Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 1.djvu/423

 ii s. i. MAY 21, i9io.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

415

the querist is mainly referring to is ' The Chaplain of the Fleet,' by Besant and Rice, issued in 1877. It may also be remembered that Mr. Pickwick was not without experience of such refuges of the destitute.

W. SCOTT.

COLERIDGE ON FIREGRATE FOLK-LORE (11 S. i. 349). The folk-lore of the firegrate Is interesting ; that of " the stranger on the bar " particularly so, and it is to this that Coleridge in * Frost at Midnight ' refers. The film of soot hanging at times from a bar, and fluttering in the draught, is "the stranger, n and is popularly believed to indicate that some one not of the household, but possibly a friend of the family, is coming that or the next day. As soon as the stranger is seen on the bar, it is watched with keen interest, for its fate has much to do with the appearance o non-appearance of the visitor. The popular lines as I have known them all my life are : If the stranger on the bar goes in the fire, Your friend will come nigher ; If the stranger goes in the ash, Your friend will come none the less ; If the stranger goes up the chimney, Your friend will come, but you '11 not see him.

For the last word "her," is usually substi- tuted.

The rule is to wait and see ; but if the which way to dispose itself, you may " waft " t with your hands, and say :
 * ' stranger n takes much time over deciding

Stranger mine, come to me ; If not mine, flee a-wee I

A little stranger is a child ; a medium one, a lady ; and a big one, a man. Two together on a bar are a sign of a married couple, or that there will be a wedding in the family if both fly away together,. but if separately, the wedding will not be " yet a while." Lasses, especially country lasses, used to make much of the " stranger on the bar " ; and if " wafting " with the hands did not make it budge, the end was hastened by using the apron. THOS. RATCLIFFE.

The superstition connected with the film on the bar of a grate is that it predicts the advent of a stranger, and the custom is to wave the hand up and down, saying, " Tues- day, Wednesday, Thursday," and so on, till it falls ; and on whatever day it falls, the stranger is supposed to come. Of course, if it does not happen to be a Tuesday when it appears, the day must be altered.

MATILDA POLLARD.

Belle Vue, Bengeo.

[Replies from C. C. B. and ST. SWITHIN also acknowledged.]

" ROUNDHEAD " : ITS MEANINGS (11 S. i. 187, 358). The following is from Rapin's ' History,* quoted in Granger's ' Biographi- cal History of England,* vol. ii. p. 270 :

" The (London) apprentices wore the hair of their head cut round, and the Queen, observing out of a window Samuel Barnardiston among them, cried out, ' See what a handsome round head is there ! ' and the name came from thence, and was first publicly used by Captain Hyde."

R, B.

Upton.

In Archceologia Mliana, Third Series, iv., there is a description of flails, amongst them being mentioned war flails and the " round- head, ~ l a pike -headed staff, a morning star without a chain. "It is figured and described in Mercurius Civicus of 1643, No. II." R. B R.

South Shields.

LATJNCESTON AS A SURNAME (11 S. i. 346). There is no mention of this name in Marcus Clarke's preface to ' Poems by Adam Lindsay Gordon, 4 nor in a compre- hensive paper on ' The Literature of the Australian Commonwealth,'- by Percy F. Rowland, of Sydney, N.S.W., which appeared in The Nineteenth Century for April, 1902. The latter refers to Henry Kendall, Gordon, and Marcus Clarke as " the contemporary triumvirate of Australian letters," and enumerates the names and writings of many others. The absence of any mention of "Phil Launceston " seems to point to his being, if it is not an assumed name, of so slight importance as to be unnoticed by writers who were thoroughly conversant with their subject. Gordon died in 1870, Clarke in 1881, and Kendall in 1882.

W. B. H.

Phil Launceston, in spite of the Athenceum reference, was the "fake 21 of a friend of mine, and need not be seriously considered. I fear that our august contemporary was taken in for once. NEL MEZZO.

OSBORN ATTERBURY (US. i. 328). The following quotation from Noble's continua- tion of Granger's ' Biographical History of England ? may possibly be of some interest to the querist :

" Bishop Atterbury had issue by Catherine,

daughter of the Rev. Osborne, a relation of

the Duke of Leeds, Osborne Atterbury, baptized at Chelsea, April 23, 1705, who was of Christ- church, Oxford, and went to the East Indies. Re- turning in 1732, he was ordained by his father's great rival, Hoadly, bishop of Winchester ; and in June, 1746, obtained Oxhill in Warwickshire : he inherited his uncle's, Dr. Lewis Atterbury's estate at Great Stoughton in Huntingdonshire.