Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 10.djvu/230

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. x. SEPT. 5, IMS.

in the hedgerows. To be good and true fighters, they had to be short, nearly round, with bull-noses, flat and broad, something like the nose of a bulldog, and this was probably why we called them " bullies." There were several ways of " training " or preparing these warriors for the fray. 'Gathered, after careful selection, before the beards began to turn brown, they were stripped of their beards, and dried in a careful way in the sun or on the hob. Some lads let them lie buried in cow-shards for a week before drying. When dry, they were bored very carefully. The fights between nut and nut went on for some weeks, and the more nuts a nut broke, the higher its " cobberer " grew, and I have known some " bullies " become the " cobberer " of some scores of nuts. The word " cobberer" stood for " conqueror." During the time the cob-nut game was in, the couplet,

Jick, Jack, Jell,

Ah shonner pley th' shell !

'was to be heard from every group of lads, for no other game was in until " cob-nut " went out. There were many niceties about the game, and if a lad was quick enough to call out,

Jick, Jack, Jell,

An' yo mun pley me shell !

as soon as he found out that his nut was damaged, his opponent was bound to go on until the finish, when the conquering nut was rubbed with a portion of the victim's shell, adding one more "cobberer," And also the " cobberer " which the losing nut might have acquired in previous combats. It is quite fifty years since I used my last cob-nut for " cobbering " other nuts.

THOS. RATCLIFFE. Work sop.

[A similar game is played in London by boys with horse-chestnuts. ]

n FLYING MACHINES: "AVIATION." Bishop John Kinge, in his ' Lectvres vpon lonas,' " delivered at Yorke " in 1594 (Oxford, 1597), p. 614, comments thus :

" Some haue gone about to imitate the workes of creation, as to make thunders and lightnings, and to fly in the aire ; but they haue paid the price of saying in their foolish harts, I wil be like the most High."

Bishop John Wilkins, in his ' Discovery of a New World,' 1636 (4th ed., 1684, i. 183), writes :

" 'Tis not perhaps impossible, that a Man may be able to Fly, by the Application of Wings to his own Body ; As Angels are Pictured, as Mercury and Daedalus are feigned, and as hath been attempted by divers, particularly by a Turk in Constantinople, as Busbequius Relates."

"Aviation" is a new word, not in the ' N.E.D.' It is no doubt derived, like aviarius, from avis, but avius means " out of the way." W. C. B.

TYPOGRAPHICAL PUZZLE. Here is a funny instance of the unintelligibility by which the editors of the ' New English Dictionary ' are from time to time for a moment pulled up, and by which dictionary-makers have sometimes been reduced into the admission of bogus words :

1673, A. Marvell, 'Corresp.' ('Wks.,' 1872-5, vol. ii. p. 413), lett. 211: "These great collections of hands that come men found themselves upon having been prosured among the raffe of the meaner and most unexperienced mariners."

Readers of * N. & Q.' will not need to have the errant letters pointed out at least not for a week. They are " all there."

J. A. H. M.

" AS THICK AS INKLE -MAKERS." My SOU,

Mr. Alfred F. Robbins, has brought to my notice a paragraph that appeared in Apple- bee's Weekly Journal of 28 Nov., 1719, in which it was said of some people that, after a quarrel, they were again " as great as inkle-makers." This brings to my memory the fact that in my early days at Launceston, when the woollen manufacture still existed in that part and that is now fully seventy- five years ago the proverb " As thick as inkle-makers " was commonly applied to great cronies, because inkle-makers had to work very closely together. Another woollen trade phrase of that time, " They run like skeiners," explains itself to any who have seen an old hand-loom. R. ROBBINS.

[For other communications on "inkle" see 5 S. ix. 7, 153, 299 ; x. 156 ; xi. 156 ; 6 S. iii. 347.]

WILLIAM COLLINS, THE POET. The in- formation about the life of the hapless Collins is so slight that the following refer- ences to him in ' The Letters to Gilbert White of Selborne from John Mulso ' (1907) are worthy of preservation :

P. 3. 18 July, 1744." I saw Collins in Town, he is entirely an Author, and hardly speaks out of Rule : I hope his Subscriptions go on well in Ox- ford : He told me that poor Hargrave [probably Thomas Hargrave, matric. Christ Church 20 Dec., 1742] was quite abandon'd, that He frequented night Cellars ; I am sure you will be sorry for it, it really concerns me when I think of it, that so sprightly a Genius and so much good-nature should be so thrown away."

P. 7. [London] 8 Oct., 1744." Collins is now my next neighbour. I breakfasted with him this morning, and Capn. Hargrave play'd on ye Harpsi- chord, which He has not forgott quite so much as He has Himself."