Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 11.djvu/386

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. XL APRIL 17, im

With all respect to an ancient scribe, the punctuation leaves something to be desired

I cannot believe that the saying originated as Lady Dorothy Nevill asserts. I feel that Sheridan's reply was a stroke of humour on an already well-known locution.

ST. SWITHIN.

Seventy years ago a song with the title ' Jack Robinson ' had a great vogue. It related the woes of a sailor who had been jilted by his faithless fiancee, and was sung to a tune known as ' The Sailor's Hornpipe.' The last verse the only one I remember ran thus :

He hitched up his trousers. " Alas ! alas ! That I should live to be made such an ass " ; And he was off while you'd say " Jack Robinson."

HENRY SMYTH. Stanmore Road, Edgbaston.

[MR. G. MERRYWEATHER of Chicago also thanked for reply.]

BURIAL HALF WITHIN AND HALF WITHOUT A CHURCH (10 S. xi. 108, 230). I am not aware whether, in connexion with this custom or practice, testamentary directions on the point have often been noted. In any case, the following instance has so recently been made public that it cannot as yet be very generally known. ' North- Country Wills,' 1908 (Surtees Society), includes, at p. 131, the will of Ralph Hed- worth, parson of Stanford-on-Soar, Notts, dated 20 June, 1532, which says :

"To be buried within the churche yard of Stanford, of the west side of the quere, a parte of my bodye to lye within the wall of the said quere. ' '

A. STAPLETON.

39, Burford Road, Nottingham.

One of the walls I think the west of the south transept of Hamsterley Church, co. Durham, is built over an effigy, half being within and half without the church.

R. B R.

BRUGES : ITS PRONUNCIATION (10 S. x. 408, 473 ; xi. 74, 134, 254). I well remember poor Ludlow Bruges at Eton in the early fifties of last century. He died there, and his tutor Russell Day wrote some pathetic lines to his memory. We always called him Ludlow Brewjis, as MR. STILWELL says.

Hie ET UBIQUE.

"KERSEY" (10 S. xi. 85, 178). PROF. SKEAT and MR. PENNY will find a good account of the above cloth in ' The Draper's Dictionary,' by S. William Beck (n.d.).

JOHN RADCLIFFE.

BEN MEIR'S CHRONICLES (10 S. xi. 248). The Chronicles of Rabbi Joseph ben Joshua ben Meir the Sphardi were rendered into English, and published for the Oriental Translation Fund by Richard Bentley, 1835, 2 vols., 8vo. A biography of the author and an accout of his literary productions will be found in the ' Jewish Encyclopaedia,' vol. vii. p. 268. ISRAEL SOLOMONS.

91, Portsdown Road, W.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &o.

The People of the Polar North : a Record. By Knud Rasmussen. Compiled from the Danish Originals and edited by G. Herring. Illustra- tions by Count Harold Moltke. (Kegan Paul & Co.)

THIS work deals with the three distinct Eskimo branches which make up the population of Green- land : the West Greenlanders, the civilized and Christianized inhabitants of South-West and West Greenland ; the East Greenlanders, formerly the inhabitants of the south-east coast, which is now quite deserted, except for the area of Angmagssalik, as is the whole of the east coast ; and the Polar Eskimos : "at the present time the Eskimos, as a race, are an unexplored and unexploited people, and much of their origin and history is still conjecture, though the proof of the great similarity between the dialects of different tribes would give confirmation to the theory of a common parentage at no remote date."

Mr. Rasmussen and Lieut. Moltke were mem- bers of the Danish Literary Expedition which left Copenhagen in June, 1902, for South-West Greenland. The former was peculiarly fitted to win the confidence and affection of the Eskimos because he had himself been born and brought up in Greenland, and had spoken the language from his boyhood. Lovers of folk-lore will find much to interest them in this book, as he was the first man to make thorough and efficient research into the folk-lore treasures of the Polar Eskimos, their traditional history, and their religion. Mr. Herring states that ' ' he will probably of necessity be the last. When others come, if they do come, they will be too late. The Polar Eskimos are very few in number. They are not a fertile race, and year by year, ravaged often by mysterious and perhaps imported sicknesses, and waging a perpetual war with nature in her harshest mood, they are growing steadily fewer. . . .Contact with the white Polar explorers, the communication which the Danish Literary Expedition succeeded in opening up between the Cape Yorkers and the West Greenlanders, may be useful to these chil- dren of nature, inasmuch as they have already learnt to appreciate some of the advantages of modern civilization such as Manchester breech- loaders, ammunition, and lucifer matches. But undoubtedly such contact will tend to efface the memory of their legends and customs, to destroy the continuity of their primitive religious beliefs, and to modify their mode of thought. Such a result," Mr. Herring continues, is "inevit-