Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 7.djvu/192

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. VIL FEB. 23, 1007

went carefully round the statue, and, greatly to my astonishment, found there was no inscription.

This is no worse than the Oxford colleges, which are all without name, and tens of thousands of visitors have to be continually asking, " What is this college ? " In reply I have been told that it would vulgarize them to put up names. I can only say that if all the talent at Oxford can find no way of putting up the names artistically, theirs is a sorry case. I should suggest plain gold and plain letters, not any artistically involved " black letter," which takes so long to make out that one gives it up.

RALPH THOMAS.

WEST INDIAN MILITARY RECORDS (10 S. vi. 428, 476; vii. 14, 78). The following extract from The Broad Arrow of 26 January may be of interest (' Promotion Prospects,' p. 94) :-

"Among the officers who suffer peculiar hard- ships by reason of these unfortunate reductions may be instanced those of the West India Regi- ments, who have endured more of the ' ups and downs,' the expansions and reductions of military life than perhaps any other corps. Students of military history do not need to be reminded of the terrible mortality among the British troops serving in the West Indies at the end of the eighteenth century. In consequence of this excessive death rate, which shocked even the Ministers of those days, no fewer than twelve West India Regiments were raised about 1800, of which however, more Hcddano, four were reduced two years later, while the remainder served on until the final fall of the first Napoleon. Within the next ten years six more of the West India Regiments were disbanded, but in 1840 one was added to the two which survived, and two more w r ere raised some fifteen or sixteen years later. All these three had however dis- appeared from the 'Army List' by 1870, and for the next eighteen years the two regiments which re- mained were given what no doubt they needed in common with the Army of to-day a rest. Mr. Brodrick added a third battalion to what had by now come to be called the 1st and 2nd Battalions of the West India Regiment, but Mr. Brodrick's bantling was strangled almost at its birth."

HERBERT SOTJTHAM.

The 9th, 10th, llth, and 12th West India Regiments were raised in 1799, and dis- banded in 1803. Vide 'Army Lists' for those years. C. J. DURAND, Col.

< J range Villa, Guernsey.

SHAKESPEARE'S RESIDENCE NEW PLACE (10 S. vii. 66). MR. EDGCUMBE is correct in thinking that some portions of Shakespeare's final residence remain. They consist of parts of the foundations, brought to light some time ago when a mass of debris was removed from the site. Carefully guarded by wire screens from the too-zealous souvenir

grabber, they may now be seen by any Stratford-on-Avon pilgrim. MR. EDGCUMBE should consult J. O. Halliwell's ' Account of New Place,' 1864, folio, and Bellew's work on the same subject, ' Shakespeare's House at New Place,' 1863, 8vo ; and I would add that Mr. W. C. Hazlitt's 'Life of Shake- speare ' also deserves " universal study."

WM. JAGGARD. Liverpool.

QUEEN VICTORIA or SPAIN : NAME-DAY (10 S. vii. 30, 76). Is MR. GRISSELL right in calling the Queen-Consort of His Catholic Majesty " Her Catholic Majesty " ? At any rate, he is wrong in saying that " when she- was conditionally baptized " she took only the additional name of Mary. She took the additional name of Christina also, in honour of the Queen Mother. Her full name- now is Victoria Eugenia Julia Ena Maria Christina, but the ' Almanach de Gotha ' drops " Julia Ena Maria."

JOHN B. WAINE WRIGHT.

"CHURCHYARD COUGH" (10 S. vii. 7). This expression has long been familiar to me. I inherited a cough of this description from my venerable mother, who died the year before last, at the age of eighty-five. She was subject to a similar cough all her life. I remember the use of the term particularly well. As a young man I lodged in 1863 with an old lady in Camberwell. Once, when I had been " barking " rather more than usual, I said, in reply to her remark of sympathy, " Oh ! I shall be all right when I get rid of this cough." " Ah ! " she said, gravely and with emphasis, " you will never lose that churchyard cough in this world." As a matter of absolute fact, that surmise (expressed nearly forty-four years ago) has, so far, proved correct, for I still suffer from the same weakness. The name only has changed. My doctor calls it " gout in the throat." HARRY HEMS.

Fair Park, Exeter.

This expression is by no means dying out either in Northamptonshire or Warwickshire. It is still a hackneyed expression, and con- tinually used by all classes of society con- cerning persons who have bad colds accom- panied by a harsh, barking cough. I have known the term all my life, and besides the two counties named I have met with it in London and Essex in fact, it seems to be quite cosmopolitan. JOHN T. PAGE.

Long Itchington, Warwickshire.

This term has been applied to the hollow cough which ends with a rattle of crepita-