Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 11.djvu/400

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. XL APRIL 24, im

WOMEN AND PIPES. Emancipation of women from the restraints of femineity proceeds so rapidly that it probably will not be long before pipes take the place of cigarettes between the lips of tobacco- loving fair ones, who scandalize such of their grandmothers as have had the pluck to survive a complete upset of the manners of their own generation. Did the wives and daughters of men in the upper classes indulge in the " Indian Weed " in the time of James I. ? and if so, did they smoke it in pipes ? The British Solomon wrote thus in his ' Counterblaste ' :

" Herein is not onely a greate vanitie, but a great contempt of Gods good giftes, that the sweetnesse of mans breath, being a good gift of God, should be willfully corrupted by this stinking smoke, wherein I must confesse it hath too strong a vertue. . . .Moreouer, which is a great iniquitie and against all humanitie, the husband shall not bee ashamed to reduce thereby his delicate, wholesome and cleane-complexioned wife, to that extremitie, that either shee must also corrupt her sweete breath therewith, or else resolue to live in a perpetuall stinking torment."

ST. SWITHIN.

" To PEIPON." In ' Scrapeana : Fugitive Miscellany ; or, A Medley of Choice Bon Mots, Repartees,' &c., 2nd ed., York, 1792, p. 16, is the following :

" Some Bucks, being in a merry mood at the Inn of Kirkstal Abbey near Leeds, agreed to give the Innkeeper a new sign ; which was accepted of, the subject was the Star and Garter ; the motto To PEIPON (Greek, i.e. The lest possible). The country people read it, to RIPON, and so jog on the contrary road."

What is the explanation of this obscure jest ? There is apparently a confusion about the Greek P and the Latin or English P.

ROBERT PIERPOINT.

WILLIAM HAMILTON REID. I have a pencil drawing of William Hamilton Reid by Samuel Collins of Bristol, the master of Ozias Humphrey. Reid was a writer of some literary attainment, and a staunch friend of the Jews. I should like to have the place and date of his birth and death, and some account of his life.

ISRAEL SOLOMONS. 91, Portsdown Road, W.

SHIPS' PERIODICALS. A reference in The Evening Standard of 5 April to The Forlorn Hope, as the ship's magazine of the Good Hope is called, suggests the query whether the leading vessels in our Navy have their own periodicals, and, if so, whether any list, or further account, of them is obtain- able. ALFRED F. ROBBINS.

NAPOLEON'S DEATH. I shall be glad to learn the author of a poem on the above subject, the first lines of which are :

Wild was the night, yet a wilder night Hung round the soldier's pillow ; In his bosom there raged a fiercer fight, &c.

NEMO.

[Isaac MacLellan. There is an account of him, in Griswold's ' Poets of America.']

' THE OAK TREE.' Can you kindly tell me the author of a poem entitled ' The Oak Tree ' ? It begins :

Long ago in changeful autumn,

When the leaves were turning brown, From the tall oak's topmost branches Fell a little acorn down.

CHARLES FALKNEB.

[The very useful ' Index of Poetry,' by Edith Granger (Chicago, 1904), states that the poem is anonymous.]

" WOMAN WITH THE WEST IN HER EYES." In a little volume of ' Poems ' by Mary E, Coleridge, London, 1908, the following poem occurs :

UNWELCOME.

We were young, we were merry, we were very, very wise,

And the door stood open at our feast, When there passed us a woman with the West in her eyes,

And a man with his back to the East. Oh, still grew the hearts that were beating so fast,

The loudest voice was still, The jest died away on our lips as they passed,

And the rays of July struck chill. The cups of red wine turned pale on the board ,

The white bread black as soot ; The hound forgot the hand of her lord,

She fell down at his foot. Low let me lie where the dead dog lies

Ere I sit me down again at a feast When there passes a woman with the West in her eyes,

And a man with his back to the East.

To whom is the reference in "a woman with the West in her eyes," and what does, the expression " West " there mean ? Also, who is the man with his back to the " East,'* and what is the meaning of " East " there ?

H. P. C.

Boston, Mass.

" Pur - LOG " : " PUDDING," BUILDING TERM. The buildings at Paris Garden were the successors of the ancient mill of Wide- flete, and in 1631, as I stated at 10 S. ix. 212, were referred to as "a water-mill theretofore called a tyde mill, and then Pudding Mill." I thought that I had perhaps found a clue to the meaning of the last term in that of the verb pudder, to make a tumult or bustle, splash, &c. (Webster) or, in one of the senses of the verb puddle ;