Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 7.djvu/167

 10 s. vii. FEB. 16, 1907.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

135

of which ran towards the south (see J. M Mackinlay's ' Folk-lore of Scottish Loch .and Springs,' 1893, pp. 9 and 262).

J. HOLDEN MACMlCHAEL.

'" BOSSING " (10 S. vii. 69). The jingling proverb " Ossing conies to bossing " seem to mean effort leads to eminence, success or leadership. The old verb " to oss " ii still very often used in the vernacular o the Midlands, in the sense of to try, make an effort, or begin in earnest to do a thing I find in the Eng.-Lat. part of an old Latin dictionary (title-page and colophon missing but probably of the sixteenth century " to osse, paro, adorior, audeo." " Boss ' a,s a noun is often used in reference to th head of a business or undertaking. Work men commonly speak of their master as quently used, colloquially or jocularly, in such phrases as " he bosses the concern, the job, or the show," applied to the person having the chief direction or control.
 * ' the boss." As a verb the word is fre

W. R. HOLLAND. The " boss " is the head of the house or the business, or the leader of a gang of -workers. There is no difficulty about " ossing comes to bossing " when it is known that "to oss " means to offer or try to do -an' tha '11 boss sumtime." A man put to a new kind of work might look at it and say, " Ah '11 show willin' ; ah '11 oss anny way, the work he was set to do. " Oss " is one of the most-used dialect words in Yorkshire, Lancashire, Notts, and Derby, besides other Midland counties. THOS. RATCLIFFE.
 * a thing. I have often heard " Na then oss,
 * an' boss it," meaning that he would master

Worksop.

See ' Bocin ' in Bradley's edition of Stratmann's dictionary and the quotation therein from Wyclif : " men ]>at boosen hor (their) brestis." The verb means to swell out, also to make to project ; the sense here is, perhaps, the being puffed up. Compare <$>vviov[jic.vo<s, Col. ii. 18. H. P. L.

In Ray's 'Proverbs,' Bell, 1893, p. 46, the meaning is said to be the same with " Courting and wooing brings dallying and doing." " To osse " in the Cheshire dialect, is to aim at or intend to do (Bailey's ' Diet.,' 1740) ; and " to boss " is to master, to accomplish, to manage, apparently an Anglicized form of the Dutch baas, as in " de vrouw is de baas." But it is an old English word, for several instances (one in the sixteenth century) are given in Farmer
 * and Henley's ' Slang and its Analogues.'

A seventeenth-century example is there given as follows : " Here they had their first interview with the female boss or supercargo of the vessel " (1679, M. Philipse, ' Early Voyages to New Netherlands,'

Sioted by De Vere). See also the ' English ialect Dictionary,' by Dr. Joseph Wright.

J. HOLDEN MACMlCHAEL.

ST. GEORGE'S CHAPEL YARD, OXFORD ROAD (10 S. vi. 469 ; vii. 13). The parish burial-ground of St. George's, Hanover Square, was laid out in the Bayswater Road in 1764. In or about 1893 the chapel was pulled down, and a new one built at the cost of the late Mrs. Russell Gurney (not Mr. Russell Gurney, as stated ante, pi 13). Its name is now the Chapel of the Ascension. On 26 April, 1894, at a consistory court held at St. Paul's Cathedral, a faculty was, on the application of the Rev. David Anderson and the churchwardens of St. George's, granted to lay out the burial- ground as a garden at an estimated cost of about 2,400Z. The time given for carrying out this " improvement " was five years, with leave to apply for extension of time. It was alleged that it would be necessary to remove over 2,000 tombstones. There were provisos for protecting the interests of five persons who appeared and for preserving ~jhe tomb of Laurence Sterne. No tombs were to be removed where objection had aeen taken, so long as those tombs were

ept in order (see Morning Post of 27 April, 1894).

I visited the old chapel and graveyard soon after the " housebreakers " had begun their k vork. In the graveyard besides Sterne's /ombstone I found little of interest. Many >f the inscriptions had been more or less destroyed by time and weather. One monu- iient in the churchyard was interesting as a ecord of an early testamentary instruction or " cremation." It has been described n ' N. & Q.' ; see 7 S. xi. 150 ; xii. 385, 518. .t vanished in the course of the restoration, )r devastation.

Sir Thomas Picton was buried here, but lis body was removed in 1859 to St. Paul's Cathedral ; also Mrs. Radcliffe, author of The Mysteries of Udolpho,' and J. T. Smith he engraver.

In the chapel is the tablet in memory of Irs. Jane Molony (sometimes referred to as

Lady O'Loony "), which gives her and .er husbands' (she was married three times) reat positions and noble connexions, adding hat

she was hot, passionate, and tender, and a highly ccomplished lady, and a superb drawer in water