Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 11.djvu/470

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. XL MAY 13, im

in his hands (p. 74) ; and various later examples, as disalder, are furnished on pp. 79, 82, 83, 89, and 90.

ALFRED F. BOBBINS.

" LUMBER 'fc= TROUBLE, MISCHIEF. " Lumber " is often used as equivalent to trouble or mischief in ordinary conversation in the North and Midlands. " To get into lumber," "to be always in lumber," are common expressions to denote getting into trouble, difficulties, or mischief.

B. D. MOSELEY.

YELLOWHAMMER SUPERSTITIONS. This extract from The Scotsman, 12 Sept., 1908, may be worth preservation in ' N. & Q.' :

"A correspondent in last week's ' Nature Notes ' complained of a late nest of the yellowhammer being robbed. There is no bird more inoffensive than the yellowhamnier, and yet there is none round which more curious superstitions have centred and rendered it the innocent victim of unfounded prejudice. Just as the robin receives an unwonted measure of protection on account of its being universally regarded as a peculiar favourite of the Deity, so the yellpwhammer suffers from its supposed associations with the Evil One. For the yellowhamnier was accounted one of the Devil's birds, as instanced in the rhyme : Yellow, yellow yorlin, Drink a drap o' the De'il's bluid Ilka Monday morning.

And it was further believed that the Devil, crouch- ing in the form of a toad, sat upon the yellow- hammer's eggs and hatched them and fed the young :

Quarter puddock, quarter taed,

Half a yellow yourlie.

In the 'Birds of Scotland,' Graham describes the yellowhamnier as a ' Fair plumaged bird, cursed by the causeless hate of every schoolboy,' and we read that in Berwickshire at one time it was the custom for children to hang by the neck all the yellow- liammers they could lay hold of. ' They often take the bare gorbals, or unfledged young, of this bird -and suspend these by a thread tied round the neck to one end of a cross stick. Then they suddenly strike the other end and drive the poor bird into the air.' This cruel practice was, however, by no means confined to Berwickshire. I have seen the same operation carried out many a time in my own l>arish in Mid-Lothian, and Tannahillwas no 'doubt thinking of some such custom when he wrote of

The weary yeldrins have to wail

Their little nestlings torn. C C "

ALEX. BUSSELL. Stromness, Orkney.

"LEAGUER." The 'N.E.D.' does not Tefer to this word as meaning a house of a certain kind. " Holland's Leaguer " at Southwark is mentioned in ' Old and New London,' vi. 32, 41, and was the name of a comedy by Shackerley Marmyon, 1632. M.

CJmrus.

WE must request correspondents desiring in- formation on family matters of only private interest to affix their names and addresses to their i]iieries, in order that answers may be sent to them direct.

BECKFORD QUERIES. 1. Alderman Beck- ford's first wife was a widow, with a daughter, Miss Elizabeth March. Miss March married a man called Hervey or Harvey. Is any- thing known of the lady or her husband ?

2. It is stated in many places that ' Vathek ' Beckford was as a lad so absorbed by a love of Oriental literature that Lord Chatham recommended that the ' Arabian Nights ' should be kept from the lad. What is the authority for this statement ?

3. Where is there a copy of the first edition of Beckford's burlesque novel ' Azemia,' published over the pseudonym of Lady Harriet Marlow ? The British Museum has only the second edition.

LEWIS MELVILLE.

Salcombe, Harpenden, Herts.

[Halkett and Laing state that ' Azemia ' (called ' Amezia ' in Dr. Garnett's account of Beckford in the 'D.N.B.') was published under the pseudonym of Jacquetta Agneta Mariana Jenks.l

WITCHCRAFT BIBLIOGRAPHY. Has any list of the various trials for witchcraft, pamphlets for and against the practice, &c., ever been printed ? W. B. GERISH.

Bishop's Stortford.

LADIES' CRICKET MATCHES. In June, 1777, a cricket match was played at the Oaks in Surrey " between the Countess of Derby and some other ladies of quality and fashion." Mention is made of it in The Sporting Magazine of April, 1803, vol. xxii. 13, where it is referred to in

" A Letter written by the late Duke of Dorset, the celebrated cricketer, to a circle of Ladies, his intimate friends, describing a cricket match played at the Oaks, in Surrey, by some of the first female cricketers in the Island."

This letter, which was evidently composed shortly after the game had taken place, is reprinted in F. Lilly-white's ' Cricket Scores and Biographies,' vol. i. p. xxii.

The Duke of Dorset omits to mention any dates, but it is not difficult to ascertain the exact period of the historic match. Obviously, it cannot have taken place later than the summer of 1778, since from that time onward Lady Derby ceased to reside at the Oaks, nor earlier than the summer of 1776, for it was in this year that, owing to the death of his grandfather, her husband, Lord Stanley was elevated to the peerage.