Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 7.djvu/278

 NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. VIL MARCH 23, 1907.

Wi' waefu' heart and sorrowing e'e I saw my Jamie sail awa ;

Oh ! 'twas a fatal day to me,

That day he passed the Berwick Law. It will be remembered that the youthful hero in Burns's song states that the boat .awaiting his convenience " rocks at the pier o' Leith," while the ship to which it is presently to waft him over " rides by the Berwick-law." Annotating Tannahill, Semple remarks that " Berwick Law is a hill in the County of Berwick, on the shore of the German Ocean." This is a perfectly natural mistake to make if one is unaware of the difference between North Berwick and Berwick-on-Tweed. The former is in East Lothian, with the Bass Rock and Tantallon Castle in the vicinity, and the conical Berwick Law at its back. The Isle of May lies some miles off, and nearer the Fife shore, forming a kind of natural guardian to the Firth just as it opens to the North Sea. Thus the vessel that sailed from Leith and was wrecked on the May had made but little progress when she suffered disaster. THOMAS BAYNE.

CURTAIN LECTURES. Douglas Jerrold, in his preface to the collected edition of ' Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures,' which first appeared in an early volume of Punch, and were a great success at the time, explains that the idea of the work occurred to him while watching some schoolboys at play, but does not make any reference to the title, which appeared to be sufficiently original.

It would seem that the title was not Jerrold's own. Pope makes use of the expression in his Prologue to ' The Wife of Bath,' 164-5, written when he was between sixteen and seventeen, i.e. about 1706. The lady says :

I still prevailed, and would be in the right, Or curtain lectures made a restless night. In Chaucer she says : As by continual murmur or grutching, Namely a-bed ; ther hadden they meschance ; Ther wold I chide.

JOHN HEBB.

[The 'N.E.D.' gives two seventeenth-century examples of " curtain lectures," the first being dated 1633. A new edition of Douglas Jerrold's work, with an Introduction by Mr. Walter Jerrold, was mentioned in last week's ' Notes on Books.']

" AUTHOR " USED FOR " EDITOR." (See 9 S. v. 166, 323, 425.) It would not be safe to assume that Thackeray is to be caught tripping in causing Swift to exclaim to Harry Esmond (as quoted at the last reference), " I presume you are the editor of The Post- Boy, sir " ; but there appears to be no

contemporary evidence of this use of the term, though, while Swift was still writing and The Post-Boy still being published, the words " director " and " author " were employed to indicate the one whom we now call " editor."

In an explanation why a certain letter had appeared, given in Mist's Weekly Journal, or Saturday's Post (No. 272), for 11 Jan., 1724, it was observed :

"The Letter came by the Penny-Post on the llth of December, with a Request to have it inserted that Week; the Director of this Paper haviiig perused its Contents, ordered that it should be deferr'd to the Week following, intending, in the mean Time, to inform himself, in the best Manner he could, of the Authorities therein mentioned."

But the personage whom Mist described as " the Director " was being contem- poraneously termed in The British Journal and The Instructor " the Author," con- tributions appearing in the former addressed "To the Author of The British Journal" and the imprint running :

" London : Printed for T. Warner, at the Black Boy in Pater-Noster-Row, where Advertisements and Letters to the Author are taken in ; and Compleat Sets may be had."

The Journal 's imprint, save for the address, is similar. The same style is to be found in the imprint to The Tea-Table, published twice a week during that same spring, this being

"Sold by J. Roberts [who also published The InMructorL near the Oxford Arms in Warwick- Lane. Where Advertisements are taken in, and Letters to the Author."

There is no mention of this signification of " author," however, in ' N.E.D.'

ALFRED F. ROBBINS.

" PISCON-LED." This is a term used by an old lady, whose account of Pembrokeshire folk-lore is given by " M. S. Clerk " in Folk- lore for June, 1904. It is applied to the curious experience of an old Welsh fisherman, who, on his way home one evening, came to a field, out of which he was unable to find his way all night, but kept wandering round and round it till morning. " Piscon- led," or " pisco-led," the old lady maintained to be the correct phrase, although " pixie " was suggested by her auditor.

In an article on ' Popular Superstitions,' by Sir Francis Palgrave, in an early number of The Quarterly Review the same supersti- tion is incidentally referred to as existing in Normandy, and believed there to be caused by treading on Vherbe maudite. At Llandy- bie, Carmarthenshire, I know of a meadow which was the scene of an adventure similar