Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 10.djvu/456

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NOTES AND QUERIES. (io s. x. NOV. 7, iooa,

PARLIAMENTARY APPLAUSE : ITS EARLIEST USE (10 S. x. 248, 296). There is some anticipation of the manner in which a speech of Charles II. is described in the quotation at the earlier reference in Shakspere's obvious compliment to Elizabeth in Bas- sanio's lines addressing Portia after she has accepted his suit :

Madam, you have bereft me of all words ; Only my blood speaks to you in my veins ; And there is such confusion in my powers As after some oration, fairly spoke By a beloved prince, there doth appear Among the buzzing, pleased multitude ; Where every something, being blent together, Turns to a wild of nothing, save of joy Expressed, and not expressed.

1 The Merchant of Venice,' III. ii. Carlyle in ' Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches,' interlards the speeches on his own account with expressions of applause, including " Hear, hear ! " which was a Parliamentary ejaculation of much later date ; but there is an early official mention of what would indicate Parliamentary applause in the record in the * Lords' Journals ' (vol. xiii. p. 334) under date 11 Nov., 1678:

" The Lord Chancellor gave the House this Account : ' That he had delivered at the Conference [with the Commons] what he was directed; at which there was a very great Expression of Joy.' "

POLITICIAN.

MEDITERRANEAN (10 S. x. 308, 351). MR. PIERPOINT'S "by the Turks called the 'White Sea,' to distinguish it from the Black Sea," suggests an explanation of a passage in the ' Letters of Queen Victoria.' Near the end of vol. ii., I think, the Queen expresses wonder at the Turks proposing at the out- break of the war of 1853 to undertake opera- tions in the Black Sea, and to relegate the British fleet to " the White Sea ! " She no doubt thought this a Turkish blunder, and that the Baltic was intended. ' D.

"THE ESSEX SERPENT " (10 S. x. 310). CROSS PATTE will find in an eight-page tract in the British Museum entitled 'Strange News out of Essex ; or, The Winged Serpent,' an account of what appears to be the origin of this curious tavern-sign. " One of the most venomous Serpents in former time," says the narrator,

''lurked about the Meads near Saffron Walden, in Essex, who by his very sight killed so many as the town became almost depopulated, when a valerous knight, making him a Coat of Christal Glass, boldly went to assail this Cockatrice ; but her venomous nature not able to indure the purity of that fine metal, she suddenly dyed, in memory whereof his

sword was hung up in Walden Church, the effigies of the Cockatrice set up in Brass, and a Table hanged close by, wherein was continued all the story of the adventure ; but in these late times of Rebellion, it being taken for a monument of super- stition, was by the lawless Souldiers broken in pieces, to show they were also of venomous Nature as well as the Cockatrice."

J. HOLDEN MACMlCHAEL.

An account of the well-known tavern, bearing this name, and situate in King: Street, Covent Garden, will be found in Mr. Holden MacMichael's exhaustive work on ' Charing Cross and its Immediate Neighbourhood,' pp. 206, 207, and 325.

ALAN STEWART.

A friend of mine informs me that Lar- wood and Hotten's ' History of Signboards ' is getting increasingly difficult to come- across. As to the correctness of this state- ment I can say nothing, but, thinking that it may not have been seen by the querist,. I venture to quote what is said therein. The authors state that this is the sign of a public-house in King Street, Covent Garden, and that there was formerly one in Charles- Street, Westminster. The latter street, or as much as is now left of it virtually the name only is devoted to Government offices, and public-houses know it no more. They further state that the name arises

"perhaps in allusion to a fabulous monster recorded! in a catalogue of wonders and awful prognostica- tions, in a broadside of 1704, from which we learn that before Henry II. died a dragon of marvellous bigness was discovered at St. Osyth in Essex."

Altogether there seems to be a great element of uncertainty about its origin, as no counter- suggestion is put forward to account for it ; in fact, as to the St. Osyth dragon they say there is no evidence " other than the above- mentioned broadside." In a foot-note the authors tell us that the broadside was reprinted in ' N. & Q.' for 15 January, 1859. W. E. HARLAND-OXLEY.

Westminster.

[S. D. C. also refers to Larwood and Hotteri. The broadside printed by DR. RiMBAULT at 2 S. vii. 42" merely alludes to the St. Osyth dragon in the few words copied by Larwood and Hotten.J

DEATH AFTER LYING (10 S. x. 109, 157, 195, 274). 'The Family Topographer,' by Samuel Tymms, 1835, vol. v. p. 30, says :

"In Ashover parish register is this remarkable entry : ' 1660. Dorothy Matly, supposed wife to- John Flint of this parish, forswore Herself, where- upon the ground opened, and she sunk overhead, March 23, and, being found dead, she was buriedl March 25.'"

R. J. FYNMORE.

Sandgate.