Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 8.djvu/356

 294

NOTES AND QUERIES, no s. vm. OCT. 12, 1907.

heard : " You may sham Abraham, but

you mayn't sham Abraham Newland.'

The people using it would not, however

know that an Abram Man meant a beggar

but some one quite out of sorts with work.

THOS. RATCLIFFE.

Worksop.

The song referred to in the editorial note is entitled ' Abraham Newland.' The first line is :

Ne'er yet was a name so bandied by fame. It appears in an old book of songs callec ' The Songster's Favourite Companion ("London: Printed for Lane & Newman and A. Macgoun, Glasgow." No date) The date of the song may be vaguely inferred from two lines in the last stanza (p. 9) : The French say they 're coming, but sure they art

humming, I know what they want if they do land.

The music " for the Flute, Voice, and Violin ' is given. ROBERT PIERPOINT.

" RAPIDS " : " WATER-BREAK " (10 S. viii 189). There is a well-known use of the latter word in Tennyson's ' The Brook ' :

With many a silvery waterbreak Above the golden gravel.

A cognate word, of course, is " waterslide,' so largely used in ' Lorna Doone,' and referring to a rapid that runs smoothly, without break and bubbling.

H. SNOWDEN WARD.

Hadlow, Kent.

Anglo-Saxon, having been the language of the people living south of the Thames, cannot be expected to contain an equivalent to what its users never, or rarely, saw. The Norse settlers gave the Northerners their past and present word fors, foss.

H. P. L. [ST. SWITHIN also refers to Tennyson.]

" TOTTER-OUT ": "JAG" (10 S. viii. 5, 11.3). MR. BAYNE mistakes the meaning of " jag" in slang usage. It is not a drink, but the^results of the drink, being in fact a ' load," in serious meaning and as a jocular synonym for it in slang. To " have a jag on " is to have a load on, in either sense. In my younger days (and doubtless so still) farmers spoke of "taking a little jag of wood to market." The adjective reminds me that "jag" was always used for a rather small load ; and if I am not mistaken, a pack-animal in hill districts in the old country was called a jag-horse or

jag-mule. Had the name anything to do, I wonder, with the " jog " or jogging pace inevitable on mountain roads, and its limi- tation with the fact that only small loads could be carried there ?

FORREST MORGAN. Hartford, Conn.

MAHONY OR O 'MAHONY FAMILY (10 S. viii. 148). The mother of Daniel, Count Mahony, was a Moriarty, and he was born at " Couliercorane " in Ireland, according to the records of the Order of Santiago, to which he was admitted in 1711. He is therein described as

" Mahoni y Moriarti (Daniel), Teniente General de los Ejercitos de S.M., Coronel de un Regimiento de Dragones irlandeses, Govornador de la ciudad y castillo de Cartagena. Electo comendador del Aceuchal. Couliercorane (Irlanda)."

RtJVIGNY. Chertsey.

BEER SOLD WITHOUT A LICENCE (10 S. ii. 9, 71 ; viii. 232). I have often heard a friend of mine, who is now dead, say that it was the custom in this town, as late as the forties of the last century, for the parish clerk to brew beer and entertain the bellringers and other friends and neighbours at Whitsuntide. He had not a licence, but no one interfered, for the neighbours thought that he had a prescriptive right, on account of the office he held, to sell beer at the time of that festival. This custom was probably a survival of the church ales of the Middle Ages. EDWARD PEACOCK.

Kirton-in-Lindsey.

CLARA REEVE (10 S. viii. 166). Allibone's 'Dictionary' gives 1725-1803 as the dates of the birth and death of this lady, adding that she was born, lived, and died in Ipswich, and that her father was rector of S. Nicholas's in that town, and rector of Kirton (an adjacent parish to Newbourne).

' The Old English Baron ' is a weird story, and used to be bound up with ' The Castle of Otranto ' in a little sixpenny book, though it has run through many editions. I an remember reading it when a little boy, and being alarmed at a woodcut represent- ng the discovery of the skeleton of Lord L,ovel in a box, under the floor of a bed- oom. It certainly is a fact that Lord jovel was never heard of after the battle of Stoke Field, Notts, in 1487, and he is usually supposed to have been drowned in Trent, which flows hard by. He had )een fighting on the side of the Earl of "lincoln, of whom he was a firm partisan. VEinster Lovel, the ancient family seat, now