Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 5.djvu/61

 v. JAN. 20, 1906.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

45

With some difficulty a waiter was prevailed several occasions, when the old year passed upon to show Col. Mannering and Dinmont the away the door was thrown open, and the head

' of the house stood bareheaded in the doorway, the rest of us standing behind, while one of

room where their friend, learned in the law, held his hebdomadal carousals." 'Guy Maunering,' vol. ii. chap. vii.

Tl e -L the men, by arrangement, brought something

Rob Roy, was, I have heard, so favourite AVAp ' / ft. hftf ' .nvthine or any

T' W ' a f1' i. 6 l V ? ! over the doorstone, before anything or any

a character with Stevenson, that he cherished fc fc T} finger-in to0 k something

the idea that his family were really Mac- h h went aw * thus making the

cors under an ahas Now m Scott's, j k cerfcain bofch >

Roy (chap, iv.), I find : THQS RATCLIFFE.

[In the West Riding it was'unlucky for the person who first entered to come empty-handed. He should not, moreover, bring anything that had been killed as game. Oysters were permissible.]

BACTERIA : EARLY NOTICE. The following passage from Varro, ' De Re Rustica,' seems* very striking in view of recent discoveries, He is speaking of the dangers of " loca palustria " :

"GYescunt animalia quredam minuta, qme non

domaaai' witn restivity nave impressed I posaunt ocu ii consequi, et peraera intusin corpus themselves on Stevenson's singularly recep- per os ac nares perveniunt, atque efficiunt difficiles tive brain, and reappeared in the form above morbos."

quoted ? There is, of course, the " Heb- HERBERT A. STRONG. domadal Council " at Oxford, but Stevenson The University, Liverpool, and Pinkerton were alike, I think, in ELSDON. The lines on Elsdon village knowing little of Oxford. The 'N.E.D. 'gives quoted by MR. PICKFORD at 10 th S. iv. 376, one only of the references for the word in f orm the first of four stanzas of a rime by Scott, and, instead of the passage in * The George Chatt, a Northumbrian verse-writer. Wrecker,' an allusion to it in The Speaker. I- - -~ <-- i * i ^ *Q rJ lii

gre

"The wits and humorists, the distinguished worthies of the town or village, the apothecary, the attorney, even the curate himself, did not disdain to partake of this hebdomadal festivity."

In the same chapter, a little later, I read :

"As mine host's politics were of that liberal description which quarrelled with no good customer, his hebdomadal visitants were often divided in their opinion."

May not these associations of "heb- domadal" with festivity have impressed

LOUDON DODD.

NEW YEAR LUCK. Some peculiar things are still done with the incoming of the new year. To ensure luck to herself during the

of his 1866).

The piece is to be found on p. 53 'Miscellaneous Poems' (Hexham, Chatt was the son of a farmer, and was by turn agricultural labourer, private soldier, and journalist. He died at Cockermouth on

V Cttl. -L U OU3UIO 1UUIV l/U IIGIOOII. UU111J, l/110 I _ T J. nrvrv t

present year, and also to the house where 8 November, 1890 after for the time she lives, the servant of one of I TJ est Cumberland limes

my neighbours tied a piece of string to a lump of coal just before midnight of the old year, laid the string across the doorsill, and afterwards, as the clock at the church was striking the hour of twelve, opened the door. As soon as the last stroke sounded, she pulled the piece of coal into the house, in this way making sure that something came into the house before anything was taken out of it. This bringing in ensured good luck all the year. If anything had gone out first herself, for instance the year would bring luck more or less of a serious nature. An old man who was in service at one of

years

sixteen

A Hexham antiquary told that a local vicar new to the once gave great offence to the Elsdon folks by quoting the rime in his church magazine. This may be the source of MR. PICKFORD'S cutting. JOHN OXBERRY.

Gateshead.

'CHARLIE, HE'S MY DARLING.' The alert and definitive authorities who furnish readers of the newspapers with literary information have just circulated a report that Mr. T. F. Henderson has traced *' Burns's 4 Charlie is my Darling ' " to its source. Mr. Henderson, ever since he wrote with Mr. Henley regard-


 * AU \J IV^l UlCftU " I1VJ " C*O A1A Q^& T A^V OTV V**V W* I W V W ,.^-- * J J

the greater houses near here made it a ing the Scottish poet, has been considered a practice for fifty years (up to the year of his leading factor in the movement by which

death) to bring, on the last stroke of twelve as the year died, something into the house a log of wood, a bushel of corn, or a skepful of some farm produce ; and, as my informant (a lady, by the way) said, there was always luck during the thirty years or so she had known that house. 1 remember as a lad in Derbyshire how on

Burns is to be proved merely an outcome, and not an original force. What he himself has intimated on the subject may probably come up for consideration hereafter ; mean- while, it may not be amiss to say a word on the misleading statement that has been widely published through the medium of the newspapers. In the first place, 'Charlie is