Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 1.djvu/402

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NOTES AND QUERIES. en s. i. MAY w, 1910.

who wrote ' Disputationes Theologicse.' Perhaps Davidson's ' Inverurie and the Garioch,' 1878, might be helpful in tracing the family connexion. W. SCOTT.

LOVELS OF NORTHAMPTON (10 S. xii. 489 ; 11 S. i. 54, 136). I thank MB. MACMICHAEL for the information he kindly supplies at the second reference as to the Lovel con- nexion with the City of London.

Sir Thomas Lovel, K.G., is said to have entertained at his suburban residence of Elsing, near Enfield, the Queen Dowager of Scotland in 1516. Would this and Paradise Place be identical ?

A ' ' Lovel " mansion is also said to have been in Lovel Court, Paternoster Row. Does any evidence of this exist ?

I am making the Lovel family a special study, and shall be grateful for any infor- mation about members of it.

THOS. H. WRIGHT.

142, Wellingborough Road, Northampton.

MAY BASKETS AND JUNE BOXES (11 S. i. 347). The May Day custom described as prevailing in some parts of the United States may possibly be a survival of a very ancient superstition, carried to America by Irish exiles.

In my childhood in Ulster some five-and- fifty years ago every street in our village was yellow with " May flowers,** scattered on each window-sill and doorstep on May Eve. Our nurses took us out to streams and marshy meadows to gather basketfuls of the marsh marigold (known in Northern Ireland as the May -flower), and before sunset the contents of the baskets were lavishly strewn over every opening to the house by which ' ' the gentle people n could enter. The belief was then strongly held that the night of May Eve gave them great powers for harm and that the only way to baffle them was to strew the flowers they dare not tread upon.

At that time fairies were believed in by all the Catholic population, and as the Ulster nurses were generally of the old faith, the nurseries of the North cherished so ardent a belief in the wee folk fifty years ago that it is hard to realize that probably no one under twenty to-day has even heard of the rites and the risks, the spells, and the superstitions of those days of legend and first-hand fairy tales.

I am inclined to discern in the "maimed rite n of hanging flowers on the door-knob on May Day a distinct echo of our Ulster flower-covered doorsteps on May morning.

Y. T.

The corresponding practice in this country was to hang branches of the birch tree decorated with flowers on the knockers of street doors. See 7 S. iv. 242, ' Bishop Percy on the Customs of May Day.'

TOM JONES.

" DERBY AND " DOWN n (11 S. i. 228). If the refrain " Hey down derry down '* is indeed derived from the Welsh ' ' Hai down ir deri danno," the Welsh harpists must have been well known on the Continent at an early date ; vide the madrigals by Flemish, French, and Italian composers of the sixteenth century and the early part of the seventeenth.

Unfortunately, I have no reference books here, but from memory would call H. I. B.'s attention to ' Matona Mia Cara,* by Orlando di Lasso, published by Novello, where the refrain appears as * ' Don don don diri diri don don don don don n ; and to ' O Bella, O Bianca J (I forget the composer), published by Breitkopf & Hartel, edited by Barclay Squire, where the refrain is "La din dirin don. 11 GALFRID K. CONGREVE.

Vermilion, Alberta, Canada.

It may not be without significance that in books of old Welsh airs the refrain of "Hob y derri dando " is englished "down down hie derry down." Danno or dando = dan-y-to, under the roof, is supposed to refer to a building for storing acorns as pig food, or to the shade of a grove of oaks.

H. P. L.

' EDWIN DROOD l CONTINUED (11 S. i. 69, 153). To the items given at the latter reference should be added the following :

' A Great Mystery Solved,' by Gillan Vase, 1878.

' Clues to Dickens's " Mystery of Edwin Drood,'" by J. Cuming Walters, 1905.

' The Puzzle of Dickens' last Plot,' By Andrew Lang, 1905.

' The Mystery of Edwin Drood,' a drama in four acts, by J. Comyns Carr, 1907.

' Keys to the Drood Mystery,' by Edwin Charles 1908. ' The History of a Mystery : j a Review of the Solutions to " Edwin Drood," three articles in The Dickensian for Sect., Oct., and Nov., 1905, by George F. Gadd.

W. B. H.

THE BRAZILS (11 S. i. 189, 355). It is only within a few years that we have ceased (the Royal Geographical Society first, and then the Colonial Office) to say "the Ber- mudas,^ "the Barbadoes," &c.

BRUTUS suggests that " all the Russias lt has to do with Russia in Europe, Russia in Asia, &c. No Russian worries about Asia,