Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 3.djvu/112

 106

NOTES AND QUERIES. [u s. m. FEB. n, 1911.

tinder the archway during a block in Fleet Street. It is difficult to realize that London -at that time was not much more than a large country town with few hotels North- umberland House with its huge empty court- yard standing on ground now so differently occupied.

At the time when the removal of the Bar was under discussion, some excellent plans for keeping it in the City were unwisely rejected. HENBY TAYLOR.

Birklands, Birkdale, Lancashire.

" STICK-IN-THE-MUD." This seems to be an old colloquialism, but it is not mentioned, I think, in the ' English Dialect Dictionary.' I remember, about twenty years ago, hearing the expression applied to a person who never made any progress in business or life gene- rally he was addressed as " old stick-in- the-mud " ; and it may be noted that one who is deficient in histrionic talent is known as a " stick." An " old fogey " is an " old stick-in-the-mud," a slowcoach. Hughes in * Tom Brown at Oxford ' says : " This rusty old coloured one is that respectable old stick in the mud, Nicias." But there is an earlier instance of the use of the phrase in The General Evening Post of 15-17 Novem- ber, 1732 :

" George Sutton was Yesterday before Justice De Veil, on suspicion of robbing Col. Des Romain's House at Paddington. The Colonel was in the Boom with the Justice, and no sooner had Sutton entered the Boom, but the Colonel said, that is the Man that first came and seized me with his drawn Sword in his Hand. The Justice com- mitted him to Newgate. At the same time James Baker was before Justice De Veil for the same Fact. The Colonel could not swear to him, but the Justice committed him to the same Place with Sutton. George Fluster, alias Stick in the Mud, has made himself an Evidence, and impeached the above two Persons."

Again, in The General Evening Post of 13-15 Dec., 1733,

41 John Anderson, James Baker, alias Stick in the Mud, and Francis Ogleby were convicted lor breaking open the House of Thomas Bayner, .a Silversmith, and stealing Plate to' a considerable value.

J. HOLDEN MACMlCHAEL.

BBECHIN. In ' A Catalogue of Rare and Valuable Books,' recently issued by a pro- minent London house, the following entry

appears in the section given to Wales :

"Brechin. Black (D. D.). History of Brechin. Crown 8vo, cloth. Brechin, 1839. 3/6."

The compiler of the catalogue evidently thought that his volume is concerned with

Brecknock or Brecon, and not with the ecclesiastical town of Brechin in For- farshire, which enjoys the distinction of giving his title to a bishop. Between the two names thus incidentally associated there is a possible connexion, which Anderson in ' The Scottish Nation ' discusses as follows :

" Its similarity [that of Brechin, to wit] to the British name Breckeinoc or Brycheinog, Anglicised into Brecknock or Brecon (anciently Aberhodni), the chief town of Brecknockshire, which Giraldus Cambrensis (1188) and even earlier authorities derive from Bracken, a regulus or prince of that country, who died about the year 450, renders it probable that it is likewise called after some individual of British or Cambrian origin of that name. Nor is it impossible that, being a town of great ecclesiastical antiquity, its round tower being one of the only two extant in Scotland, and not of later date than the sixth or seventh century, it may have originated in a church dedicated to the family of this Bracken."

" Brechin," it may be added, is not pro- nounced " Breechin," as the unwary are prone to think, but belongs to the same guttural family as Ecclefechan and Auch- termuchty, with which the Southern visitor invariably has trouble.

THOMAS BAYNE.

LOWE FAMILY, 1670-80. The following entries occur in a copy of the Authorized Version, 1611, in the British Museum :

"Sarah Lowe was Borne the 13 th of May and Baptized the 15 th of June, 1676.

"Andrewe Lowe was Borne the 31 st of March and Baptized the 9 th of May, 1681."

HENKY R. PLOMEB.

CONSCIENCE-STBICKEN : TABDY ADVEB- TISEMENTS. The following advertisements in comparatively recent newspapers may be worth noting. The first appeared in The Standard of 9 February, 1888, and the reply to it in that of 17 February :

" AMELIA AND CLARA SPENCER, at school in 1837, 5, Prospect-place, Peckham-rye, and whose home was in that part. Advertiser DEEPLY REGRETS doing some ACTS for which they were accused and may have been expelled."

" AMELIA AND CLARA SPENCER are much gratified to see the advertisement headed as above. They freely forgive the advertiser for the wrong done over 50 years ago. 173, Church Boad, Canonbury, N."

A somewhat similar circumstance is recorded in the following paragraph from The Standard of 18 October, 1909 :

" A BELATED CONSCIENCE. An ex-under- graduate of Cambridge sends a curious advertise- ment to a Cambridge paper. He states that one day in 1852 an undergraduate came into collision on college premises with a tobacconist's boy,