Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 10.djvu/460

 454

NOTES AND QUERIES. [ii S.X.DEC. 5,1914.

conclusion from all this was that ' Colu- mella ' was to a great extent only his fun. MR. HUMPHREYS, however, suggests that Graves was giving in the book the results of his bitter experience, and this seems equally probable. M. H. DODDS.

"BOCHES" (11 S. x. 367, 416). In Lucien Rigaud's ' Dictionnaire d 'argot moderne,' 1888, the explanation of this word is as follows :

" Boche (Tete de). Tete dure, individu don^ 1'intelligence est obtuse, c'est-a-dire tete dcbois dans le jargon du peuple. Dans le patois de Marseille une boule a jouer est une boche."

The sense appears pretty plain. The Ger- mans are looked upon as a kind of football which has been kicked into France only to be kicked back again, with the added insinuation that they are thickheads or wooden heads. E. G. B.

' ; TABLK OF PEACE " (11 S. x. 410). This was an osculatoriurn or " Pax-Brede." See the article under the former of these names in Dr. F. G. Lee's ' Glossary of Liturgical and Ecclesiastical Terms,' where illustrations of two examples may be seen :

" The rule of Sarum was to send the Pax before communion to all the faithful present, and it was given by kissing a small plate of ivory, or precious metal, with a handle behind. On this was commonly engraved, either a representation of the crucifixion of our Lord, or a figure of the Agnus Dei. The osculatorium was found in every church sacristy, and numerous records of the donation of such are preserved." Ibid., p. 25-4.

DICKENS AND WOODEN LEGS (11 S. x. 409). Lovers of Dickens must feel grateful to OLD GOWN for challenging them to call to memory the various instances of this peculiarity. Personally, I confess to a special Jiking for Thomas Burton,

" purveyor of cat's meat to the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs and several members of the Common Council,"

who was firmly persuaded that the constitu- tion of his second-hand wooden legs was undermined by the glass of hot gin and water sometimes two that he drank regularly every night, and for that yet more famous leg,

" gone likeways home to its account, which in its constancy of walkin' into wine vaults, and never comin' out again 'till fetched by force, was quite as weak as flesh, if not weaker."

Indeed, even with the recollection of Silas Wegg, that " literary man with a wooden leg," I should be inclined, in this respect, to place the deceased Mr. Gamp first. But need one suppose that the humorous possi- bilities in wooden legs were suggested by any

definite original in earlier fiction or in actual life ? From a child Dickens had a remark- ably observant eye, especially for all that was abnormal or grotesque, and in the streets of Chatham and London he must have seen many sailors and soldiers who had been maimed in the Napoleonic wars.

If it had been necessary for Dickens's imagination to be stirred by an instance in literature, one would be tempted to point to Lieut. Hatchway. ' Peregrine Pickle ' was among Dickens's first literary associations. When describing his own childhood in ' David Copperfield,' and how he gave a local habitation to his favourite characters in fiction, he writes :

" I have seen Tom Pipes go climbing up the church-steeple .... and I know that Commodore Trunnion held that club with Mr. Pickle in the parlor of our little village alehouse."

It is in the alehouse scene in the second chapter that Jack Hatchway wards off a blow from Trunnion's crutch with his wooden leg. g EDWARD BENSLY.

MOURNING LETTER-PAPER AND BLACK- BORDERED TITLE-PAGES (4 S. iv. 390 ; 11 S. x. 371, 412). The custom of printing black borders on the title-pages of funeral sermons must date much earlier than the one (1735) quoted by MR. WELFORD. The earliest I can refer to .at the moment is dated 1678, entitled :

" The | Fight of Faith | Crowned : | or, A I Sermon | preached | At the Funeral of that | Eminently Holy Man | Mr. Henry Stubs. | By Tho. Watson Minister of the Gospel. | London, | Printed, and are to be sold by Joseph Collier at the | Bible on London-Bridg [sic], under the Gate, 1678."

Thick black lines also head the Epistle and the commencement of the sermon.

ROLAND AUSTIN.

I have in my possession a volume of old funeral sermons. Those of the eighteenth century all appear with black borders, &c., as described by MR. WELFORD, while those of the nineteenth century are quite plain. Among them are :

" A | Sermon | Occasioned by the | Death Of the late Reverend | Isaac Watts, D.D. Preached to the | Church of which he was Pastor. To which is added, | The Funeral Oration at | his Interment. | By Samuel Chandler. | Both Published at the Request of the said Church. | London: | Printed for J. Oswald, and W. Dilly, at the | Rose and Crown in the Poultry, near the Mansion- | House ; J. Buckland at the Buck in Paternoster- | Row ; and E. Gardner, at the Ship, in Lorn- | bard-street. MDCCXLIX. | Price Six-pence " (pp. 45).
 * December 11, 1748. | By David Jennings. I