Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 10.djvu/547

 10 s. x. DEC. 5, iocs.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

453

Douglas who undertook to bear Bruce' s heart to Palestine, are thus given : Arg., a man's heart gu., on a chief az. three stars of the first. R. L. MORETON.

[MR. H. J. CLEMENTS also thanked for reply.]

BILLY BUTLER THE HUNTING PARSON (10 S. x. 310, 395). An account of this Dorset sportsman and worthy appeared in Notes and Queries for Somerset and Dorset for March last. It was written by Canon C. H. Mayo, one of the editors, and was accompanied by an illustration a portrait, taken from a bust purchased by Canon Mayo at the Leweston Sale on 10 Sept., 1906. The bust is marked at the back " Chalmington House, 1842. Duntonsc."

This article states that " Billy Butler " became Vicar of Sturminster Newton, 21 Nov., 1791 ; ceded to Frampton (a rectory), 1 Feb., 1800 ; and died 13 Aug., 1843, aged 81.

He had an elder brother, Thomas (not mentioned by MR. VAUGHAN GOWER), who succeeded their father in the rectory of Okeford Fitzpain after the latter's death, 11 Nov., 1779; held also the rectory of North Barrow, Somerset, and the vicarage of Hannington, Wilts ; and died 1 April, 1811.

Canon Mayo quoted the third edition of Hutchins's 'Dorset,' Grantley Berkeley's 'Life and Recollections' (1865), and Miss Serrell's 'With Hound and Terrier in the Field ' (1904) upon the subject of his article. JOHN COLES, Jun.

Frome.

" DOLLS" ON RACE - COURSES (10 S. x. 326). -It is interesting to note in connexion with this that in modern Dutch doel (pi. doelen) is an aim, a mark, a goal.

ST. SWITHIN.

FIG TREES : MATURING MEAT (10 S. ix. 389 ; x. 53, 96). Thanks to an article on ' Tender Joints ' which appeared in The Table of 31 October, I am now able to answer my own query. As this property of the fig tree seems very generally unknown, and as I have consulted several high autho- rities on botany, &c., only to find them as ignorant as myself, I think it may be of interest to quote the following passage from the article referred to :

" Any meat hung in a fig tree can be rendered perfectly tender in eight hours at 'most. A joint, fresh from the butcher, should be tied in a common pudding-cloth and hung on a fig tree, among the leaves, and left there for eight hours, after which the meat will be perfectly tender, and not only that, but more juicy and toothsome than the best-

hung meat hung, that is, in the ordinary way -

The subject is no new one, as many old houses can testify. I know of four two of them Elizabethan,, two Inigo Jones houses which have a small court- yard, outside the kitchen door, round which are fig trees trained against the walls."

T. F. D.

CHOVEVI-ZION ' (10 S. x. 407). There is a society of that name, its object being to secure possession of Palestine by diplo- matic methods ; but I have never heard of its issuing any paper or periodical. Possibly MR. SCOT is confounding two different things. There was a paper published some- years ago by a gentleman who firmly believes that the Anglo-Saxons are the descendants of the Lost Tribes. Whether it is defunct or not I have no means of deciding.

M. L. R. BRESLAR.

REINDEER: ITS SPELLING (10 S. viiL 170, 258, 358, 416, 451). The names of the parties to the Mamhead wager, laid in 1862, are no secret. Punch printed the following epigram :

How rain in rein-deer should be spelt,

Whether with e or a, Burnaby, Stewart, and Ten Broeck

The odds will take or lay. Sure 'tis but fair that a and e

At length should rise to view, Considering how turfite swells Have run on i.o.u.

RICHARD H. THORNTON. 36, Upper Bedford Place.

"DISDAUNTED" (10 S. x. 328, 352, 377, 416). Fairborne died in 1680. I do not know when his monument was put up in the Abbey, but the epitaph was printed in 1693 in Dry den's miscellany called ' Examen Poeticum,' p. 442. Prof. F. J. Curtis, of the Akademie at Frankfort-on-the-Main, has kindly looked at the copy of this book in the library of his " Seminar," and he tells me that the reading there is " un- daunted." L. R. M. STRACHAN.

Heidelberg.

BORN WITH TEETH (10 S. v. 8, 78, 115). According to the ' Benkei Monogatari/ written in the fifteenth century or there- about (in Hirade's * Muromachi Jidai Shosetsu SmV Tokyo, 1908, p. 243), Benkei was born, after a uterogestation for three years and three months, " with hair growing down to the shoulders .... and with teeth, front and molar, fully developed." This description well accords with that of King Richard III. at the last reference above.

This Benkei, so popular a subject of the romances and arts of the Japanese, was a