Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 1.djvu/400

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NOTES AND QUERIES. pi s. i. MAT M. ma

and memorized, the performer places the fifty-two cards behind his back, and names the card which he deliberately draws and holds up with the face towards the spectators.

TOM JONES. [C. M. also thanked for reply. ]

" GOD SAVE THE PEOPLE ! " (11 S. i. 328). I find an instance of the use of this phrase in 1776. In the recently issued sixth volume of the Historical Manuscripts Com- missioner's ' Report on Manuscripts in Various Collections * (p. 122) is given a letter of 2 Jan., 1776, from Sir Grey Cooper to William Knox, in which, in connexion with a reference to the insurrectionary proceed- ings at Boston, Mass., it is said : "I see their proclamation for a fast ends with God save the People"

' The People's Anthem,* by Ebenezer Elliott, "the Corn-Law Rhymer" (1781- 1849), beginning

When wilt thou save the people ? God of mercy ! when ?

with its refrain to each of the three verses,

God save the people !

is well known. ALFRED F. ROBBINS.

[MB. A. RHODES also thanked for reply.]

" ONOCROTALUS," A BIRD (11 S. i. 309). The onocrotalus mentioned by Pliny, x. 66, would seem to be the pelican. He describes the bird as resembling the swan, but differing from that bird in having as it were a second crop attached to its beak. In this, he says, the bird can stow away a marvellous amount of food, which, like ruminants, it transfers into its mouth. Festus tells us that the common name for the bird was truo, or the long-nosed one. It seems natural to connect this word with the Welsh trwyn and the French trogne ; but this is disputed by Korting.

Curiously enough, in the next chapter Pliny tells us that he has heard stories of birds seen in Germany whose plumage shone by night as though with fire, recalling the facts known to naturalists about phosphor- escent owls. H. A. STRONG.

Liverpool.

See Aldrovandi's book on birds. Does the medieval scribe perhaps use the words of the Psalmist about the bird in the wilderness? In the Vulgate the bird is named onocrotalus, which Luther translated as the bittern, from which no doubt other versions copied, like, e.g., one of the Hungarian versions ; but in the English Bible it is translated as the

pelican. The querist will find also that the onocrotalus has been mixed up with the " water-raven,''- that is the cormorant, but, to the best of my belief, never with the corn- crake. L. L. K.

This bird, reported to be " as big as a swan," should be rather a bittern than a corncrake (ortygometra}. See an interesting note by Miss Locock on the bittern with two stomachs, 1. 13,031 of Deguileville's. ' Pilgrimage of the Life of Man ' (E.E.T.S.)..

H. P. L.

LADY WILLIAM STANHOPE : CAPT. C. MORRIS (11 S. i. 348). The difficulty that MR. R. BOLTON has experienced in ascer- taining the maiden name of the Lady William Stanhope who married his great -great- grandfather Capt. Charles Morris, is mainly due to the defects of some of the modern books of reference.

Sir William Stanhope, the next brother of the famous Lord Chesterfield, was married three times. His first wife was a daughter of John Rudge, M.P. She died in 1740. His second wife, a Crowley or Crawley, died in 1746.

Sir William married for a third time, on 6 Oct, 1759, a young woman of two-and- twenty (* Lord Chesterfield's Letters,' ed. 1845, vol. i. p. xx, and vol. iv. p. 327), but the union was not happy. They separated in September, 1763 (ib., iv. 369-72) Her maiden name was Anne Hussey Delaval, and she was second daughter of John Hussey, Baron Delaval. She was born 2 Dec., 1737, and married secondly, in 1773, Charles Morris, captain 2nd Life Guards, the post-nuptial settlement, being dated 1 July, 1773. She died at Melton Constable, 23 Feb., 1812.

An admirable pedigree of the family of Delaval is printed in the ' History of North- umberland,' vol. ix., 1909. I am indebted to it for the last dates that I have given. W. P. COURTNEY.

TRAVELLERS NOT IN ' D.N.B. 2 (11 S. i- 266). MR. EDWARDS appears to have pretty well exhausted all available sources of infor- mation regarding the persons named in his query. The following jottings will probably ^dd little to what he already knows.

The brothers D'Abbadie were suspected of being emissaries of the French Government in Abyssinia, and were accused in certain quarters of having procured the expulsion of Protestant missionaries from the country. They contributed largely to French scientific