Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 10.djvu/473

 11 8. X. DEC. 12, 19H.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

and that at any period when Goidelic Celts can conceivably have inhabited Lincolnshire cruadhail could not have been pronounced crool, and could not, therefore, have been borrowed by the English in such a form as to yield the Doomsday " Crul."

H. I. B.

"Pious CHANSONS." This expression, which occurs in ' Hamlet,' Act II. sc. ii., has given rise to much discussion, a summary of which may be found in Furness's ' Vari- orum Shakespeare,' i. 175, note. I make the suggestion with much diffidence : Can it have anything to do with ' Piae Cantiones,' published in 1582 for the use of the Lutheran communion in Sweden ? The work is extremely rare, and is not to be found in the British Museum Library. It was used by the Rev. Dr. Neale and the Rev. T. Helmore as the source of some of their ' Carols for Christmastide,' published in 1853. It is now fairly well known through a translation, with copious notes, by the Rev. G. R. Woodward, which appeared about three years ago. R. B. P.

" PRACTICAL POLITICS." In a letter in The Times of 21 November, Sir Harry B. Poland writes :

" There is a general belief that it [the phrase] was first used by Mr. Gladstone in a letter which .he wrote to the Warden of Glenalmond, 1865, that the question of the Irish Church was ' remote and apparently out of all bearing on the practical politics of the day ' ; and in a speech which he made at Dalkeith in 1879 he refers to what he had so written, and again uses the phrase.

" The first time I can find the phrase in print is in ' Vivian Grey,' which Mr. Disraeli wrote in 1825-6. At page 70 of the Hughenden Edition, Vivian says :

1 ' I remember his [Marquess of Almack] observing to a friend of mine, who was at that time desirous of getting into the House, " Har- grave," said his lordship, " if you want any information upon points of practical politics " ; that was his phrase ; you remember, Mr. Toad, that his lordship was peculiar in his phrases.' "

The above should, I think, find a place in 'N. &Q.'

A reference more generally useful than Hughenden Edition, p. 70, is vol. i. chap. xv. I am referring to the edition of 1833 among " Colburn's Modern Novelists."

I may add that in this edition " I remem- ber him " appears instead of " I remember his " ; that the words " practical politics " are in italics ; and that a query appears at the end of the sentence. The man to be applied to was Stapylton Toad himself.

ROBERT PIERPOINT.

A PURITAN ORDEAL IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Benjamin Smith Lyman, the geologist, informs me that in the first half of the last century they had in Massachu- setts an ordeal in this wise. A child who was accused of misconduct and denied it was made to hold a heavy Bible with a key on it. If the key shook, the child was guilty. ALBERT J. EDMUNDS.

Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

(Quems.

WE must request correspondents desiring in- formation on family matters of only private interest to affix their names and addresses to their queries, in order that answers may be sent to them direct.

HERALDRY OF LICHFIELD CATHEDRAL. In one of the Library windows are these arms, which I am at present unable to identify, but which are believed to have appertained to local ecclesiastical dignitaries. Speedy help would be very welcome.

1. Gu., a cinquefoil ermine.

2. Or, a lion rampant gules.

3. Gu., a castle triple-towered or ; on a chief of the second a lion's head erased between two cocks gu.

4. Argent, three cross-crosslets azure ; on a chief of the second two molets or, pierced gules. S. A. GRUNDY-NEWMAN.

TOOTH - BLACKENING. In Haxthausen's ' Studien iiber die Innern Zustande, das Volksleben und insbesonderer die Land- lichen Einrichtungen,' Hannover, 1847, S. 76, it is said that the Great Russian women " paint their cheeks very red, and formerly they often dyed their teeth black " ! Can any of your readers tell me what preparation was used in their tooth-blackening ?

Likewise, the Japanese women of old times used to paint their cheeks and blacken their teeth. The former usage died out during the eighteenth century, whereas the latter practice is still met with occasionally in the country parts.

KUMAGUSU MlNAKATA. Tanabe, Kii, Japan.

"MADAME DRURY, AGED 116." I have an old newspaper cutting which reads as

follows :

" Died, on Saturday night, of a gradual decay, in the hundred and seventeenth y.-ar of her age, old Madame Drury, who lived in >ix reigns and saw many generations pa.vs in iwi.-\v li. -fore her. She remembered iMtrrt<>n in ate, liv.-d in inti- macy with Wilk-s, Booth, and Gibber, and knew old Macklin when he was a stripling : her hos- pitality exceeded that of the Knglish character,