Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 1.djvu/144

 136

NOTES AND QUERIES. ui s. i. FEB. 12, 1910.

be seriously entertained by those who are The words, on the face of them, resemble familiar with Milton's works. It may also be less the polished language of a playwright

than the rough-and-ready eloquence of the It is inconceivable that any

worth noting that the French name for Palm Sunday is " Jour des Rameaux," literally the Day of Branches, a designation which was bestowed on it because of the palm branches that were borne by the Jewish populace on the occasion of Christ's triumphal entry into Jerusalem.

N. W. HILL. New York.

"MAN IN A QUART BOTTLE" (10 S. xii. 289). On the 16th of January, 1749, a crowded audience filled the Haymarket Theatre, London, to witness a conjuror

stump orator.

playwright in the eighteenth century should have risked his popularity by reflecting so offensively on the drinking habits of his countrymen. Consequently I venture to suggest that the " old playwright " had no actual existence, and that the words put into his mouth belong to modern days.

W. SCOTT.

LOVELS OF NORTHAMPTON (10 S. xii. 489 ; 11 S. i. 54). The tradition that the last Lord Lovel had two sons, who grew up and

,

perform several astonishing feats among left descendants, may be safely dismissed

them that of jumping into a quart bottle ^ fiction - This is proved by the descent of

The conjuror, of course, failed to appear the baron y of Beaumont, which was called

and a formidable riot was the result the out of abe y ance in favour of a descendant

theatrical property being wholly destroyed of one of Love J' s sisters. This could not

by the dupes whose credulity had victimized have happened had there been even a sus-

them. An account of the affair was printed P icion *** he * left descendants.

in The General Magazine for January 1749 The earli est known ancestors of the family

were hereditary butlers of Normandy in

a copy of which is now before me

In Timbs's ' Romance of London,'- under the latter part of the eleventh century, as e headin The Bottl ' w ell T as hereditary constables of the castle

? f ^ ^ * ,% stat * ment * hat * w According to Timbs, the whol affar was a > esters, father and son, fought at

,-

the heading The Bottle Conjuror ' p. 177, the same event is described in greater Detail f

" foolish experiment on the credulty othe public.' 5 It arose out of a wager between the Duke of Montague and Lord Chesterfield the latter of whom is reported to have said : f Surely, if a man should say that he would jump into a ? quart bottle, nobody would leve that.- The Duke accepted the

Senlac > I believe that there is no record

of

TT W

< THE CANADIAN BOAT SONG ? (11 S. i. 81). _We must go warily in drawing conclusions

mentioned above.

venture to submit that this foolish

challenge. An advertisement duly appeared as to the authorship of this lyric, and in n V stating that at a certain particular we must not attach too much

specified time and place a person would get importance to what, after all, may be a mere into a tavern quart bottle and perform literary device. It was quite in keeping- other extraordinary feats. The result was as w i t h the methods of those responsible for the

early Blackwood to indicate fanciful origins for contributions, and even to assign both

experiment was the origin of the phrase articles and poems to possible and impossible " man in a quart bottle.'* It had nothing writers. Those who created the Odontist whatever to do with drinking customs, and developed the Ettrick Shepherd into but referred only to the credulity which the one of the strongest and most engaging Englishman no doubt shares in common with mythical figures in English literature cannot the Scotsman and the Irishman. The words in all cases be judged according to the strict Believe it ? Believe anything ! No canons of critical estimate. One of them swallow like an Englishman's. A man in a might say, as in this instance, "I have the quart bottle or a victory, it 's all one following song from a friend of mine now down it goes ! " are merely significant of in Upper Canada,'' and yet have no more the length to which human credulity may ground for his assertion than he had for proceed. Chesterfield's remark, quoted producing numerous lyrics of a captivating above, is probably the nucleus around order and deliberately attributing them to which, in course of time, the words attri- buted to the " old playwright n have

gathered. I can hardly believe that any to perplex the Shepherd very much in the old playwright ever used such expressions. I early days of Maga. He would professedly

his contemporary, "Dr. Miller Street, Glas

James Scott, 7, Lockhart used