Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 4.djvu/499

 iv. NOV. is. 1905.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 413 for a person who buys remnants of cloth from tailors to sell to others for mending. I can affirm, from my own knowledge of the trade, that the term is commonly so used, and it will even be found in the ' London Directory ' in this sense. The classical haunt of the piece- broker in London is around Golden Square. There are several, for instance, in Carnaby Street and West Street. In the north of England, instead of piece-broker, the tailors call him a fent-dealer, from "fents," the local name for remnants. JAS. PLATT, Jun. Although this term is not used, I believe, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, any one who lives in the stuff-manufacturing districts would at once take it to mean a wholesale agent for woven fabrics. Textile materials «are sold by the manufacturers in "pieces," which in the "stuff" trade (ladies' dress fabrics, as distinguished from coatings, trouserings, <fec.) are usually of fifty yards (nominal) length. There are also double pieces, usually of 104 yards. "Pieces" is such a definite noun that it needs no modifi- cation or explanation in the textile districts. The newspapers use ' The Piece - Goods Market' as a heading, and report that "the demand for pieces was not very brisk." In Bradford the old market-house was known as Piece Hall, a name preserved in Piece- hall Yard. I hope DR. MURRAY will not suppose that I think this a complete and sufficient answer to his query. At the same time, it may be suggestive of the direction for further research. H. SNOWDEN WARD. Uadlow, Kent. My friend Mr. W. G. Butcher, who is, like myself, the son of a member of the Royal Exchange, or stock-broker, agrees with me in thinking that "piece-broker" must refer to a money-changer who dealt in cash or current coin, rather than in nominal or paper money. "Piece" means "piece of money," as does piece in French, or peseta in Castilian. E. S. DODGSON. CARAVANSERAI TO PUBLIC-HOUSE (10th S. iv. 308).—Sir John Hawkins in his ' Life of Dr. Johnson' (second edition, 1787, p. 87) has a foot-note on the antiquity of taverns and their decrease in London within the last forty years. L. R. M. STRACHAN. Heidelberg, Germany. CHAPBOOKS AND BROADSIDES (10th S. iv. 327).—I am glad to be able to supply some of the information desired by the Assistant Keeper of the Viennese Imperial Library. William Ford, 6, York Street, Sheffield ; James Todd, Long Street, Easingwold ; and William & Benjamin Brooke, 290, High Street, Lincoln, printers, appear in Slater's 'Directory of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire,' 1849. Alice Swindells. 8, Hanging Bridge, Manchester, and William Brooke, High Street, Lincoln, appear in Pigot & Co.'s 1 Directory ' for 1822-3, and in that for 1828-9. Chas. Walker, letter-press printer, Runcorn, also appears in Pigot's 'Directory'for 1822-3. HENRY JOHN BEARDSHAW. 27, Northumberland Road, Sheffield. POLAR INHABITANTS (10th S. iii. 30).—In the ' Historia Norwegite' it is stated (the original is in Latin):— "Beyond the Greenlanders (i.e. Norsemen), to- wards the north, certain dwarfs are found by hunters, whom they call Skraellings, who when they are wounded with weapons, when alive, their wounds become white without blood, but being dead their blood hardly seems to flow. But they are entirely without iron ; they use whales teeth for missiles and sharp stones for knives." Of course the writer means the Eskimo- called by other early writers Karelians—and the whales' teeth mean narwhals' horns (' Discovery of America by the Norsemen," by J. Fischer, S.J., p. 62, note 4). A Danish geographer, Claudius Clavus (1413), mentions "pygmies" in Green- land. He calls them Karelians, and had Ci some of them in captivity, and also their ts, great and small. Another geographer —Schoner—writing a little later, mentions the Arctic pygmies, who use coracles. Cardinal Filiaster, in 1427, in side-notes to some northern maps, speaks of Greenland as inhabited in the north by pygmies, griffins, and unipeds. It is, however, most probable that it was from the Scandinavian history of Archbishop Olaus Magnus (1555), that strange jumble of facts and fancies, that Fulke Greville learned about the northern pygmies, for the archbishop speaks of " De Pegmseis Gruntlanise " (ibid., p. 67, note 3). Since writing the above, I have seen the map of Ortelius, 1570. On this Greenland is represented as a large island ; north of it, separated by a wide strait, is an undefined region, across which is printed " Pigmei" (' Life of John Davis,' p. 28, by Clements R. Markham, in " The World's Great Explorers"). FRANCESCA. KIT'S COTY HOUSE (10th S. iv. 247).—Not only DR. MACKAY, but also succeeding con- tributors on this point, at the references given by the Editor, seem to ignore the ex- planation afforded by Stow in his 'Annales, 1615, p. 52, which might well be reproduced here, in order that it may be borne in mind, in case of further discussion of this curious