Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 10.djvu/264

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. x. SEPT. 12,

HARVEY'S BIRTHPLACE (10 S. x. 9, 117, 174). William Harvey certainly left nothing to Gonville and Cains College. The mistake has probably arisen out of the fact that he was an important benefactor by will, and apparently also by gift to the Royal College of Physicians in London. His will is printed in full in D'Arcy Power's ' Life,' 1907 (" Masters of Medicine " Series).

J. VENN.

Gonville and Cams College, Cambridge.

HOVE (10 S. ix. 450; x. 14, 111, 156). The authority for my statement that Hove is derived from an Anglo-Saxon word meaning " low-lying " is Horsneld's ' History of Sussex,' i. 165, foot-note :

" Hova signifies in the Saxon a low or lower scite than the neighbouring district, as Hoving-den does."

PERCEVAL LUCAS.

The derivation of Hove from an alleged A.-S. word hov, meaning a marshy tract, is to be found in several self-styled dic- tionaries of place-names. I must plead guilty to having copied from them in my little book on Hove, though I gave the alternative of Hof = & court of farm, as obviously the more probable. The compilers of these "dictionaries may have been misled by the statement found in most books dealing with the district that Hove is sometimes spelt Hou in ancient documents. Thence it is an easy transition to How, Hoo, and Hoe, all of which forms are found in Sussex, and to a fine philological muddle. There is in Lancing a manor of Howcourt. How, I find on the same untrustworthy authority, means a valley or hollow. I suppose it all arose out of the use, down to the seven- teenth century at least, of u as the medial letter and v as the initial. To the eye of the copyist Hov perhaps seemed wrong, so he altered it to Hou, and destroyed a pre- decessor's attempt to be phonetically correct. H. G. DANIELS.

Sussex Lodge, Shorehara, Sussex.

" VIVANDIERES " (10 S. ix. 171, 313, 418; x. 158). A pageful of illustrations showing vivandieres in the uniforms (modified to suit their sex) of various regiments of cavalry and infantry in the time of the Second Empire is given in ' L'Armee Fransaise, Album Annnaire ' ( Plon-Nourrit et Cie.) for 1907.

According to ' Chambers's Encyclopaedia ' the uniforms were first adopted during the Algerian campaigns, but are now discon- tinued. C. S. HARRIS.

TYPOGRAPHICAL PUZZLE (10 S. x. 186). The error is, of course, the transposition of s and c in " some " and " procured " : read " These great collections of hands,, that some men found themselves upon, having been procured among the raffe of the meaner and most unexperienced mariners."

J. A. H. M.

SNODGRASS AS A SURNAME (10 S. ix. 427 ; x. 10, 52, 113). Regarding the Dickens- aspect of this discussion, I can say that my father, William Snodgrass, of Bath, always, told me that Dickens met my grandfather in a Bath hostelry ; that my grandfather was an amateur poet, and, as is the way in inns even nowadays he talked a lot p that Dickens, when he went to Bath, dropped in often, and also talked a lot. Result :. Dickens struck by the singularity of the name ; a novelist seeking for new and striking or curious names ; the rest, ' Pickwick Papers.'

There was a Pickwick coach running from London to Bath at that period. There was a Weller who had livery stables at Bath. There was a Tupman whose name- was over some shop in the town.

One of my brothers has a volume of poetry in MS. written by my grandfather,, from which I may perhaps send you a few selections. Some are quaint old songs, of the period, which, I believe, are non- existent in writing elsewhere. All these things show that Dickens discovered most of his names for ' Pickwick Papers ' during: a visit to Bath. But the Snodgrass family must not be judged by the standard of the Snodgrass of Pickwick's friendship.

ALFRED E. SNODGRASS.

"Burr" (10 S. x. 170). There is no difficulty here. The querist has taken the archaic s for /, and thereby reached a plural " bums " instead of " bussis," the equivalent of modern " bushes." If he will substitute the real for the supposed word, and assume that " damson " means drenches, he will readily get the meaning of the line. THOMAS BAYNE.

[MR. W. E. WILSON replies to the same effect.]

TOOTHACHE (10 S. x. 121, 171, 196). I cannot say that I ever heard of black- smiths in this country having been accus- tomed to draw teeth, though this office frequently devolved upon barbers, and, as. we know, there were barber-surgeons. In 'Elegant Extracts,' 1796, vol. ii. p. 491 r is an amusing poem called ' The Barber's- Nuptials,' and though no author's name