Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 1.djvu/139

 n s. i. FEB. 12, i9io.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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"Broad Woollen Cloath" in the West Riding in the County of York (13 and 14 Car. II. cap. 32); Searchers of "Broad Woollen Cloath" within the said West Riding; the Kidderminster weavers (22 and 23 Car. II. cap. 8) ; the Commissioners for settling the draining the Fens called Bedford Level (15 Car. II. cap. 17) ; poor prisoners not worth 101.; " The Oath of a Jury of Women returned to try whether a Woman convicted that pleads her Belly be quick with Child " ; Ale -taster within a Leet ; Surveyor of the Moors ; Leather-Searchers, &c.

The word Tronator, or Tronour in Norman- French, is well known as signifying the Keeper of the Tron or Public Weigh-Beam. In the Calendar of Letter-Book C, Guildhall (Dr. Sharpe), p. 118, there is mention of a writ to the Mayor and Sheriffs of London (25 May, 32 Ed. I., A.D. 1304) directing sufficient security to be taken for Richard Cristesmesse, the King's Troner (tronatore nostro) ; and there is plenty of information regarding the Tron in the ' Liber Albus ' and ' Liber Custumarum, 1 and also references in the 1 Liber de Antiquis Legibus ' (Camd. Soc.). Giles Jacob's 'Law Dictionary' (7thed., 1756) gives both Tronage and Tronator.

The word in the oath of the Knights of the Round Table as to which there is some doubt is "Title": I have confirmed this by a sufficiently well -printed impression of the first edition, and it is given as such in the second edition.

The shortest oath in the book appears to be ' The Homage of a Temporall Lord * (p. 246), and not the oath mentioned by R. S. B., viz., " that given in 1605 by Henry Garnet, the .Jesuit," which is 9 lines in length, against 7|. in the former. With regard to the latter oath, the Bishop of Lincoln in his ' Gunpowder Treason,' 1679, states: "This oath was by Gerrard the Jesuit given to Catesby, Piercy, Christopher Wright [on p. 94 he says " John Wright "], and Thomas Winter, at once, and by Greenwel the Jesuit to Bates at another time, and so to the rest " ; and on p. 94 he also states : ' ' They all were confessed, had Absolution, and received thereupon the Sacrament by the hands of Gerrard the Jesuit then present." The Bishop and the com- piler of ' The Book of Oaths ' are thus at variance as to which of the two Jesuits administered the oath.

The " clothes " that were shipped by the Merchant Advent urn- were not his apparel, but his bales or pieces of cloth, as is shown by the Index: "Merchant for the true shipping Cloth to the Mart Towne."

The Midwife's Oath is not the longest, that of the " Deputy of the Tonne of Calice," 'ordered by Parliament in 27 Hen. VIII. (pp. 151-8), being practically eight pages in length, whilst the midwives have to be content with nearly six.

JOHN HODGKIN.

" YON "- : ITS USE BY SCOTSMEN (11 S. i. 43). MB. BAYNE writes with authority on all matters connected with the Scottish language, and it is with great diffidence th^t one ventures to dissent from any statement of his on the subject. I cannot, however, think that he is correct in his views as to the use of the word " yon."- It is in my experience constantly used, in the West of Scotland at all events, with the meaning of "this" or "that." I cannot, of course, tell what the " verger " (who no doubt was the " beadle " ) actually said when he saw William Morris, but I should certainly have ex- pected him to use the expression reported by Mr. Noyes, and ask, " Wha 's yon ? "'

The story of " Sandy c? Baird and the Pyramids, like many of the yarns fathered on that worthy, may very probably be apocryphal. Having, however, known in- timately many of his friends and contem- poraries, from whom I have heard many of his stories, which they asserted they had themselves actually heard him tell, I have no hesitation in saying that, if Sandy did ask the question recorded by MB. BAYNE, he would have used the word " yon " in the sense of " these things."

I cannot, moreover, think that MB. BAYNE has been very happy in his selection of quotations from Burns in support of his contention. In the line

Ye see yon birkie, ca'd a Lord, " yon " surely means no more than " that,"' and does not necessarily involve any idea of distance. So, too, in the lines quoted from ' Mary Morison,*

Tho' this was fair, an' that was braw, An' yon the toast of a' the town,

" yon '* only means " that other one," and does not imply she was at a greater distance than the other ladies referred to.

The use of the word in such a sense may be a Scotticism, or a vulgarism, or an offence against grammar and good taste, but the fact remains that it is common in Scotland at the present day. T. F. D.

It is rather sad that MB. BAYNE'S excel- lent article should contain a reference to " the survival of the earlier ' thon,' " which is a different word altogether. " Yon ll is