Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 4.djvu/250

 204 NOTES AND QUERIES. [io«-s. iv. SEPT. 9,1905. •down. Kinch or kench, a cutting made in a stack. Identical with chink ? Lammy, warm, balmy. Applied to the •weather. Lary, cunning, wary. " Xow be lary," be cautious, is a phrase often used by old people. Lommer, to leap as a. cow does when appe- tens maris. Mexon, to clean out a cowshed. " Mexon the cows " is an expression often heard. Missick, a moist piece of ground ; also poor, marshy grass. They sometimes say of poor hay " It's naught but missick." Cp. Scotch misk, land covered with coarse, moorish grass. Necker or nicker, a bullfinch. Nwf/l;/, black and clayey. Applied to land. Nutty, sociable, friendly, clannish. Palin, a pillion. Purled, weakened by illness or disease, reduced in flesh. A sick cow is said to be purled, and it is said that a fat lazy dog " wants purling." Rain or reen, a space between rows of peas. Twinter, to dry up, shrink, shrivel. The word is applied to anything—e.g., apples, old men and women, flowers. Wizzen, to imagine, fancy, suppose. An aged, bedridden woman, who had lost the sense of taste, wizzened that they were poison- ing her food. She also wizzened that they had put sand in her bed. The i is often pro- nounced long. Wizzen, to whine or whimper. Apparently used of dogs only. Yare, hoar-frost. Yarry, frosty, but applied to hoar-frost only. " It was quite yarry this morning." Yaringles, the frame on which yarn was reeled, after spinning, and before it was made into hanks. Halliwell says that the word occurs in early vocabularies. S. O. ADDY. "SJAMBOK": ITS PRONUNCIATION.—Although probably familiar to every reader, this word has got into only one English dictionary, viz., into the supplement to the latest edition of Webster. The pronunciation is there figured as shdmbok. This may be the way it is pronounced in England, but in South Africa the stress is on the second syllable, shamt>6k. That this is the original accen- tuation, taken from the "Taal," or Cape Dutch, is clear from the way the term is used in the interesting poems printed by Mr. Reitz when President of the Orange Free State—for example, in his ' Uitgesogte Afrikaanse Gedigte' of 1897, p. 34 :— Zijn achter-os fjamlxik is lang. Pas op als hij hul ledig vang ! The etymology of this very popular colo- nialism is given by Prof. Skeat in the sup- plement to his 'Concise Etymological Dic- tionary.' JAS. PLATT, Jnn. " FACTS ARE STUBBORN THINGS." — When this was submitted to 'N. & Q.,' 8th S. x. 357, 498; xi. 135, nothing could be added to the authorities already given in Bartlett's 'Familiar Quotations' (Routledge, n.d., p. 344). which only took it back to 1748. In the 'Copy of the Will of Matthew Tindal,' 1733, p. 23, we read, "Matters of fact, as Mr. Budgell somewhere observes, are very stubborn things." Perhaps somebody can give an exact reference to the place in Eustace Budgell's works. W. C. B. JOHN BLAND, THE EDINBURGH ACTOR- MANAGER.—This bluff, eccentric personage became co-manager with West Digges at Edinburgh in 1773. Under ' Mr. Bland, Senior,' Charles Lee Lewes, in his 'Memoirs,' relates several anecdotes illustrating his absent - mindedness, but says nothing of his antecedents beyond furnishing the vague intimation that he was an Irishman, and came of "an ancient _and respectable family." It seems to me that in the account given of John Bland in Dibdin's 'Annals of the Edin- burgh Stage' he has been confounded with Humphrey Bland, of Eland's Fort, Queen's County, a gentleman who died in 1763. If the 'D.N.B.' is to be believed, it was the latter who served with Honey wood's dragoons in 1715, who fought at Dettingen, and was captured at Fontenoy. Possibly John and Humphrey may have been related, but it hardly seems feasible that the main inci- dents in the lives of both could have_ been identical. The late Mr. J. C. Dibdin, in the sound work just referred to, states that John Bland was an uncle of the celebrated Mrs. Jordan. One seeks in vain for any corrobo- ration of this. The maiden name of Mrs. Jordan's mother was Phillips, and her father's name (according to the important narrative in Herbert's ' Irish Varieties') was Francis. The famous actress made her dtbut in Dublin as Dolly Francis, but subsequently performed for a time under the name of Bland. To the latter she had apparently no more legal right than she had to the ultimate nom de thAitre under which she gained distinction and notoriety. With Tate Wilkinson's gossipings at our command, we know perfectly well why she eventually called herself Mrs. Jordan;
 * E.D.D.' has the verb hike, to toss up and