Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 2.djvu/348

 284

NOTES AND QUERIES. [io* s. n. OCT. s,

])es mona waftol under wolcnum," which mean " now shines the moon, wading (wander ing) amid clouds." Still it is far from certai that waftol means wandering. But one thin^ is clear, which is that iveather is here equiva lent in meaning to wolcen. cloud. In referrin to the passage from * Finnesburg ' Jaco Grimm says in his 'Deutsche Mythologie that wadel, wedel, means that which wags tc and fro, and Mr. Stallybrass, his English editor, says, " The English waddle, which i the same word, would graphically express the oscillation of the (visible) moon from side t( side of her path."*

I thought I had seen the word flampy meaning flaccid, either in the ' N.E.D.' or tir 'E.D.D.,' and was surprised not to find i there. In the Peak one hears of bacon being " soft and flampy." When a cow is not wel fed, and her flesh is not firm enough, she is said to be flampy. In my ' Sheffield Glossary I have given the wordflem as applied to flaccid butter, but no other instance is yet recorded In March or April when a cow sheds her hair she is said to be bloomy, or to " have a good bloom on," but as winter approaches and the hair begins to stand on end, she ii penny. Suspense is a Latin word " not under- standed of the people," and instead of it they say hotty-motty. Thus, if you are trying to buy a field, and cannot bring the man to a point, you " should keep him in hotty-motty a while." One day as a man was cutting a thick piece of wood with an adze I heard his brother, who was standing by, say " thou 'rt splittin' it a' to ribbins" A ribbin is here a splinter, and I have heard shavings of wood called ribbins. Does this illustrate the his- tory of the ribbon which adorns a woman's bonnet 1

The custom of heaving or lifting women at Easter is known in many villages of the Peak as cucking, and Easter Monday is some- times called Cucking-day. In Castleton, Bradwell, and other villages, Easter Monday is also known as Unlousing-day, i.e., releasing- day, probably because the abstinence of Lent was then at an end.t When a young woman came out of her house in the morning of Easter Monday the young men used to say "kiss or cuck." If she refused the proffered kiss the young men came in the evening and cucked her, or lifted her up. At Castleton the women cucked the men on Easter Tuesday, and a story is told about a man who was cucked so often that, in his anguish, he fell

t I have said more on this word in my 'House- hold Tales,' &c., p. 115.
 * English translation, p. 712.

on his knees, and implored an old woman who was driving a cow home not to cuck him. Cucking was a very rough practice, and at Castleton it was sometimes done by two men who put a " fork stale" (handle) under the girl's legs and lifted her up therewith. More frequently the men seized her by the arms, tossed her up, and caught her as she fell. The custom is now generally abandoned, for of late years it has led to charges of assault being made before the magistrates. At Bradwell, however, it is said that there were more girls seen walking out on Un- lousing-day than on any other day. From what has been said it will be seen, I think, that a cucking-stool is a lifting-stool.

S. O. ADDY. (To be continued.)

JANE CLAIRMONT'S GRAVE. As considerable obscurity exists about the latter, as about ^he earlier, years of Jane Clairmont Shelley's ' Cons tan tia "it may not be unnecessary to give the inscription upon her tomb. Mr. William Graham in his ' Chats with Jane 31aremont ' (Nineteenth Century, 1893-4) stated tery at Trespiano ; later it has been said in print that the place of her sepulture was at ihe Badia a Eipoli ; but neither of these statements is correct. She really lies in the Jampo Santo della Misericordia di Sta. Maria d'Antella, a village to the south-east of Florence, and the inscription (below a cross) upon her tomb reads thus : In Memory of
 * hat she was buried in the Municipal Ceme-

Clara Mary Constantia Jane Clairmont,

born April 27, 1798, died March 19, 1879.

he passed her life in sufferings, expiating not only

her faults, but also her virtues.

f the dates upon this tombstone are correct,

t will be seen, therefore, that she was eight

months younger than Shelley's wife Mary

Godwin, who was born (vide Mrs. Marshall's

Letters,' vol. i. p. 4) on 30 August, 1797.

A. FRANCIS STEUART.

PAINTING ON GLASS. In January this year here was held in London an interesting xhibition of glass pictures, and as such hings have recently come very much to the ront, perhaps the following receipt may be vorth placing on record. It is one of a large umber of receipts (many of them very extra- rdinary) contained in a MS. book dated 752. 1 give the original spelling : " To paint upon glass. Take a Massatento Print nd soak it in Water, cold water over night, or a ew hours before you use it. Then take it put it 5tween two cloth and pat it to take the water out f it. Then have ready a peice of Glass full as big