Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 11.djvu/73

 10 s. XL JAN. 16, 1909.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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(now preserved by Messrs. Shand, Mason & Co., Blackfriars), and was made in 1570. The next, in regard to age, was a two-men manual, dated 1626, from Exeter. For upwards of one hundred years it formed the sole protection from fire which the city possessed. Carried by hand-poles and shoulder-straps, it was stationed at the Guildhall. This was lent to Earl's Court by Mr. William Pett, captain of the Exeter Fire Brigade. The officer in question (for- merly the champion for one-man drill in all Great Britain) rescued this most interest- ing relic from a barn in the neighbourhood, where, for many decades, it had lain neg- lected and forgotten. The volume contains full-page illustrations of both these old fire engines. HARRY HEMS.

Fair Park, Exeter.

Mr. Sachs's ' Record of the International Fire Exhibition ' may be consulted at the Patent Office Library. A. E. A.

I had till quite recently a copy of the Earl's Court Fire Exhibition Catalogue, but have preserved only a single leaf, headed pageant illustrating the various methods of present day.
 * Fighting the Flames.' This describes the
 * ' fire fighting " from Roman times to the

Among the relics exhibited were " a primitive seventeenth-century engine from Dunstable " ; the manual engine Deluge, which " tradition says was present at the Great Fire of London in 1666 " ; a broad- Tbrimmed hat made of solid leather, for pro- tection from falling sparks, dated 1738 ; leather buckets of the same period ; a small -wheeled hand engine, dated 1735, from Windsor Castle ; and a manual engine from ^Market Deeping, 1776, mounted on a cart.

The illustrations in the Catalogue included ' The Fire Engines of the Sixties,' ' The Destruction of the Houses of Parliament, 16 Oct., 1834,' the ' Ancient Manual from Windsor Castle,' ' Oil Torch in Use in Exeter up to 1888,' and ' Old Fire Engine, Seven- teenth Century.' G. H. W.

Possibly Merryweathers, the fire-engine makers at the corner of Bow Street and Long Acre, could assist the querist, as this firm showed several ancient engines amongst their exhibits. H. S E.

" TEENICK " (10 S. x. 467). MR. MAYHEW is right : teenick is merely an individualism for tenet, which is the regular form of the word in Kent, and often appears in adver- tisements in the local newspapers. It is

more substantial than brushwood, and not so big as " binders."

" For sale, stakes, binders, tenet, peastieks, good, cheap, to clear. E. Clayson. Stelling, near Canter- bury.'' Kentish Express Newspaper, 29 March, 1902, p. 10, col. 2.

In Boy's ' Sandwich,' p. 80, there is an extract from the books of account of St. Bartholomew's Hospital (about 1546) : " Paid for tenyng and mendyng of gapps, xrf." PERCY MAYLAM.

Canterbury.

BENEDICTINE (10 S. x. 469). I have before me a book with excellent coloured illustrations entitled ' La Benedictine,' given to me by M. Pierre le Grand of the company of the " Distillerie de la Benedictine," in response to a letter which I wrote in order that I might get the information wanted. I visited the distillery some thirty years ago, where I found not only a factory of the excellent liqueur, but also a most in- teresting museum of ecclesiastical and monkish relics. The abbreviated story of the liqueur is as follows.

At the beginning of the sixteenth century there was in the old Abbey of Fecamp, whose earliest date M. Gourdon de Genouillac places in 665, a learned monk, Dom Bernardo Vincelli, alchymist and physician, who devoted himself to the study of simples and the preparation of medicinal liquors. He compounded " 1'Elixir benedictin." It is said that when Francis I. visited the Abbey of Fecamp in 1534, he desired to taste this liqueur, whose reputation had travelled to the Louvre. Afterwards having heard a certain Breton gentleman boasting of the wines of his province, he said :

" Your wines of Brittany ! they are the rawest and roughest in my kingdom, gocd for giving the

colic. ! But if you were to talk to me of the

good liqueur of the monks of Fecamp ! Faith of a gentleman ! never have I tasted better."

Dom Bernardo Vincelli committed his receipt to parchment for the use of his successors.

The abbey was all but destroyed in the Revolution, and the monks were expelled. However, the title-deeds and many other writings, &c. (among them the precious manuscript of Vincelli), were saved, and entrusted to certain devoted friends, among whom were the relatives of the former procureur fiscal of the abbey, M. Martin Couillard, maternal grandfather of M. Alexandre Le Grand, the founder of the Benedictine Distillery, who became possessor of the receipt in 1863.

I do not find in the book the date when he began to make the liqueur. If my memory