Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 7.djvu/169

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

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fticky. English coin-names are often curiously corrupted in the mouths of Asiatics and Africans. Some years ago, when I was a frequent visitor to the London opium-dens, I noticed that in the " pigeon English " spoken by the Chinese sixpence became siti peni. The word was in constant use, as it represented the quantity of opium generally called for. JAS. PLATT, Jun.

I was told in 1876, by a cousin of mine who had just returned from the Philadelphia Exhibition and a long tour in the United 'States, that when a Red Indian wanted change, he placed a silver dollar on a wooden block and chopped it into eight pieces, each of which was called a bit. The Chinese laundryman, too, made out his washing bills in bits, and not in dollars and cents. I have seen a photograph of such a chopped-up silver dollar in an American illustrated magazine, but cannot give the reference. About " the piece of eight " in Queen Anne's proclamation of 1704, see an article on * The Spanish Dollar and the Colonial Shilling ' in The American Historical Review, July, 1898. L. L. K.

DOLE CUPBOARDS (10 S. vi. 429 ; vii. 16). About forty years ago, after attending the morning service at St. Andrew's, Holborn, one of the senior choristers showed me what I presume would be called a dole cupboard. So far as I recollect, it was nothing more than wooden shelves fixed in a recess formed in a wall adjoining the church, and contained half-quartern loaves, intended for distribu- tion amongst certain poor of the parish.

J. BASIL BIRCH.

GENEALOGY iNpuMAS (10 S. ii. 427, 496). It may interest some of the readers of ' N. & Q.' to know that in the English translation of ' Vingt Ans Apres ' published by J. M. Dent & Co. in 1903 (2 vols.) the point as to the parentage of the Vicomte de Bragelonne is clearly brought out (as it is in the French original) in chap. xxii. (vol. i. circa p. 250), " An Adventure of Marie Michon." Why in other translations, as stated at the second reference, the point is not made clear or is omitted, I am unable to imagine. EDWARD LATHAM.

14" POOR DOG TRAY " : ' OLD DOG TRAY ' (10 S. vi. 470, 494 ; vii. 14). The amusing lines called ' The Cynotaph,' by Thomas Ingoldsby, First Series, vol. i. 105 et seq. ought not to be forgotten. The author declines a grave for " my poor dog Tray " in Westminster Abbey, St. Paul's, or a

London cemetery, and concludes the poem by observing :

Ay, here it shall be ! far, far from the view Of the noisy world and its maddening crew. Simple and few, Tender and true, The lines o'er his grave. They have, some of them,

too, The advantage of being remarkably new.

EPITAPH. Affliction sore Long time he bore, Physicians were in vain !

Grown blind, alas ! he 'd Some Prussic Acid, And that put him out of his pain !

JOHN PICKFORD, M.A.

Newbourne Rectory, Woodbridge.

A parody on ' Dog Tray ' was sung by the popular actor Robson in the burlesque of ' Masaniello,' written by R. B. Brough, and first performed at the Olympic Theatre, 2 July, 1857. The chorus ran : Old dog Tray had a plateful Of bones and potatoes one fine day, And inside the sav'ry mass hid Was a dose of prussic acid, Which made an end of old dog Tray.

J. T. Beckenham.

Gay makes the Shepherd, in the ' Intro- duction to the Fables,' 1. 41, say :

My dog (the trustiest of his kind) With gratitude inflames my mind : I mark his true, his faithful way, And in my service copy Tray.

ROBERT PIERPOINT.

[MR. JOHN T. PAGE also quotes some lines of the parody. The writer of this may have taken his "prussic acid ; ' from Ingoldsby.]

"THE OLD HIGHLANDER" (10 S. vii. 47, 92, 115). An interesting illustration by Hole, as a tail-piece to p. x of ' The Book of Old Edinburgh,' by Dunlop, 1886, shows an unshaven Highlander confronting a tobacconist's figure of a shaven Highlander. No date is assigned to the incident depicted. In the 1896 edition the illustration is on p. viii. W. S.

MONUMENTAL INSCRIPTIONS : ST. FAITH (10 S. vi. 225 ; vii. 57). MR. GLYNN'S con- firmation of the genitive " Fidis " is most interesting, and tends to prove that the English rendering of the name is either a joke or a blunder. W. E. B.

JERUSALEM COURT, FLEET STREET (10 S. vii. 29). Probably this was a court (de- stroyed in the Great Fire) situated either within the precincts or in the immediate