Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 4.djvu/71

 iv. JULY is. iocs.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 55 AH around the cobbler's house Tbe monkey chased the weasel: The priest he kissed the cobbler's wife,— Pop goes the weevil. The line is from a song popular in America half a century ago. The weevil is the common name for coleopterous insects of the family Carculionidse. The larvae of one species were very destructive to wheat in America fifty and more years ago. The song came into popular favour at a time when the entire country was disturbed by the ravages of the insect. FREDERIC ROWLAND MARVIN. 537, Western Avenue, Albany, N.Y. The word " weasel" was the expression often used for a sixpence. I particularly remember its employment by a railway porter some thirty years ago in connexion with a tip he had received. J. E. LATTON PICKERING. Without the quotation from an authority, say not later than the last forties, the expla- nation of "silver plate" or "flat iron" must be pronounced inconclusive. There is a distinct possibility that the boot may be on the other leg, and that these articles, being "portable property," in Mr. Wemmick's phrase, obtained the name from the vogue of the song. A reliable authority, anterior to the song, should set the matter at rest. H. P. L. As information about this song has been twice asked for, I venture to send the little I can give. About 1850 a song was popular among the lower classes in Philadelphia, the first verse of which ran as follows :— There was an old man without any sense, Who bought a fiddle for thirty pence, And all the tune that he could play Was " Pop goes the weasel.' I remember seeing the whole song in print on a handbill, but cannot recall any more of the words. I think there was a chorus after each verse. I never heard of the tune apart from this song. Another song of that time which rivalled it in popularity was ' Vilikins and his Dinah.' Both were evidently of English origin. J. P. LAMBERTON. Philadelphia. of [The lines you quote are obviously a recollection When I was young I had no sense ; I bought a tiudle for eighteenpence, And all the tune that it could play Was " Over the hills and far away."] BADGES (10th S. iii. 407).—Pi/chard means a woodpecker, as in the following old French lines, from Du VerdJer, 'Diverses Leeons,' 1616 :^ ('cmmie jinlis Picus fut estonne Quand une fOe en pichard 1'eut tourne. As to the other words inquired about, I should think the serpent's hull must be its skin or slough. Cooke may be the cuckoo, and molle the mole. Fi/lmand is a disguised form of foumart, the polecat. JAS. PLATT, Jun. Lord Cobham : serpent's skin.—A hull is a covering or shell: " the hulls o_r skins of grapes" 0Nomenclator,' quoted in Nares's ^Glossary '). Duke of Somerset: beanstall and crown.— Would not this allude to some office of the royal household like the avenar or avenor (see Halli well's 'Archaic Words'), which in- volved the care of such provender as was kept where the bean-fodder was stalled for feeding cattle ? LordKyvers : the pychard and the pye.— The pye is doubtless the magpie, although it is not mentioned in Burke's 'Peerage.' Lord Dudley : " ye molle."—Molles are de- scribed in Bailey's 'Diet.'(1740) as " Kastrels, a kind of Hawks. Chau." But a molle was also a mull or mill for grinding purposes, the heraldic terms "mullet" or "molette," &n<�ersde moline, or mill-rinds, which sup- port the millstone, being related, I think. There is another possible interpretation. " Moll," from mollis, soft, was an old English term (old slang, presumably) for one of the softer sex, but not, at first, necessarily de- rogatory to womanhood, as later. And it occurs to me that perhaps " molle" was allusive to Agnes, daughter of Hotot, who married Lord Dudley, of Clapton, and who, disguised, took the place of her father, who was unable through illness to fulfil his en- gagement in mortal combat with one who had quarrelled with him (see Burke's'Extinct Peerages," s.v. Dudley). Agnes was victorious. J. HOLDBN MACMlCHAEL. BISHOPS' SIGNATURES : THEIR PUNCTUATION (10th S. iii. 487).—In old signatures a colon frequently appears after the Christian name when abbreviated, thus—Tho: Smith. The archiepiscopal signatures mentioned may be a return to that custom, as the name of the see is abbreviated, while an ordinary sur- name is not. The use of a colon in that manner is perhaps more distinctive than the period, which signifies finality or complete- ness. M. WILLIAM SHELLEY (10th S. iii. 441, 492).— MR. J. HALL may be glad to know that, ac- cording to Berry's ' Sussex Genealogies,' p. 63, Mary Shelley, who married George Cotton, of Warblington, Hants, was sister of William