Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 2.djvu/119

 ii. JULY so, 19W.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

95

liminary discourse and additional notes

by Lord Mountmorres." London, 1791.

This book was also translated into Polish. Both the original and the translation may be seen at the British Museum.

S. J. ALDRICH. New Southgate.

THE ST. HELENA MEDAL (10 th S. ii. 9). This decoration was conferred by Napo- leon III. on the surviving members of the great Napoleon's army. I have seen one of the medals and the document issued with it by the French War Office in either 1853 or 1854. If MR. J. WATSON will communicate with me, I shall be happy to give him the name and address of a gentleman whose father received one of the medals.

ALFRED MOLONY.

12, Vincent Square Mansions, S. W.

SIR THOMAS FAIRBANK (9 th S. xii. 469). The names of the various engineers who built the oldest Hull docks (1778 to 1829) are given in vol. i. of the Transactions of the Institution of Civil Engineers, but Sir Thomas Fairbank's name is not among them. Un- fortunately, the paper does not disclose the names of the various contractors. It is pos- sible, however, that your correspondent meant Mr. Thomas Firbank, who was chairman of the Hull Dock Company. A copy of his portrait, painted in 1864, is before me, and represents him in his eighty-eighth year. The original hangs in the board-room in Hull. This clue may enable your correspondent to pursue the search and to clear up the ques- tion whether Sir Thomas Fairbauk had any- thing to do with the Hull Docks.

L. L. K.

TIDES WELL AND TIDESLOW (9 th S. xii. 341, 517 ; 10 th S. i. 52, 91, 190, 228, 278, 292, 316, 371, 471 ; ii. 36, 77). I will not enter into controversy with MR. ADDY as to whether u should be read u or v, seeing that it is so con- stantly used interchangeably. Take, for in- stance, the name de Averailles in 'Testa Nevil,' p. 197 b, written Avsylles in Kirby's ' Quest.'; Auames in 'Testa,' p. 198b; Duaylles in ' Hundred Kolls,' p. 85; Davailles in 'After Death Inquest,' No. 14, p. 240. But I desire to point out that the town of Collompton has nothing whatever to do with Columba. It is a town on the river Culm, anciently written Colun, and takes its name from the river. It appears in Domesday as Colitona. Several other estates on the Culm are named in Domesday : Colun, now called Hele Payne, in Bradninch ; Colun, now Culm 1'yne, in Clayhidon ; Colum, now Columb John, in Broadclist; Colun, no\v Whiteheath field,

in Collompton ; Colun Reigny, now Combe Satchvil, in Silverton. Collompton was em- phatically Culintown, the town on the Culm.

MR. ADDY will find that what townsmen now call a field countrymen usually call a close, sometimes a meadow, Devonshire men often a park ; the term " field " being reserved for the open arable lands, lying away from the village or town, which have been for the most part enclosed in the last two centuries. This is at least the use in Saxon England. In Gen. iv. 8 Cain says to Abel : " [Let us go into the field !] And it came to pass, when they were in the Jield, that Cain rose up and slew his brother." The translators evidently so understood it.

The state of things in the Danish part of England was very different from that in Saxon England. The agricultural system of Derbyshire is, therefore, no evidence of the system in use in Wessex, Sussex, and Essex, and vice versa. OSWALD J. REICHEL.

Besides the line quoted from the ' Bridal of Triermain,' " Carlisle tower and town," we have "Carlisle fair and free" in the same poem ; also in the refrain of Albert Graeme's song in the * Lay,' Canto vi.,

The sun shines fair on Carlisle wall. I think Scott uniformly thus accents the word, except where the rhythm of his verse demands the oxytone accent, as in "merry Carlisle," coming at the end of the line. In Cumberland you generally hear " Carlisle," except when Southern influence has been at work. The tendency of the district is to lay stress on the first syllable of place-names, as '* Whitehaven," " Bowness," <fec., when the visitor generally says "Whitehaven," "Bowness." C. S. JERRAM.

THE VAGHNATCH, OR TIGER-CLAW WEAPON (10 th S. i. 408 ; ii. 55). When Sivaji treacher- ously murdered the Mohammedan general Afzul Khan at Partabgarh, Satara District, Bombay Presidency, in 1659, he wore beneath his cotton tunic a coat of mail, and beneath his turban a cap of mail. He carried a crooked dagger, called a scorpion, concealed in his sleeve, while within his half-closed hand, and attached to his fingers, were sharp hooks of steel, known by the name of " tiger's claws." Afzul was in a moment seized with the claws and stabbed to the heart. The wagnuck is said to have been invented by Sivaji. The weapon is not a dagger, but is concealed in the fist, the first and fourth fingers being passed through the rings at the ends. One preserved in the museum of the E.I. Company had three claws. Some years ago, when in Bombay, I heard that