Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 10.djvu/23

10 s. x. JULY 4,

NOTES AND QUERIES.

15 after existing taverns, or whether taverns subsequently took their names from the rooms.

If will head the "angel" with a capital I think he will agree with me that this was the name of one of the sitting-rooms at "Holly-Tree Inn." I remember being at inns where the rooms were called after county families. At Stratford-upon-Avon you may sleep in "As You Like It" or have "The Midsummer Night's Dream."

(10 S. ix. 370, 414 492).—It is not the dissyllable "stymie" but "styme," which is a monosyllabic word, that Jamieson defines as "a particle," "a glimpse," and so forth. What he says of the term is fully substantiated by apposite illustrations from standard works, and it accords with the Scottish practice of the present day. We all know what it is not to be able to see a styme, but it is only those of us who are golfers that understand what is denoted by a stymie. Burns thus characteristically illustrates the familiar word in the closing stanza of his 'Epistle to John Goldie in Kilmarnock':—

Ebenezer Picken, a native of Paisley, in his 'Miscellaneous Poems' of 1813, seems to use the term in the sense of "a moment." Describing in 'The Visit; or, Crispin in the Dumps,' the literary adventures of a shoemaker, he writes:—

that is, he ceased not for a moment, or, perhaps, he never hesitated in the slightest degree. The word seems to be a direct relative of A.-S. stíma, a gleam, brightness.

(10 S. ix. 486).—Col. Finnis was killed during the office of his brother, Alderman Thos. Quested Finnis, as Lord Mayor of London. A memorial tablet to the colonel was placed in the church of St. Dunstan's-in-the-East:—

"By the inhabitants of this Parish as a testimony to the worth of a brave Soldier and a sincere Christian, as a token of sympathy with his bereaved family, and a mark of respect and regard for his only surviving brother, the Right Hon. Thomas Quested Finnis, Lord Mayor of the City of London in the year 1857 and Alderman of the Ward of Tower."

(10 S. viii. 429; ix. 297, 314, 495).—In the Appendix to the Forty-Third Report of the Deputy-Keeper of Public Records, issued in 1882, there is a list of seventeen sorts of English apples which had been sent as being the best to Marshal Wrangel in Sweden in the year 1663. This list I met with amongst the correspondence of the marshal of the castle of Skokloster, when examining the MSS. there preserved in 1881.

(10 S. ix. 170, 298).—'The Woman, Spaniel, and Walnut Tree' has such a vogue that it is well to point out that John Taylor, the "Water-Poet," should have been quoted as the author in the dictionary referred to in the editorial note. Another far earlier song runs:—

H. P. L.

(10 S. ix. 351, 492).—, who mentions a solitary instance of this name in Moray, suggests that it may apply to "some far-removed place" (presumably a mountain, or some cliffs by the sea) where newly weaned lambs would be out of the hearing of their mothers. The only instance I have heard of is in Norwich, where there is an Unthanks Road, leading, I presume, to some place of this name. This, I think, would hardly correspond to Dr. Milne's description, as Norfolk is notoriously the flattest county in England, and Norwich is near its centre, and a considerable distance from the sea.

There are "Unthanks" at Intwood Hall, Norwich, still, and an Unthank Road in Norwich.

I remember coming into contact with some people of this name in Newcastle-upon-Tyne some fifty years ago. Last Trinity Sunday the Bishop of Ripon ordained the Rev. R. A. Unthank, and licensed him to the curacy of Carleton-in-Craven, Skipton. I suppose the name is not uncommon. According to Mr. Bardsley ('Dict. of English and Welsh Surnames') there is one