Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 10.djvu/282

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NOTES AND QUERIES.

[II S. X. OCT. 3, 1914.

I have also seen a letter from F. W. X. Crouch, the composer of ' Kathleen Mavour- neon,' a^d the father of the notorious Cora Pearl, enclosing a melody in a colour nota- tion of his own contrivance. This was probably never published. Crouch was a man of many and various gifts, which he was quite incapable of turning into terms of bread and butter.

I do not remember to have seen any foreign work on the subject. It is a pity that this delightful speculation was unknown to Mersenne. So unsolvable a problem would have fascinated him, and have added another chapter to the delights of his ' Harmonic Universelle.' JAMES E. MATTHEW.

" FFRANCIS " (11 S. x. 228). I have long supposed that "ft"' is simply a form of the capital letter, which we have, not much altered, in the " Old English " type ff, and that it was not an " eccentricity " limited to a few cases. My great-grandfather wrote his name with " ff ," and it was a very common surname. I feel sure that " ffrancis " and " ffrances " are common in parish registers. I think that in " Ff " we have an / too much.

J. T. F.

Winterton, Doncaster.

BRITISH REGIMENTAL HISTORY (US. ix. 89, 174). 'The Black Watch : the Record of an Historic Regiment,' by Archibald Forbes, LL.D., Cassell & Co., 1896, may be added to the list supplied at the second reference. Forbes also wrote ' Glimpses through the Cannon Smoke,' 1880 ; ' Soldiering and Scribbling,' 1882 ; ' Barracks, Bivouacs, and Battles,' 1891; 'The Afghan Wars,' 1892, &c. He died 29 March, 1900.

J. B. MCGOVERN.

BRITISH COINS AND STAMPS (11 S. x. 191, 235, 255). While I agree that the face to the left " is the more obvious and convenient position," I do not think that our postage stamps were deliberately designed on this principle. I should suppose that when postage stamps were first issued in the reign of Queen Victoria the head was placed in the same position as on the coins, without any consideration of convenience, and that the authorities saw no sufficient reason for making a change when King Edward came to the throne. I clearly remember that, when the new stamps were first issued after his accession, it was stated in some news- paper that fresh designs would have to be made because the artist had overlooked the rule as to changing the position of the head with each reign. It was officially announced

in reply that there had been no opportunity to establish such a rule, as postage stamps had been issued under one sovereign only, and that it was not considered desirable to extend to postage stamps the rule which had become accepted for coins.

F. W. READ.

POEM WANTED (11 S. x. 230). The poem, inquired for by R. M. is ' The Reveille," l>y F. Bret Harte. It begins :

Hark ! I hear the tramp of thousands,

And of armed men the hum ; Lo 1 a nation's hosts have gathered Bound the quick alarming drum, Saying, " Come, Freemen, come !

Ere your heritage be wasted," said the quick alarming drum.

Its first appearance in England was. I think, in ' That Heathen Chinee and Other- Poems, Mostly Humorous,' by F. Bret Harte, published by John Camden Hotten, no date. The ' Special List of Books ' at the end ia my copy is " for 1871."

The poem appears, naturally, in " The Select Works of Bret Harte. .. .with an. Introductory Essay by J. Montesquieu Bellew," published by Chatto & Windus, no date. Bellew's Introduction is dated " No- vember, 1872," whereas in my copy the ' List of Books ' is dated " July, 1882." B think that we may take 1 864 as the date of the first appearance of the poem.

" Extraordinary efforts were made during the winter and the spring to recruit and reorganize the Northern Armies." Times, Annual Summary, 1864.

In ' That Heathen Chinee and Other Poems,' 'The Reveille' appears on p. 89$ and on p. 94 is " Relieving Guard. T. S. K, Obiit March 4, 1864."

' The Reveille,' minus one stanza, and with an unimportant substitution of one word for another, was reprinted in The Times of 4 September last. The omitted third stanza omitted, I suppose, because the word " Yankee " was obviously inap- propriate to our present circumstances is :

" But when won the coming battle,

What of profit springs therefrom ? What if conquest, subjugation, Even greater ills become ? " But the drum Answered, " Come ! You must do the sum to prove it," said the Yankee- answering drum.

In the next stanza The Times has What if, mid the battle's thunder, in place of the original

What if, mid the cannons' thunder.

ROBERT PIERPOINT.