Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 3.djvu/332

 272

NOTES AND QUERIES. [io* s. in. APRIL s, 1905.

pig ; the little pig in a fright jumped over the stile ; and so the old woman got home that night."

ROBERT PIERPOINT.

SCOTCH WORDS AND ENGLISH COMMENTA- TORS (10 th S. i. 2G1, 321, 375, 456 ; ii. 75, 198). In The Academy of 11 March, p. 235, a writer on 'Hereditary Royal Nurses' ex- pounds thus with reference to the youthful James V. :

" One of the boy's tutors was ' Sir David Lind- say of the Mount, Lord Lyon King at Arms,' and to this fine old courtier he would call, with the inveterate love of nicknames and the kind fami- liarity of those early times, 'Pa-Da-Lin. 1 "

Familiarity, kind or otherwise, was un- doubtedly a feature of the proceeding re- ferred to, but as the exclamation was among the prince's earliest attempts at speaking, and was the best he could do with the words "Play, David Lyndsay," it is hard to see why it should suggest " the inveterate love of nicknames." This is how the "fine old courtier " himself sets the matter in ' The Complaynt to the King':

The first sillabis that thow did mute

Was PA, DA LYN, upon the lute.

Than playit I twenty spryngis, perqueir,

Quhilk wes gret piete for to heir.

At a later stage of the same article, in some account of the upbringing of James VI., this passage occurs :

" There were also seven ' Rokaris,' some of them apparently ladies of birth, for, beside the very plebeian Jeane Crummy, there appears the Ladie Kyppinross. ' Rok ' is an old Scots word for spin- ning-wheel. The life of women, great and simple, in old Scotland must have been largely bound up with that curious word ' Rok.' "

As with prophecy so with definition, it is perilous to venture at random. The " rok " or " rock " was the distaff, which the house- wives carried with them to social gatherings, thereby originating the name " rockin." Had half a dozen gossips lugged their spinning- wheels with them to a neighbour's fireside, the scene Would undoubtedly have been animated, but it would also have led to inconvenience and disorder. Burns in one passage links together "rock and reel and spinnin wheel," and he makes the stalwart virago of ' The Weary Fund o' Tow ' break the rock over the posv or head of her long- suffering partner in life. To have shattered the spinning-wheel in the same circumstances would have been the picturesque feat of a veritable Amazon. THOMAS BAYNE.

l 'FARKERs"(10 th S. iii. 188). This is pro- bably a misprint for forkers. The 'N.E.D.' gives as the fifth meaning of the word forher : "5. ('In Suffolk, an unpaired partridge/ F.

Hall.) 1657, R. Ligon, ' Barbadoes ' (1673), 4, They [? fly ing fish]... fly e as far as young Partridges, that are forkers." The word occurs in Dryden. In 'Limberham' (1678), Act IV. sc. i., Woodall, on entering, thus apostrophizes the select company consisting of Mrs. Overdon and her daughter, Mrs. Pad, Mrs. Termagant, and Mrs. Hackney : " Whores of all sorts ; Forkers and Ruin- tail'd : Now come I gingling in with my Bells, and fly at the whole Covey " (quoted from the 1735 edition). Fork-tail is a name for several kinds of birds, especially the kite. The 'N.E.D. 1 has a quotation, "the fork'd- tail'd kite," from 1691.

L. R. M. STRACHAN. Heidelberg, Germany.

HAMLET WATLING (10 th S. ii. 488 ; iii. 154). Mr. Watling's collection is in the possession of Miss Nina Layard, the well-known lady antiquary and geologist, who lives in Ipswich.

DEANE.

LUTHER FAMILY (10 th S. iii. 27, 176). -In challenging the "royal descent" of the Gordons MR. BULLOCH has been, apparently, misled by the record of an action, circa 1503-6, between '' ane Richt Nobile and Michty lord Alex., Erie of Huntlie, Lord Gordon and Badenogh," and "ane Nobile and Michty lady Elizabeth, Countess of Huntlie, his modir" She could only have been his stepmother, because George, second earl, married in 1455 Elizabeth Dunbar, Countess of Moray, who already had two children by her first husband, Archibald Douglas. Huntly had no child by this lady, and after he divorced her she married Sir John Colquhouri, of Luss. Her heir, Mal- colm Colquhoun, succeeded her in her lands. Huntly next married the Princess Annabella Stuart in 1459, but divorced her on 24 July, 1471, as they were within the forbidden degrees, and on account of the princess's relationship with the Countess of Moray. On 18 August, 1471, the banns of marriage were proclaimed, in the parish church of Fy vie, between George, Earl of Huntly, and Elizabeth Hay, of Errol. This marriage was neither celebrated nor consummated until after 12 May, 1476. On that date Nicol, Earl of Errol, the lady's brother, made the earl swear on the holy Bible that he would not take advantage of the lady until he had her to wife lawfully ('Records of Aboyne,' p. 399). This is the Elizabeth, Countess of Huntly, who is called mother of the third earl in the action alluded to ; yet she could not be so, for Alexander, third Earl of Huntly, was contracted in marriage with