Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 12.djvu/623

 10 B. xii. DEO. 25, 1909.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

515

philologists so much hitherto is the idea that there was no word in Anglo-Saxon to correspond with these.

But is there none ? In the Laws of King Ethelred will be found the following sentence : ' ' To seghwilces apostoles heah-tide f seste man and freolsige }i (at every festival let there be fasting and feasting). This quotation I disinterred from Bosworth's ' Anglo-Saxon Dictionary,* ed. 1870, s.v. hedh tid, a high day, solemnity, festival, and, as it seems to me, it is just the word we are in need of. This takes the word back well into Anglo- Saxon times, while the numerous quotations in the ' N.E.D. 1 date only from the thirteenth century, though MB. MACMICHAEL (ante, p. 214) has cited one from the twelfth.

How did hedh tid become Hocktide ? That need not cause us any difficulty, I imagine, if we remember that with the advent of Lanfranc and the Norman eccle- siastics at the Conquest the pronunciation of Saxon words presented a constant trouble to the foreigners, who, in speaking of a popular festival such as this, would almost certainly make use of the French adjective haut, instead of the A.-S. hedh ; and thus tide, and the barbarism at once take root.
 * ' haut tide n would degenerate into Hock-

Another supposition, but one less pro- bable, is that the Norman monks may have bungled over the spelling of the word, and so have written the present name by mistake for the Anglo-Saxon one ; in which case Hocktide would have to be reduced to the condition of a ghost-word. See MB. PLATT'S deciphering of Lincolnshire names, ante, p. 235. N. W. HILL.

New York.

NICKNAMES OF PEBSONS OP FASHION TEMP. GEOBGE IV. (10 S. xii. 326). Some- thing of " The Golden Ball " and " The Silver Ball " is told in ' The Maclise Portrait Gallery/ by William Bates. My edition is that of 1898. On p. 238 we read :

" A gentleman of considerable fortune, Joseph Hayne, Esq., of Burderop Park, Wilts., known to his contemporaries by the sobriquet of ' Pea- Green,' which he gained in that dandiacal epoch from the colour of his coat. Large as was his income, it was much less than that of another favoured child of fortune named Hughes, the son, as was said, of a slop -seller in Ratcliffe Highway, who, having succeeded to the enormous fortune some 40,OOOZ. per annum of his uncle, Admiral Sir Alexander Ball, added the name of the latter to his own, and became known as the ' Golden Ball.' Thus it was that Hayne as a lunar light acquired the nickname of the ' Silver Ball,' and by-and-by that of the ' Foote-Ball,' when it became known that he had fallen under the sway of the lovely actress."

Miss Foote's action for breach of promise of marriage, in 1825, resulted in a verdict in her favour for 3,OOOZ. In the scurrilous novel ' Fitzalleyne of Berkeley,' 1825, Hayne appears as the " Pea-Green Count.'*

' The Maclise Gallery l further has, at p. 288 :

" The funeral of Count D'Orsay at Paris, 7 Avigust, 1852 ... .Among those who attended was an old man, one of the last relics of the Brum- mellian school of dandies. This was the cele- brated Hughes Ball, commonly called, from his great wealth, the ' Golden Ball,' who, after trying in vain to make a noble alliance, had created a nine days' wonder in the ' circles of fashion,' some thirty years before, by marrying Mercandotti, the Andalusian Venus, the most charming of all the daughters of Terpsichore, reported, in the scandal of the day, to be a natural daughter of the Right Honourable the Earl of Fife. The ' Golden Ball ' lived for a time at his residence at ' Oat- lands,' till, after losing a mint of money at the gaming table, and squandering three-fourths of his enormous fortune, he withdrew to Paris, where he ended his days in comparative obscurity." A foot-note gives this verse from ' The English Spy,' i. 194 : ; ,

Now, by my faith, it gives me pain

To see thee, cruel Lady J

Regret the Golden Ball.

'Tis useless now : the fox and grapes

Remember, and avoid the apes, Which mark an old maid's fall.

W. B. H.

A full account of the men about town in the time of George IV. is to be found in Mr. Melville's 'The, Beaux of the Regency,' 2 vols., published about a year ago. A list of authorities is appended to this work.

T. F. D.

' SOBBIQUETS AND NICKNAMES l (10 S. vii.

366, 430; viii. 37, 114, 290; x. 174). Before the Tenth Series closes I send a further list of sobriquets in use during the latter part of the eighteenth century, or the first part of the nineteenth. As before, my list contains only nicknames that were fairly familiar, and does not include pseu- donyms :

Old John of the Hill. John, 3rd Duke of Rutland. Lord Pyebald. Hugh, 2nd Viscount Falmouth. Number Eleven. Thomas, 3rd Baron Foley. The Fighting Parson. Sir Henry Bate Dudley. Dog Jennings and Chillaby Jennings. Henry

Constantino Jennings, the antiquary. Viper Jackson. Dr. William Jackson. Omniscient Jackson. Richard Jackson, politician. Handsome Tracy. Robert Tracy, the beau. Romeo Coates. Robert Coates. The Lord Chief Baron. Renton Nicholson. The Sham Squire. Francis Higgins. The Northern Hero. Major James George

Semple. Gentleman Lewis. William Thomas Lewis, actor.