Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 11.djvu/495

 10 s. xi. MAY 22, 1909.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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English scummar is found in this sense in Barbour, and skumer in Trevisa (? cp. scomer/are in Gower) ; but Stratmann's dictionary makes no mention of the corre- sponding verb. Two possibly rare, or early, instances of this (Scandinavian) word, in the phrase at the head of this note, are found in ' The Brut ; or, The Chronicles of England ' (E.E.T.S. No. 136) : on p. 310 a -chronicle of 1360 MS. of about 1400-20 says that a navy " scymed the see " ; and on p. 383 one of 1417 MS. about 1450 says : " ]>e erle toke his meyne, and went to schyppe, and skimmed the see, and kepte ]>e see-costez, |>at no maner enymys durste rowte [assemble] vpon |>e see." H. P. L.

HALLEY AND PYKE FAMILIES. The Librarian of Congress, Washington, D.C., kindly supplies the following information from the Chief Bibliographer :

" In John O'Hart's ' Irish Pedigrees,' 4th edition, Dublin, 1887, vol. i. p. 91, is a foot-note to the account of the Hally family (anglicised Hal ley) which reads as follows : ' It' is worthy of note that the celebrated astronomer Halley was a descendant of this family, who were here- ditary physicians in Ireland.' "

I should be very grateful for any informa- tion as to the authority or evidence upon which O'Hart based the above statement.

Several references to the Haley, Hall, Halley, Haly, Hawley, and Hayley families appear in ' The Irish and Anglo-Irish Landed Gentry, when Cromwell came to Ireland,' by John O'Hart, Dublin, 1884, pp. 390-1 ; also to the families of " Hally " and "Haly" (ibid,., pp. 82-3) and the family of " Healey " (ibid., pp. 87-8).

A list of Pike and Pyke wills (P.C.C., 1675-1784) is included in a new series of re-edited ' Extracts ' in The Magazine of History, New York, 1908-9.

EUGENE F. McPiKE.

1, Park Row, Chicago.

LONDON SHOP FKONTS. In Country Life for 14 Nov., 1908, Mr. H. B. Wheatley provided a well-illustrated pleasant article on ' Old London Shop Fronts.' That is barely six months ago, and now we have to record the loss of two of those relics of eighteenth-century London.

Messrs. Bell having removed, 225, Oxford Street has been transformed into a cine- matograph theatre, and a similar fate has befallen the once familiar " Burgess's Fish Sauce Shop in the Strand." To its frequenters of the last few decades the memory of the Strand as it was will always be associated with two distinctive

smells. At the corner of Beaufort Buildings, where Rimell occupied Ackermann's " Re- pository of the Arts," we met perfumes of all degrees of sweetness ; but wafted from the door of No. 107 came a strange, but not unpleasant odour that suggested soy, ketchup, anchovy sauce, and mixed pickles all at the one time.

The original Burgess advertised con- stantly at the end of the eighteenth century, and must have had a very brisk, but mixed business. Parcels of " orange and lemon trees from Genoa " were constantly arriving, and you could purchase " new morells," a difficult thing to find in London to-day ; but I am at a loss to explain exactly what " Chapzugar cheese " was.

The latest loss of old London shop fronts is that of 139, Long Acre, a fine broad bow of small panes projecting over a caged-in area. Through those small squares of glass escutcheons and other emblems of pride in death have looked out on the changing world for at least a century.

ALECK ABRAHAMS.

ELIZABETHAN LIBRARY. Now that biblio- graphy is beginning to arouse a wider in- terest, it may be worth while printing a list of books found written within Heylyn's ' Microcosmos,' 1625, before me. The hand is clearly contemporary, and the same person has annotated the text of the volume.

Several of the books named appeared before 1600 and are fairly familiar, but those with an asterisk I cannot find recorded :

Little Description of the great worlde.

Blundevill, his Exercyses.
 * Colson's Arethmetique.

Pathway to Knowledge.

Record's Grounde of Arts.
 * The Seman's Kalender.

Morrall Philosophy in Englishe.
 * The Merchant's Handmayde.

Selden of Tythse.

Ryder's Dictionary.

Lo. Chan. Bakon his Apothegmes.

Ars Arithmetica.

WILLIAM JAGQARD.

WOMAN BURNT FOR POISONING HER HUS- BAND. In the parish register of Durleigh, Somerset, is the following entry under " Marriages " :

"5 Mar., 1753. John Bradford, of WestMonkton, and Susanna Davis, of Huntstile, in the parish of Chilton."

A note in the margin says :

"An unfortunate marriage; she poisoned him, and was burned for so doing at Wells the ensuing Autumn."

D. K. T,

Bath.