Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 5.djvu/85

 s. v. JAN. 27, 1906.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

different tune to each verse mostly the popular tunes of the day.

LAUNCELOT ARCHER. 83, Vincent Square, S.W.

Forty - five years ago I had a little son with an extraordinary musical ear, who used to pick up street songs and others. I have no idea where he got the one of which COL. PRIDEAUX prints the first verse, as I never otherwise heard of it ; but I think these two verses may please your correspondent :

Women with their ten toes tight tucked into Fiddle-faddle shoes you scarce could see ;

How they ever got there's quite a wonder ; China must be broken in pieces.

Ching-a-ring-a-ring-ching, &c.

What a lot of Pekin pots and pipkins, Mandarins with pigtails, rings, and strings,

Funny little slop-shops, Cases, places, Hung about with bells and ding-dongs. Ching-a-ring-a-ring-ching.

MARY A. HOWELL,

In the early forties I can recollect * Ching- a-Ring,' but remember only two stanzas. There were three, I fancy. The two were as follows :

Ching-a-ring-ching, Feast of Lanterns, Such a crop of chop-sticks, hongs, and gongs,

Hundred thousand Chinese crinkum crankums, Hung about with bells and ding-dongs.

Such a lot of Pekin pots and pipkins, Mandarins with pigtails, rings, and strings,

Funny little slop-shops, cases, places, Stuck about with cups and tea-things.

SAML. BIRCHAM.

PARTY COLOURS. (See 6 th S. i. 355, 382; ii. 175, 337, 451 ; 9 th S. vi. 284.) Startling change is to be noted in election colours. All over Middlesex the Tories used to be " true blue," like the Whigs in Surrey, while the Middlesex Whigs used the Fox Westminster buff and blue, printing in blue letters on a buff or light yellow paper. At the time of the " Spirited Foreign Policy " many Tories took to the use of the red, white, and blue, forgetting thatthese are the national coloursof France and of Russia (as well as of Holland). In 1886 the opposition to Home Rule con- firmed this odd selection, and the Liberals began to use both blue and red. At the present or last election red was the Liberal colour in Westminster. In some divisions of Middlesex the Tories are now using red, and the Liberals blue. In many parts of England, of course, besides Surrey, the Liberals have long been blue; but in other parts "Blue" is equivalent to "Tory," and the "True Blue" clubs are Conservative. P. C. S.

LOCKE MANUSCRIPT. I think the following passage, which I have taken from The Literary Gazette of 14 February, 1829, will interest students of John Locke :

" The Chelmsford Chronicle states that a parcel of manuscripts has come into the possession of Dr. Forster, of Boreham, including the original MS. of Locke's Essay concerning Human Under- standing, with numerous corrections and erasures ;. Original Letters from Locke (partly dated from- Amsterdam during his exile), on various political,, religious, and miscellaneous subjects ; some original familiar letters of Algernon Sydney, Lord Shaftes- bury, and others ; correspondence of Toupe, author' of EmendationesinSuidam ; of the late Mr. Richard Gough, the antiquary; a curious MS. work on coins, by Stukely ; some critiques of the history of Sir John Hawkwood, of Sible Hedingham by Gough ; and a large correspondence between the Hon. Thomas Pitt, first Lord Camelford, from Naples, and the late Benjamin Forster, resident at Broomfield, in Chelmsford. There is also a MS. relating to the origin of the Abbey of St. Neots in Cornwall ; a Syriac MS. ; and other miscellaneous papers. But what is most remarkable is, that it seems evident from a passage in one of Locke's letters, that he has somewhere left an unpublished metaphysical work on Cause and Effect, entitled, ' On Perceiving all things in God,' which has eithec been lost or suppressed."

W. ROBERTS.

MR. ROOSEVELT'S SCOTS ANCESTRY: BUL- LOCHS OF BALDERNOCK. A brief article on Mr. Roosevelt's Scots ancestry in The Daily Chronicle of 4 January suggests some curious minutiae not quite suitable for a daily news- paper. Mr. Roosevelt's mother, Martha Bui* loch, was the great-granddaughter of a James- Bulloch, who was born "in Scotland" in 1701, and went to South Carolina in 1729y via Glasgow. Nothing has been discovered about his origin, but he probably belonged originally to Stirlingshire, for the parish of Baldernock is the cradle of the Bullochs. At any rate, a very interesting coincidence arises- in the President's love of an athletic and outdoor life. In making some minute in- quiries into the history of the Stirlingshire Bullochs I find that this characteristic has become a tradition in most of the families of the name quite independent of the theory into which I venture to press it. Thus a, record for throwing the light weight at Cam- bridge was recently established by Mr. J. H. Bulloch, a member of the well-known distil- ing family of Glasgow, who originally came from Baldernock. His uncle is an inveterate angler. One of his kinsmen, Archibald Bulloch (born about 1750), was presented in 1829 with a sword by the county of Dum- barton for "charging single-handed a number of Chartists who were in possession of a forge, making pikes, and capturing about a dozen of them." It is further related of him.