Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 10.djvu/357

 ii s. x. OCT. si, 1914.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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watching the issue. They resembled soldiers so much when viewed from a distance that one man rode after them and requested that they should descend the slope of the hill in close order, and, disappearing at the bottom, re-ascend in the same manner and show themselves on the summit. This they did for hours, until the stout Welsh wives were clean beat, but the manoeuvre was successful. General Tate and his officers were terrified by the red cloaks, thinking they were the British uniform."

I disbelieve the first form of the legend, and doubt the second. I should disbelieve that also if nay mother's description of the part played by her mother as a private in the stage army were not one of my earliest recollections.

There is a singular lack of contemporary chronicles of the Invasion. The earliest and, so far as it goes, the best is :

" Some Account | of the I Proceedings I that took place on the landing 01 the French | near Fishguard, in Pembrokeshire, | on the 22nd Feb- ruary, 1797 ; | and of the | Inquiry | after- wards had into | Lieut.-Col. Knox s conduct | on that occasion, | by order of His Royal High- ness the Commander | in Chief : | together with | the Official Correspondence, | and other Docu- ments. | By Thomas Knox, | late Lieut.-Col. Commandant of the Fishguard Volunteers. | London: | 1800."

This is clear and detailed, and the narrative is confirmed or illustrated by nearly sixty official documents, but, unfortunately, it is not a full history. Knox, having been deprived of his commission without any formal charge or proper inquiry, wrote to prove that his conduct had been correct throughout, and it would have been foreign to his purpose to describe any events in which he did not take part.

One might have reasonably expected a full account of the Invasion from Richard Fenton, who was living in Fishguard at the time ; but in his ' Historical Tour through Pembrokeshire ' he says that it would be as impertinent to enter into details of an event so fresh in the recollection of every one as it would be unpardonable to pass it over totally unnoticed. To avoid the un- pardonable he gives several pages of windy rhetoric, and to avoid the impertinent he gives very few details. The first of those few (that the Invasion took place on Tues- day, 20 February) is demonstrably wrong, for in 1797 the' 20th of February was a Monday, and the correct date is Wednesday, the 22nd.

The fact that the " Welsh Heroine " is not mentioned in either of the contemporary accounts does not prove that the writers had not heard of her. In Knox's vindication she would have been irrelevant, and to

FentonTshe would have been one of the

impertinent details which he purposely omitted. DAVID SALMON.

Swansea.

"ACCIDENTS WILL OCCUR IN THE BEST- REGULATED FAMILIES" (11 S. x. 271, 296). Dickens cannot have originated this saying. It occurs in Scott's ' Peveril of the Peak ' towards the end of the novel, in the final interview between the Countess of Derby and the King :

" ' My liege,' said the Countess, colouring in- dignantly, ' my household is of reputation.'

" ' Nay, my Lady, be not angry,' said the King ; ' I did but ask. Such things will befall in the best- regulated families.'"

It is probably older than Scott. Chester. JOSEPH C. BRIDGE.

Micawber, it is true, remarks that " acci- dents will occur in the best - regulated families," but he was not the earliest of Dickens's characters to utter this sentiment. He was anticipated by Jingle :

" All a mistake, I see never mind accidents will happen best - regulated families never say die," &e. 'Pickwick, chap, ii.

I submit that the saying did not, as was suggested, originate with Charles Dickens. The way in which it is introduced in Jingle's disjointed style, as well as Micawber's playful application of the proverb, " in families not regulated by that pervading influence which sanctifies while it enhances," &c., both clearly show that Dickens was merely placing a stock expression in the speakers' mouths.

In Vincent Stuckey Lean's ' Collectanea,' vol. iii. p. 411, it is included among ' English Aphorisms ' in the form " Accidents will happen.... in the best -regulated families," and the quotation given from 'David Copperfield.' EDWARD BENSLY.

GELRIA: A PLACE-NAME (11 S. x. 168, 218, 237). It will not do to say that this is " probably meant for Geldria." Gelria and Gelre are the normal forms in the Middle Ages (e.g., in the thirteenth -century ' Nar- n it in de Groninghe,' &c., published for the Utrecht Historical Society in 1888, p. 17 et passim) ; and Gelre is the form used by the latest historian of the Netherlands, Prof. P. J. Blok of Leyden (' Geschiedenis van het Nederlandsche Volk,' 2nd ed.). In English we have been accustomed to speak of Guelders or Guelderland. The northern (and larger) part of it lay in the diocese of Utrecht. The castle of Gelre stood in a detached territory, and this district, " la