Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 11.djvu/626

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NOTES AND QUERIES. rio s. XL JUNK 2s, im

It has also ' The Elopement,' from a print published in Smithfield, 1 May, 1837 ; ' The Marriage,' same date ; ' The Recon- ciliation ' ; ' Holy hard ! You have forgot the Lady,' published February, 1835 ; and ' Love in a Carriage.'

ROBERT PIEEPOINT.

"LUMBER" (10 S. xi. 386). In the 'Dic- tionary of Archaic and Provincial Words,' Halliwell enters " lumber " thus :

"(1) Harm; mischief. Var. died.

" (2) Dirty foolish conversation. East.

" (3) To stumble. More usually lumper."

Unless when the form " lumper " is used, the word in this third sense is surely not necessarily provincial. In allusion to a heavy movement, with stumbling perhaps included, " to lumber along " is a perfectly common expression. A good illustration occurs in Dryden's version of ' Georgic III.' 142:

Let them not leap the ditch, or swim the flood, Or lumber o'er the meads, or cross the wood.

The verb might also be appositely em- ployed in describing the somewhat ungainly progress of an elephant. THOMAS BAYNE.

See the ' English Dialect Dictionary,' s.v. ' Lumber.' J. HOLDEN MACMICHAEL.

DEAD ANIMALS EXPOSED ON TREES AND WALLS (10 S. x. 149, 457 ; xi. 413). It is a common custom for British gamekeepers, or woodmen, as they were formerly termed, to hang up at a given spot, on convenient boughs, the bodies of all winged and four- footed " vermin." From the earliest period these open-air museums of natural history always interested me. There I might with some certainty find specimens of hawks, jays, magpies, weasels, stoats, rats, stray cats, and other real or imaginary foes which had paid tribute with their lives to the keeper's inexorable gun. WILLIAM JAGGARD.

"RHOMBUS" (10 S. xi. 448). I am told that " rhomb " is not in my ' Dictionary,' but I find it both in the larger and smaller editions. It was in the first edition of 1882. I suppose it is meant that I do not refer to the fish so called. All the same, I explain that the name arose from the shape. See further in Liddell and Scott.

WALTER W. SKEAT.

( Liddell and Scott ('Lexicon,' 1861) give po^/ifos as a spinning-top or wheel, magic wheel, tambourine, a geometrical rhomb, a species of fish so called from its rhomb-like shape. Smith (' Lat. Diet.,' 1870) gives

rhombus as a magician's circle, a kind of fish, the geometrical figure. As it is originally a Greek word, the question whether the geometrical use preceded the piscatorial, or vice versa, cannot be deter- mined by English use alone, and remains to be solved. J. T. F.

Durham.

" THOUGH LOST TO SIGHT " : ' THE NUN ' (10 S. xi. 249, 317, 438, 498). I regret that I cannot answer T. F. D T'S question con- cerning ' The Nun ' accurately. About ten years ago I was reading in the British Museum, and in a book called ' The Nun ' I came upon the familiar line " Though lost to sight," &c. I noted the title of the book and the date ; but nothing more. I feel pretty sure it was a drama, and I think in prose.

The second line quoted by MR. ANDERSON seems to be one of the two which Sir D. Dundas sought, but leaves the mystery of " Though lost to sight " unsolved.

G. W. E. R,

I have a book entitled ' The Nun : a Narrative, by Mrs. Sherwood,' published by Ward, Lock & Co. (278 pp.), no date. It is an attack on Catholic faith and practice under the guise of a novel.

WILLIAM GILBERT.

8, Prospect Eoad, Walthamstow.

[Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood, perhaps best known as the author of ' The History of the Fairchild Family,' was a voluminous author of a strongly Evangelical tone. Her first tale, ' The Traditions,' appeared in 1794. She" died 22 Sept., 1851. The ' D.N.B.' includes ' The Nun ' among her longer stories, but does not mention the date of its publication.]

BYRON'S 'BRIDE or ABYDOS ' (10 S. xi. 445). On turning up my copy to insert the two supposed additional lines I found that they already stood in the poem just a trifle earlier lines 238-9 (Canto II. xx.J They are far more suitable there than after 449.

A. WATTS.

STEVENSON AND THE HOUSEMAID (10 S. xi. 449). The episode to which S. H. S. refers is to be found near the beginning of ' Old Mortality,' the third essay in 'Memories and Portraits' (1st ed., '1887, p. 39). EDWARD BENSLY.

[M. also thanked for the reference.!

TREYSSAC DE VERGY (10 S. xi. 370, 432). -MR. HORACE BLEACKLEY will find much information regarding Pierre Henri Treyssac de Vergy in ' The True Story of the Chevalier- d'Eon,' by Ernest Alfred Vizetelly, pub-