Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 10.djvu/223

 ii s.x. SEPT. i-2. 19H.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

217

Lawyer Wakem, in George Eliot's ' Mill on the Floss,' is a fine portrait of the country lawyer. P. D. M.

STATUE OF CHARLES I. AT CHARING CROSS (11 S. x. 169). This statue has always stood upon the site upon which it was originally placed. The exact date of its erection is doubtful. Mr. Wheatley in his ' London Past and Present,' i. 355, gives it as 1674, on the authority of Waller's poem. It may have been placed on its site in that year, but Marvell in his poem complains that it had remained for five months " still muffled with board "; and as in a further stanza he refers to two prorogations of Parliament, the first of which had taken place in November, 1674, and the second in June, 1675, it is probable that the statue was not finaUy unveiled till the autumn of the latter year. Mr. Wheatley also says that it was erected under the superintend- ence of Sir Christopher Wren. It appears, however, from Marvell's poem that Sir Charles Wheler, M.P. for Cambridge Uni- versity, and an official of the Court, was the authority who was actually in executive charge of the work (Marvell's ' Poems,' ed. Aitken, ii. 98). W. F. PRIDEAUX.

"WAKES": " LATK " (11 S. x. 170). Brand, in his ' Popular Antiquities,' says that he believes the true etymology of wake " is given in an extract from a metrical life of St. John in Dugdale's ' War- wickshire,' quoted by Strutt :

" And ye shal understond & know how the Evyns were first found in old time. In the sgynning of holy Churche, it was so that the pul cam to the Chirche with candellys bren- iyng and wold wake and coome with light toward Chirche in their devocions ; and after they to lecherie and songs, daunces, harping, _ig, and also to glotony and sinne, and so .ed the holinesse to cursydness ; wherefore loly Faders ordenned the pepul to leye that iVaking and to fast the Evyn. But hit is called /igilia, that is waking in English, and it is called ?vyn, for at evyn they were wont to come to 'hirolic. '

' Wake " is mentioned in the same sense in

1 H > ' I 'romptorium Parvulorum. ' Many quo-

ations are given in W. Carew Hazlitt's

Faiths and Folk-lore,' 2 vols., 1905, which

js founded on Brand's ' Popular Antiquities.'

The modern use of the word refers, par-

i( ularly in Lancashire and Yorkshire, to the

1 inn ual holidays of the operatives, when the

vorkshops and mills are closed down for a

Iveek or ten days, and those working people

\linsc means are adequate for the purpose

>ay visits to the seaside. Money for this

purpose is saved all the year round, and huge sums are distributed a few days before the " Wakes " week. " Playing " is used perhaps more than " laiking " in Lancashire, and means holiday, sport, idling, playing truant, to be out of work, or to abstain from work. Much information will be found in the ' English Dialect Dictionary.'

ARCHIBALD SPARKE, F.R.S.L. Bolton.

[MB. T. RATCLIFFE thanked for reply.]

TURTLE AND THUNDER (US. ix. 268, 335). MR. KUMAGUSU MINAKATA asks for " instances of the turtle being associated with thunder and lightning among various peoples of the world.'"

In one of Miss Alcott's books (' Little Men,' I think) there is a boy who, to wean himself from the use of worse language, has adopted the exclamation " Thunder turtles ! " Did he choose this combination solely because it was a good mouth-filling oath, like " Donner- wetter ! " or was there some earlier associa- tion in his mind between the two ideas ?

SCOTT: ' THE ANTIQUARY ' (11 S. x. 90, 155, 178). 11. For the "great Pymander " see the ' Poemander,' the Greek treatise of the so-called Hermes Trismegistus.

REFERENCE FOR QUOTATION WANTED (11 S. x. 89). Cicero in his ' Orator,' cap. 2, 7, has " Atque ego in summo oratore fingendo talem informabo, qualis fortasse nemo fuit." EDWARD BENSLY.

Reydon, Southwold, Suffolk.

OLD ETONIANS (11 S. x. 169). Dampier, John, admitted 27 April, 1756, left 1756, can be identified with John Dampier, son of Thomas Dampier, Dean of Durham, Rector of Wylye, Wilts. John Dampier succeeded his father as Rector of Wylye. See

" The Registers of the Parish of Wylye in the County of Wilts. Published by the Revd. G. R. Hadowj M.A., from Transcripts made by T. H. Baker and J. J. Hammond. Devizes : Printed by George Simpson. 1913,"

extract from Preface, p. vii.

Thomas Dampier, instituted in 1759, had been Lower Master at Eton ; he held several livings, including Fovant and West Meon, and was Master of Sherbourn Hospital, Durham. This latter, however, he seems to have resigned in favour of his son Thomas (afterwards successively Bishop of Rochester and Bishop of Ely) when he became Dean of Durham ; he died Dean of Durham in 1771, and was succeeded at Wylye by his son