Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 3.djvu/405

 10"- s. in. APRIL 29, 1905.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

333

I have quoted from the folio edition of 1658. It is a great pity that Archbishop Ussher's dates should be printed in our English Bibles as if they were put forth by authority. They first appeared in Bishop Lloyd's Bible in 1701, and have been copied by printers ever since. It would be well if they were to disappear.

ERNEST B. SAVAGE.

St. Thomas, Douglas.

Many learned and curious papers on this subject have appeared in 3 rd S. x. 242 ; xii. 374, 449, 534 ; 7 th S. i. 287, 452. Numerous works are given under this heading in the 'Contents-Subject Index' by A. Cotgreave (London, 1900).

EVERARD HOME COLEMAN. 71, Brecknock Road.

Vide 'An Outline of Ancient and Modern History,' at the end of Barclay's ' English Dictionary,' 1808.

HENRY JOHN BEARDSHAW. 27, Northumberland Road, Sheffield.

[Reply also from MR. J. NELSON.]

AMERICAN PLACE-NAMES (10 th S. iii. 188, 276). This query has recalled a memory of my boyhood, which may possibly help towards finding the collection of poems in- quired for. I cannot perfectly remember the excerpt, but it ran very nearly as follows :

" Out in Maine they write their love-letters in this style : Sweet maiden of Passamaquoddy,

Shall we seek for communion of souls Where the deep Mississippi meanders

Or the mighty Saskatchewan rolls?

Ah, no ! here in Maine I will find thee

A sheltered sequestered nook, Where the slow-winding Skoodoowabskookskis

Conjoins with the Skoodoowabskook.

Let others extol the Molloddy

Or Merrimamerrimacook ; There's none like the Skoodoowabskookskis,

Unless 'tis the Skoodoowabskook."

There may have been another stanza after the second, but I think not. The adjectives and the last line but three are the parts I remember least clearly. H. DAVEY.

"FEBRUARY FILL DYKE" (10 th S. iii. 248, 314). When an average was obtained of the rainfall at Greenwich for each month of the year, over the fifty years ended 1897, the astonishing fact (as apparently observed by MR. WOLFERSTAN) was noted that the rainfall in February was less than that in any other month of the year. Probably, how- ever, the small amount of rain which then falls has more effect than that which falls at any other time in the filling of the dikes and

streams. A considerable amount of rain may fall upon growing crops and on a thirsty land with but little effect in increasing the volume of water in the neighbouring streams ' r but when February begins there is but little- vegetation, and, moreover, the ground has usually become so saturated that it can absorb no more, and so the rain although so little fills the dikes.

THOS. C. MYDDELTON.

St. Albans.

Old folks in Somerset still quote this

Froverb as though it was founded on fact, t is no use to remind them that February is not realty a wet month. They shake their heads and intimate that " the seasons have changed." C. T.

ALL FOOLS' DAY (10 th S. iii. 286). In the days of my youth, in South Lincolnshire, no- April fools (or Tommies, as we were taught to call the victims) could be lawfully made after noontide. Did anybody ignore this, the retort courteous was :

Twelve o'clock is past and gone, And you 're a fool for making me one.

I used to feel infinitely relieved when I had more or less successfully avoided the traps of early morn, and was protected from stultification by midday. ST. SWITHIN.

MR. HARRY HEMS has misquoted the couplet. It is as follows :

April Fools' Day 's past and gone ; You 're a fool, and I am none !

He is quite correct as to the pranks not being permissible after noontide, and the same custom still obtains in this part of Yorkshire. Should any boy or girl be " fooled " after midday, the victimizer is retaliated upon with the lines I have quoted.

CHAS. F. FORSHAW, LL.D. Bradford.

ANCHORITES' DENS (10 th S. iii. 128, 234, 293). Apart from the name, there is no evidence (pace Robert Bigsby) that Anchor Church, near Repton, was ever used for a religious purpose, or was occupied by an anchorite. In the Repton parish register, under the year 1658, is the entry : " Ye foole at Anchor Church bur : April 19." In later times it was much enlarged by Sir Robert Burdett to form a summer-house, and was in

part used as a winebin.

York.

GEORGE A. AUDEN.

HOUSE OF ANJOU (10 th S. iii. 270, 317). Hazlitt's 'Coinage of the European Con- tinent,' p. 276, gives a list of the Counts and