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NOTES AND QUERIES, rio s. vm. OCT. 19, 1007.

to be devoted to doles of bread. In an word, being found in glosses only. Another interesting fourteenth-century parish church i A.-S. rother is now spelt rudder. of a town in the south of France I have quite j The phonology of the word for " steer " recently seen one of the contribution-boxes is a little difficult, as there are three A.-S. mentioned. It has two slits : one, " Pro- forms ; and the Middle English forms show messes faites," presumably for payments ! eo, e, i, o, and. But no student of Anglo-

m advance or for " chits " ; the other,

" Promesses acquittees." A printed notice hithe.

attached gives a full account of the special

" graces " in which the saint interests him-

self, notably the finding of lost goods, and also a form of prayer, ending thus :

"I promise you, as a thank-offering, to give for

the bread of the poor the sum of which I will

pay as soon as I obtain the benefit I ask for. Amen."

EDWAKD NICHOLSON.

Hyeres.

"PASSIVE RESISTEB" (10 S. iv. 508; v. 32, 77 ; viii. 37). The following appears in chap. vi. of ' The Heart of Midlothian ' :

"The passive resistance of the Tolbooth-gate promised to do more to baffle the purpose of the mob than the active interference of the magis-

trates.'

MISTLETOE.

I have just come across ' Passive Resist- ance to the Payment of Church Rates,' which is the heading to an article in The Republican (a periodical edited by Richard Carlile) for 10 Nov., 1832, p. 110. It was published by Henry Hetherington.

RALPH THOMAS.

In the report of the Medical Officer of the City of London for 1861 he speaks of certain holders of house-property " nullifying the efforts of sanitary improvement by passive resistance." STANLEY B. ATKINSON.

ROTHEEHITHE (10 S. viii. 166). It is

Saxon could well miss the origin of Rother- WALTER W. SKEAT.

The interpretation of the ancient place-

name Rotherhithe can only be reached by the strict application of the historic method. It is true that the word reSra, a rower, offers a tempting solution. But from the earliest known mention of the place (A.D. 898, Council of CelchyS) it would appear that it bears the name of an owner : .^ESeredes Hyd, Eredyshythe, Retheres Hide, Rether hithe. In the present case the owner is actually named : " Atheredum quoque ducem Merciorum," &c. (see Birch, ' Cart. Sax. ' part ii. pp. 220, 221). EDWARD SMITH.

" EBN OSN " (10 S. viii. 248). The iden- tificati on by The Monthly Mirror is correct : the author was Benjamin Stephenson, of White Lion Street, Pentonville. In a copy before me the address on p. 107 is signed by the author, the first and last three letters of the name being emphasized. It will be noticed that these with slight transposition provide the cryptic pen name. The follow- ing MS. notes by the author are of some interest :

"Four verses excepted, these are the first poems of the author, who was born in 1768. They were written in 1806 and 1807. One line only is borrowed,

now suggested that Rother-hithe is derived from the A.-S. hruther, hryther, hrlther, a steer, h - a heifer ; but no proof is offered of the fact. ; i: We could easily settle the question by ' collecting all the old spellings. But it is hardly necessary ; the ' Calendarium In- quisitionum post Mortem ' is sufficient evidence. The index gives Retherhethe,

He also adds at the end of the ballad of ' Sandy,' p. 13 : " For this ballad I have five ending verses " ; and as ' Joseph : a

Fragment,' is unfinished, he writes :

concluded this poem in 1,200 do not think these additional lines were published ; at least, I hope they were not. ALECK ABRAHAMS.

Retherhithe, Rotherhethe, Rutherhuthe, as old spellings of Rotherhithe ; and, with a parallel vocalism, Retherfeld, Rotherfeld, Rutherfeld, as old spellings of Rotherfield in Sussex. But the latter appears in Kemble's Index as Hrytheranfeld, which is decisive. For rother, a steer, began with

r __ i_ _ _ .1 __, O

hr ; whereas rother or rether, a rower, never so, being derived from

could have done rowan, to row.

Besides, oarsmen

are not found in a

field ; neither is rother, a rower, a common

NANA SAHIB AND THE INDIAN MUTINY (10 S. viii. 248). In April, 1862, I was at

Galle. and saw transhipped from the P. and O. mail steamer from Bombay to the steamer going up to Calcutta a native heavily ironed, who was said to be Nana

Sahib. At Calcutta for some time, but

he was imprisoned eventually released,

after due inquiry, as not being the Nana.

The point is that he was supposed to be alive by the authorities in 1862, and that General Harris's supposition, as stated in The Cornhill Magazine of last August, that he had died at Chilari Ghat in 1858, was not