Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 3.djvu/191

 s. in. FED. -2.-,, iocs.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

155

that the Ringmer island consists of a clustei of cottages within a well-defined area.

WALTER W. SKEAT.

An older word " Ayot " appears in the next parish to this. There are two churches Ayot St. Lawrence and Ayot St. Peter, both on high ground, very nearly surrounded by the river Lea ; and 1 atn told that " iland ' in A.-S. and O.F. includes peninsula.

T. WILSON.

Harpenden.

Does not this word mean the upper 01 high land, landing, or storey In a barn, wholly or in part, divided into two floors ? I certainly remember a barn of that character in which sixty years ago I performed prodigious feats of leaping from the high landing into the gradually lowering mow below, while two men gaily plied their flails on the threshing- floor. The threshing-floor was in the centre, where the big doors opened, and on either side of it were huge bags into which the sheaves of corn were unloaded from the wains in harvest time. The west bay had an upper continuation over a spacious storehouse, in which latter place were a root-cutter, grind- stone, barrows, and various small gear. It was, in fact, part of the barn, but partitioned off from the west bay to a height of perhaps nine feet, and covered with boarding to form a floor for the space above. The upper space went to the apex of the roof, and was open to the rest of the barn at its east end. Now, whenever a good harvest came, the top storey, the " i-land," would be filled first ; then the mow in the west bay would be built up against it. In the instance quoted by MR. ARKLE, the upper storey had been filled with rye, which was allowed to remain after the ad- jacent corn had been thrashed not an un- common practice where the grain in the upper land or storey differed from that which was built up in the adjoining bay.

RICHARD WELFORD. Neweastle-upon-Tyne.

BACON OR USHER ? (10 th S. ii. 407, 471 ; iii. 94.) In the first edition of 'Reliquiae Wot- tonianoe,' 1651, p. 538, the verses beginning "The World's a bubble" are subscribed "Ignoto"; in the editions of 1654, 1672, and 1685 this signature was changed to "Fra. Lord Bacon." But whether the ascription was made by Sir Henry Wotton himself, or by Walton, who edited Sir Henry's papers, cannot be stated with certainty. Wotton's admiration of Bacon is shown in the very interesting letter which is printed at p. 411 of the 'Reliquiae,' 1651.

The weight of evidence is certainly in

favour of Bacon's authorship. If Ussher, who did not die till 1656, had been the writer, would he have allowed the lines to have stood in Farnaby, Sylvester, and Wotton un- corrected ? W. F. PRIDEAUX.

Did Wotton write Bacon's epitaph in St. Michael's Church, St. Albans ? I thought, and think, till I know better, that it was written by his cultor and fautor, Thomas Meautys. T. WILSON.

Harpeaden.

BESANT (10 Ul S. iii. 28, 113). People ought to be allowed to pronounce their names as they please; but I remember that W. Besant when an undergraduate was called Besant. It is a foreign name, and there can be no antiquity in the Besant pronunciation, said to have been favoured. B. P. O.

As opposed to T.'s statement, I have ifc from a gentleman how he was told by the late Sir Walter that his surname should be pronounced as if it formed a rime to "peasant." This would seem to be conclu- sive in respect of a name about the pronun- ciation of which there has been so much difference of opinion. CECIL CLARKE.

Junior Athenseum Club.

BRINGING IN THE YULE " CLOG" (10 th S. ii. 507 ; iii. 11, 57). I am afraid I might perhaps have written less ambiguously, and said that dun, being often interchangeable with the sanguine colour colloquially, was probably also, like the latter, a symbol of the sun. In any case, I was, I think, guarded enough not to say that "dun is often interchangeable with }he sanguine colour as a symbol of the sun." But there is some evidence in folk-lore that, lor amuletic and sacred purposes, the dun and the sanguine colours were equally effec- tive, for the sun himself sometimes wears almost a dun aspect, and the red breast of sun-god, varies from a dull orange colour to almost a brown or dun colour. The berries of the rowan tree were none the less sacred o the Northern sun deity because they ometimes bore a yellow rather than a red int, as the sun himself can scarcely be said ,o be always of a red hue. The "Red Cow," oo, as we meet with her on the signboard, an, when we dip into her origin, be traced JQ a source much more highly fabled than ler presence as a tavern sign would suggest ; ind practically the ''Dun Cow" has been lisplaced in London, where only one instance urvives, by the "Red Cow," of which there ire still many instances. The old "Red Jow " half-way house at Hammersmith, for
 * he robin, which Grimm identifies with the