Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 12.djvu/18

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. xn. JULY 3, im

Snrveillante et le Quebec, 1783,' and is the more interesting in that it is the only one from & French source that I have come across. It was " Dessine" et lith. par Ferd. Perrot," " Publi6 par V or Delarue & Cie, Place du Louvre 10," Paris ; and " Imprim6 par Lemercier a Paris." I shall be glad of some information about Ferd. Perrot, and to learn where the original of the lithograph is to be seen, or was exhibited. The date of the engagement was 6 Oct., 1779.

2. This is a small engraving entitled * The Heroism of Capt. Farmer,' and gives one the impression that it was once an illustra- tion to some book. It is drawn by R. Smirke, engraved by T. Tagg, and was published 21 April, 1810, by J. Stratford, 112, Holborn Hill. Can any one tell me anything about the original ? If I am correct in thinking that it formed an illus- tration to a book, in what book did it appear ? UBLLAD.

song written by Charles Dibdin or William Pitt ? The first verse is :
 * THE SAILOR'S CONSOLATION.' Was this

One night came on a hurricane, The sea was mountains rollin When Barney Buntline slew And said to Billy Bowline :

is quid,

" A strong nor' wester 's blowing, Bill,

Hark ! don't ye hear it roar now !

Lord help 'em, how I pities them

Unhappy folks on shore now ! " I do not know anything about William Pitt, except that he was a dockyard superintend- ent in the West Indies and afterwards at Malta, and that he died in 1840.

In ' A Book of Verse for Boys and Girls ' published at the Clarendon Press the lines are attributed to Charles Dibdin.

THOS. WHITE. Liverpool.

"WHAT THE DEVIL SAID TO NOAH."

At a meeting of the Church Reform League

at the Church House, Westminster, on

8 June the Rev. J. G. McCormick, Vicar of

St. Paul's, Prince's Park, Liverpool, warned

Church against laissez-faire by telling

this story : "I said to the village umpire

at a cricket match, in referenced the weather,

t looks as if it 's going to clear up.' ' Ah ! replied the umpire, that 's what the Devil said to Noah.' I think," commented Mr McCormick, the same gentleman is always saying that to the Church."

la "What the Devil said to Noah" a current proverbial saying, or was it a momentary invention of the umpire ? I is not in the ' Dialect Dictionary.'

J. HOLDEN MAC'MICHAEL.

WORDS AND PHRASES IN OLD AMERICAN NEWSPAPERS.

(10 S. xi. 469.)

Brills. This can have nothing to do with Brill in Holland. It is the same word as >eryl, which in late Latin was written jerillus, and came to mean spectacles.

Buffing. This may be the original form of the somewhat difficult word " bluffing." At any rate, it has about the same sense. To " stand buff," or " buff it," meant to make a bold stand on poor backing ; hence ubsequently " buffer " came to be a tech- lical term for a false witness or " straw bail."

Diving hooks. " Diving " in eighteenth- century slang meant picking pockets. Com- pare the twentieth - century equivalent ' dipping."

Drawboys. This was a commercial term r or what are now called " leading articles." These are goods sold at cost to attract custom. One furniture dealer, for instance, will offer a saddlebag suite as leading line, another a bedroom suite. A friend of mine set up housekeeping at the lowest figure by ng the round of the furniture men and ouying nothing but " drawboys." If all took this trouble, the custom would soon die a natural death. JAS. PLATT, Jun.

MB. R. H. THORNTON asks for proof of the early use of " campus " in England in the sense of " playing-field." In Act II. sc. i. of the play ' How a Man may choose a Good Wife from a Bad,' first published in 1602, and reprinted in Dodsley's ' Old Plays ' (ed. Hazlitt, vol. ix. p. 26), a schoolboy is made to say :

Forsooth my lesson's torn out of my book.

Truly forsooth 1 laid it in my seat

While Robin Glade and I went into campis.

The use is no doubt due to the custom of making schoolboys talk Latin.

G. C. MOORE SMITH. Sheffield.

" Brills " is defined in Jamieson's ' Scottish Dictionary ' as spectacles in general, but more strictly double-pointed ones.

Campus. Mackenzie, ' History of New- castle ' (published in 1827), describing a disused Dissenters' burying-ground in Percy Street in that town, adds : "It now forms the Campus Martins of the young gentlemen belonging to Mr. Bruce's Academy. The gravestones are preserved in the surrounding walls." RICH. WELFORD.