Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 4.djvu/372

 306 NOTES AND QUERIES. [io-s. iv. OCT. H. IMS. mandyas at Thebes, which is really that of Barneses II., the Pharaoh of the oppression. The former cannot, therefore, be recognized as an historical personage, and probably Thothmes I. was the first Egyptian king who led an army beyond that country. W. T. LYNN. RODEBIGO LOPEZ.—Lopez the Jew, who became chief physician to Queen Elizabeth in 1586, and was executed in 1594 on a charge of conspiring to poison her, was at one time undoubtedly very high in her favour. She granted him leases of the estates of the bishops of Worcester, known as "Lopez- leases," which Bishop Thomas (1683-9) used to call "hopeless leases" (Oxf. Jlist. Soc., xvi. 397). The people were loud in express- ing their satisfaction at his fate. Bishop John King records that when "D. Lopus and his fellowes " were "executed at Tyborne " there was " such a showte of the people to seale their affections and assentes, as if they had gained an harvest, or were deviding a spoile,"and his own opinion is that their ends were "too too merciful for traitors and I doubt not but the Angelles in heaven reioyce" (' Lectvres vpoii lonas, at Yorke, 1594,' 1597, p. 138). All that the 'D.N.B.' (xxxiv. 134) knows of his wife is that her name was Sara, and that she came from Antwerp. She was a daughter of Dunstan Anes, purveyor of the Queen's grocery, who was the son of George Anes, of Valladolid in Spain (Harl. Soc., i. 65). W. C. B. METROPOLITAN MUNICIPAL COUNCILS. — It is generally thought that municipal bodies, other than the Corporation of the City and the London County Council, were unknown in the capital before the passing of the London Government Act of 1899; but this idea evidently was not shared by the editor of the now long defunct Morning Herald, a report in which, on 19 November, 1855, thus commenced:— "Marylebone Municipal Council.—The first Bitting of the new vestry, or more properly speaking' Muni- cipal Council,' of St. Marylebone, under Sir Benja- min Hall's Metropolis Local Management Act, was held, on Saturday, at the Marylebone Court House." But the name " Municipal Council," as thus applied to the metropolitan vestries, never took root; and it was as "vestries" that they were always known until the end. ALFRED F. ROBBINS. " BESIDE."—I have noticed frequently of late this word used instead of or for " besides." Thus in an English journal of large circula- tion I find, " The industry is now firmly «stablished in almost every country beside France." It seems to me that the writer means countries besides France, and not those that are at the side of France. I quite agree with the idea of getting rid of the " s " whenever possible, and accordingly I always write amid,among, &c.; but the writer quoted has no such idea, for a few lines below he uses the word "towards"—"do very little towards further developing." RALPH THOMAS. THE HARE AND EASTER.—An instance of the association of the hare with Easter is that of the tenure of the glebe at Coleshill, in Warwickshire. The vicar of this parish holds—or used to hold—his glebe on the condition that if the young men of the parish were able to catch a hare and bring it to him before ten o'clock on Easter Monday morning, he was bound to give them a calf's head and a hundred eggs for their breakfast. This curious connexion of the hare with Easter is still exemplified in the representations of a hare dancing on its hind legs and holding a pair of cymbals, which are often to be met with on Belgian and French Easter cards. FREDERICK T. HIBGAME. " DROWND " = DEERHOUND. — In Wright's ' English Dialect Dictionary ' it is stated that "drownd" was recorded fifty years ago in South Wales as =" grey hound," but that now the word cannot be traced. When I was in Wales some years ago I noticed that (1) the people write more than we do hyphened words—e.g., "post-office" with them has one only accent in pronunciation, viz., on the " post"; (2) in such cases they omit h more than we do—e.g., not only "forehead," but "blockhead," lost the h, "Drownd," then, is simply "deerhound" in the Welsh pro- nunciation, and a greyhound is a Scotch deerhound. T. NICKLIN. CHARLES LAMB.—In the excellent notice of Mr. Lucas's 'Life of Charles Lamb' which appeared ante, p. 257, appropriate allusion is made to Lamb's preference for Fleet Street as compared with rural scenes. All admirers of ''Elia" will heartily endorse this. In view of this attitude of his, it has more than once struck me as a fact of moment that the most imaginative letter of the poet of ' The Seasons' owes its literary survival to his care. Unfortunately, there is, I believe, no pro- bability of ascertaining its intimate history. The letter was written from Barnet in the autumn of 1725, announcing to Thomson's friend Cranston the approaching publication of 'Winter.' A hundred years later it was discovered in MS. by Lamb, and transcribed and published by him. The letter is divided