Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 8.djvu/332

 274

NOTES AND QUERIES. '[io s. vm. OCT. 5, 1907.

middle hanging down to their hammes : all the rest of their bodies be naked : they haue horrible great eares with many rings set with pearles and stones in them. The king goeth incached. as they do all : he doth not remaine in a place aboue fiue or six dayes."

My first impression was that the word incached was used to signify that every man, the king included, wore a lungooty (see ' Hobson-Jobson,' s.v.), or, as it is termed in Anglo-Indian parlance, a crupper. But I now think that the comma after incached is a printer's error ; that the sense is, " The king is clothed in the same fashion as all the rest " ; and that incached is only an exceptional form of encased=clothed (see ' Oxford Eng. Diet.,' s.v. ' Encase,' 2 b). The editor of the Hakluyt Society's edition of Varthema's travels seems so to have understood the word, for on p, 143, where Varthema, speaking of the dress of the people at Calicut, says :

" The dress of the king and queen, and of all the others, that is to say, of the natives of the country, is this : they go naked and with bare feet, and wear a piece of cotton or of silk around their middle, and with nothing on their heads, 1 '

the editor appends the following foot-note : " As Ralph Fitch quaintly says : The king goeth incached, as they do all.' " It is possible that the form used by Fitch was influenced by the Portuguese encaixar, in which the x has the sound of English sh. DONALD FERGUSON.

" NOSE OP WAX " (10 S. viii. 228). This phrase is at least as old as the middle of the eighteenth century, and I think considerably older. The first example I remember to have met is in The London Magazine, 1748, p. 259. I do not remember in what relation it is used. I came upon it many years ago, and, as is my wont, made a reference, but unfortunately did not copy the passage.

K. P. D. E.

" Nose of wax " is an old expression, put into the mouth of James I. by Sir Walter Scott in ' The Fortunes of Nigel ' :

" And now you see, my Lord of Huntingdon, that I am neither an untrue man, to deny you the boon whelk I became bound for, nor an Ahab to cover Naboth's vineyard, nor a mere nose of wax to be twisted this way and that by favourites and counsellors at their pleasure."

Mr. Edward Molineux, gent., of Mariners Westerham, Kent, was called before the Manor Court in 1625, on the information of Lady Rivers and Brian Smithe, for using certain profane and improper words, to wit, that the Bible was " a nose of wax."

See ' Wolfe Land ' vol. v. of the " Home- land Handbooks."

PRESCOTT Row, Editor.

Bishop Jewel quotes from Albert Pighius, 1542, " addunt etiam simile quoddam non aptissimum : eas [sacrosanctas scripturas] esse quodammodo nasum cereum, posse fingi flectique in omnes modos " (' Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae,' ed. Jelf, S.P.C.K., p. 65).

John Canne, in his ' Stay against Stray- ing,' 1639, quotes from Knewstub, 1579, to the effect that allegorical interpretation of the sacred Scripture " maketh no other thing of it than a nose of waxe " (John Ball, 'Answer to Can,' 1642, i. 14).

W. C. B.

JAMAICA RECORDS (10 S. viii. 29). subjoin a statement showing the dates of the earliest records (Church of England) for each parish in Jamaica in respect to births, marriages, and deaths. I think it is worth while recording this list in your columns.

I would also say in reply to the query that the records of wills, deeds, powers of attorney, &c., date virtually from the com- mencement of British rule, and are a valuable mine of information.

Parish. Baptisms. Marriages. Burial*.

Kingston 1722 1721 1722

Port Royal 1728 1727 1725

St. Andrew ... 1664 1668 1666

St. Thomas ye East 1709 1721

St. David 1794 1794 1794

Portland 1804 1804 1808

St. George 1806 1807 1811

St. Mary 1752 1755 1767

Clarendon 1690 1695 1769

St. Ann 1768 1768 1768

Manchester ... 1816 1827

St. Catherine ... 1668 1668 1671

St. John 1751 1751 1751

St. Dorothy ... 1693 1725 1706

St. Thomas ye Vale 1816 1816 1816

Metcalfe 1843 1843 1843

Westmoreland ... 1740 1740 1741

St. Elizabeth ... 1708 1719

Trelawny 1771

St. James 1770 1772 1774

Vere 1696 1743

Hanover 1725 1754 1727

NOEL B. LIVINGSTON. Kingston, Jamaica.

THE RACIAL PROBLEM OF EUROPE (10 S. viii. 145, 218, 233). During the first day which I ever spent in Brittany I was much struck by the dusky, short, thick-set type, for I travelled for some distance with two men who were striking examples of it. Their faces to me seemed non-European (though some Irishmen show the same