Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 8.djvu/549

 10 s. VIIL DEC. 7, 1907.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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the country, where I cannot get access to books), there is in the ' N.E.D.' an allusion to this statement, and the notion is rejected.

ALBERT MATTHEWS. Boston, U.S.

" Einen hinaus feuern " is in Anhalt and Thuringia used in just the same sense as <l to fire a person out." MB. MACMICHAEL'S valuable quotation from Shakespeare again shows that even such careful philologists as those of the ' N.E.D.' are too lavish of the term " Americanism," especially as their own references disprove it ; a great part of the so-called U.S. slang is formed of chips of the old English block, which not only can be found in old English writers, but also are lingering in the dialect of the mother-country. The remark in the ' N.E.D.,' " It has been suggested that this sense is derived from 8, but this seems unlikely," is astonishing. There is no reason whatever to doubt that No. 8, " To drive any one away from a place by fire ; with out, out of, from, or equivalent constructions. Also fig. Obs. or rare," is identical with 16. The explanation is not difficult : to fire out originally meant to drive out by fire.

G. KRUEGER.

Berlin.

The ' N.E.D.,' under " fire 8 ," gives several early examples of this word, concluding with one from Swift (1728), " The law is like the wooden houses of our ancestors. . . .where you .... are very often fired out of all you have " ; but neither it nor the ' Cent. Diet.' s.v. " fire out," is of opinion that the modern slang uses of these words, arising as they did in the latter part of last century in the Western States, have aught in common with the preceding English significations.

Dowden in a note to Shakespeare, Sonnet CXLIV., refers to 2 Hen. IV.,' II. iv., as elucidating the meaning of the line cited by MR. MACMICHAEL, " For the boy there is a good angel about him, but the devil outbids him too."

Till my bad angel fire my good one out would therefore signify " till he outburn, or eclipse, him." N. W. HILL.

New York,

' DIARY ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE TIMES OF GEORGE IV.' (10 S. viii. 387). "Lady Scarlet Fury " included some of the letters written to her very early in the century by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe. The latter expressed his indignation more than once <see' Correspondence of C.K.S.,' 1888, vol. i.). " It is evident," notes the editor of that

work, " that the correspondence has been heavily tampered with." Sharpe wrote MS. notes to three of his letters in a copy of the ' Diary ' belonging to Mr. Gibson-Craig, and these notes are given in the Appendix to vol. i. of the ' Correspondence.' Dr. Doran has some amusing anecdotes of the youthful indiscretions of Lady Charlotte in his essay ' Some Scotswomen,' ' In and about Drury Lane,' &c., ii. 160.

R. L. MORETON.

MARQUESS OF WATERFORD AS SPRING- HEEL JACK (10 S. viii. 251). My maternal grandmother, who died at an advanced age in 1850, was accustomed to tell me, when I was a little lad, uncanny stories about " Spring-heeled Jack," who, she asserted, was believed to be a Marquess of Waterford. The monster was credited with hiding at night in dark and lonely places, and when some chance pedestrian came along (by preference a solitary female), " Spring- heeled Jack " would suddenly jump out at one bound, and pin his vinlucky victim to the ground. HARRY HEMS.

Fair Park, Exeter.

CAPT. COOK (10 S. viii. 364). MR. HIB- GAME'S allusion to the placing of a tablet on No. 88, Mile End Road, where Capt. Cook lived for some time, reminds me of a refer- ence to him that I found during this present year, while engaged in the task of tran- scribing the monumental inscriptions in the churchyard of Greasley, Notts. It occurs on a tomb erected over "Benjamin Drawwater, Gentleman, of Mansfield, late of Eastwood, who suddenly departed this life on the 2 1 of June, 1815, in the 68 th year of his age. In his professional duty he accompanied the Great Circumnavigator Cook in the year [*ic] 1772-1775."

I do not know what Benjamin Drawwater's vocation was, nor whether any references to him occurs in the records of Capt. Cook's voyages. A. STAPLETON.

158, Noel Street, Nottingham.

ST. GEORGE'S, HANOVER SQUARE : SHOT- MARKS (10 S. viii. 387). The Gordon Riots afford the most probable explanation for these shot-marks. Mr. Baillie in his ex- cellent volume ' The Oriental Club and Hanover Square,' p. 33, writes :

"No. 4, Tenterden Street was an object of attack by the excited populace in the ' No Popery '

Riots The individual residing in the house who

had excited the anger of the crowd was Henry Herbert, twho had at that time just been created

Lord Porchester The attempted attack on the

square was directed from Broad Street (? George Street), but barricades had been erected at all the