Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 2.djvu/516

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NOTES AND QUERIES. EIIS.VIIL DEC. sr, 1913.

volume of pedigrees, ' Hardwicke and d'Aubigny ' (Brit. Mus. Libr. Addit. MSS. Dept., No. 37,940), she was the daughter of Thomas, son of Sir John Crophall, third husband of Margaret, daughter of Theobald, Lord de Verdon, who died 1316 ; but there is no mention of her mother's name or of the author's source of information.

M. C. A.

THOMAS FULLING. I should be glad of information as to the ancestry of Thomas Fiilling of the Board of Works, a bust of whom by Thomas Engleheart was in the Royal Academy in 1773. His father was John Conrad Fiilling, whose will was proved October, 1771, and whose residence at the date of his will was Leicester Fields, Soho. J. T. WELLDON.

The Garth, Ashford, Kent.

SMITH : NAME IN THE VASCONCELLOS FAMILY. Could any reader of ' N. & Q..' tell me how the name Smith came into the Portuguese family of Vasconcellos ? Perhaps your correspondent LEO C. would be kind enough to notice this inquiry.

J. A. ALBBECHT.

PBE-REFOBMATION ALMSDISHES. What was usually engraved inside old alms- dishes or rosewater dishes ? Was it a motto, or dedication, or a verse ? I should be grateful for examples. E. E. COPE.

Finchamstead Place, Berks.

' COBIOLANUS.' I should be much obliged by an explanation of the following passage :

Come, let us go :

This fellow had a Vplscian to his mother ; His wife is in Corioli and his child Like him by chance.

Act V. so. iii. 11.1177-80, Globe edition.

A. C. C.

[We hardly see what there is to explain. This is the last throw of Volumnia's passion a bitter taunt, the effective irony of which is by much the stronger in that it is not literally true to fact.]

PBEDECESSOB OF MADAME TUSSAUD'S. I shall be glad of any particulars of the Gothic Granary which stood on the site of Madame Tussaud's. J. ABDAGH.

' MENSJE SECUNDJE.' Who were the authors of the poems in the above little book, with sub-title " Verses written in Balliol College " (Oxford, B. H. Blackwell, 1879) ? WILLIAM GEOBGE BLACK.

Ramoyle, Glasgow.

" MAN'S EXTBEMITY IS GOD'S OPPOB-

TUNITY." Who is the author of this saying, and in what work is it to be found ?

CHAS. BBOWNE.

liepiws.

' MERRYGREEK ' (US. vii. 309, 415).

'RALPH ROISTER DOISTER' (11 S. iii. 367, 413, 454, 496).

ERASMUS'S ' PARAPHRASE UPON THE NEW TESTAMENT.'

I THINK it is most probable that MB. PABBY (viii. 309) is correct in supposing that the name " Merrygreek " or " Merygreke " is a pure invention on the part of the author of ' Ralph Roister Doister.' In his opening words " Merygreeke " makes a play upon his name. MB. PABBY refers to certain inhabitants of Camborne in Cornwall as having been nicknamed " meerageeks " by their fellows, the " geek " being a common variant of " gowk," a simpleton, and states that the full word seems not to have sur- vived in Cornwall and that it does not appear in Wright, though one of your correspondents at the later reference (p. 415) gives " meara- geeks " from Jago's * Glossary of the Cornish Dialect.' Nor does it appear in Uncle Jan Trenoodle's (Sandys's) 'Specimens of Cornish Provincial Dialect ' (1846), though in the ' Glossary ' attached to that work the word " gaukums " or " gaukum " is given as the equivalent of a simpleton, from " goky "' (Cornish), a fool. " Gowk " is there spoken of as a bonnet worn by country people, with a sort of flap or curtain behind that protects the back of the neck from the weather.* The similar form " gawk " is, we know, not peculiar to the West of England.

MB. PABBY'S question recalls my atten- tion to several very interesting references to what is believed to be our first English comedy ' Ralph Roister Doister ' which appeared in ' N. & Q.' a year or two ago, and, though I took a note of them, I was not at that time able to elaborate them. With the Editor's permission I would offer a tardy reparation now.

At the first of these references (iii. 367) MB. MCELWAINE raises the question as to which was the sovereign for whom the prayer for the Queen, with which the play ends (Act V. sc. vi.), was intended, and asks, assuming that the play was written before 1553, and therefore before any queen sat on the throne of England, if there is any

what is called in the neighbouring county of Dorset a " tilt-bonnet," made for the garden, without any stiffening in it.
 * This, I imagine, is but another name for