bungling tomes, Till gaping Scotland hugg'd her crack-brain'd

monies !

Last Combe, the printing gobbernowl for all, In half a thousand pages grubb'd for Gall ; And found a deputy in smug Deville, With unwash'd nands to fumble and to feel.

RICHABD WELFORD.

Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

" THE CROSS " SIGN : " HOT CROSS BUNS" (10 S. ix. 345, 436). The custom of marking with a cross was not confined to articles of food, such as buns, &c., but was .also in some instances extended to drink, e.g. beer.

My father, when a surveying officer of Inland Revenue stationed at Wednesbury, had in his station an operative brewer who carried out this custom. When I saw my father recently, I inquired as to this man ; but my father was unable to give precise

details of the practice. He believed, how- ever, that it was somewhat as follows.

Barm was added to the wort while running into the fermenting vessel. Fermentation would begin in the course of a short time after the vessel was^filled, a slight creamy " head " then making its appearance. The brewer thereupon ladled out a teacupful of the wort and spilt it on the floor, after which he marked a large cross on the yeasty " head " of wort.

It is, I believe, more than a dozen years since this brewer was transferred from my father's station to one adjoining, but in the eight or nine years previous to this transfer I frequently heard my father speak about this custom, as he was frequently annoyed because the brewer grumbled at him for disturbing his cross when sampling the wort to ascertain the specific gravity.

The old brewer, I believe, could give no reason for this practice of his, though he was asked for one more than once.

I have never heard of any other brewer following the same custom, nor of any good explanation being given, though it is pro- bably a survival from the days of the old monkish brewers. E. GANDY.

Inland Revenue, Aberayron.

The ordinary cross on a bun is X or -f , depending on the way the bun is held and looked at ; but it could not be so when the mark was ]. The second I mentioned had a double shaft and double crosspiece, and was made, I should say, by an instrument of tin or iron, the four pieces joined together, perhaps, by solder. THOS. RATCLIFFE.

Worksop.

DEATH AFTER LYING (10 S. x. 109). The town, as stated in the editorial note, is Devizes. The date of the occurrence is 1753, when Ruth Pierce of Potterne, a neighbouring village, was accused in the market of not having paid her share of the cost of a sack of wheat. She wished she might drop down dead if she had not, and thereupon fell dead with the money con- cealed in her hand. CHARLES GILLMAN.

Church Fields, Salisbury.

PAULITIAN LANGUAGE (10 S. ix. 167). L. L. K. has whetted my curiosity to know more of this tongue. Is it Armenian, Greek, or Bulgarian ? Can it by any chance throw any light on Romani ? It is generally conceded that a confusion did at one time exist between the 'Aro-iyKai/o*, or Gypsies, and the J AOiyyavot, a branch of the Paulicians. ALEX. RUSSELL.

Stromness, Orkney.