Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 3.djvu/19

 us. m. JAN. .7, mi.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

13.

in two lines of the delineation Chaucer gives of his Miller in ' The Prologue,' 11. 562-3 :

Wei coude he stelen corn, and tollen thryes ;

And yet he hadde a thonibe of gold, pardee.

See the illuminating and satisfactory note on the passage in the Clarendon Press edition of ' The Prologue,' &c., by Dr. Morris and Prof. Skeat.

The miller, with his privilege of "multure " and so forth, is a robust figure in Scottish song, his various advantages and idiosyn- crasies having manifestly made a strong appeal to those shrewd and candid observers whose literary gift is now the only evidence of their existence. One of the brightest of their lyrics, illustrating the miller's steady good fortune, opens thus : Merry may the maid lie

That marries the miller, For foul day and fair day

He 's ay bringing till her ; Has ay a penny in his purse

For dinner and for supper ; And gin she please, a good fat cheese, And lumps of yellow butter.

THOMAS BAYNE.

Let MR. GERISH consult Chaucer. In the old time every tenant was bound to grind at the manor -mill, and the miller was paid by a toll of the grain, which toll he took and measured himself.

In the days of itinerant butchers they also were suspected. Fifty years ago I can remember street-boys shouting after the butcher's man :

Butcher, butcher, killed a calf, Ran away with the best half. This was in the East Riding of Yorkshire. I have recently written about * Itinerant Tailors' (US. ii. 505). I might have added itinerant butchers and pig-killers.

W. C. B.

Those interested in the subject of the toll levied by millers will find several references to the system as it existed in Scotland in ' The Monastery ' (chap. xiii. and notes).

Apropos of MB. GERISH' s reference to the case of the honest miller of Great Gaddesden, I remember reading in Milling some years ago a paragraph about an epitaph which was said to mark the last resting-place of an American miller. It ran :

God works wonders now and then : Here lies a miller an honest man. The epitaph may possibly be apocryphal, but it serves to show that our forefathers' opinion of millers was by no means a flatter- ing one. LEONARD J. HODSON.

Robertsbridge, Sussex.

Sussex lays claim to an " honest miller " who resided at Chalvington ; but tradition says that he throve so ill that he hanged himself to his own mill-post. For further particulars see Sussex Archaeological Journal (vol. iii.)> and The Antiquary for June, 1909, in which the subject of honest millers is dealt with in an article on ' Sussex Wind- mills.' P. D. M. [ScoTUS and A. T. W. also thanked for replies.]

EMINENT LIBRARIANS (US. ii. 489, 538). For G. H. Pertz, " Oberbibliothekar " of the Royal Library, Berlin, see an article in ' Meyer's Konversationslexikon.' There is an account of his son Georg Pertz, who trans- lated Burns into German, in Briimmer's ' Lexikon der deutschen Dichter des 1& Jahrhunderts.' G. H. Pertz's most im- portant service to Germanic philology is his finding the manuscript of the Old High German ' Strassburger Blutsegen,' pub- lished by Jakob Grimm. An account of this monument is given in Paul's ' Grundiiss der germanischen Philologie,' Band II., p. 66.

H. G. WARD.

Aachen.

If MR. F. C. WHITE will revise his dates from information supplied by the ' D.N.B.,' he will find that the Rev. Henry John Todd was born in 1763 (not 1765), Dr. David Laing in 1793 (not 1790), and Sir Anthony Panizzi in 1797 (not 1799). W. SCOTT.

GREAT SNOW IN 1614 (11 S. ii. 508).- Stow refers to the severity of the winter of 1613-14 in his annals thus :

" The 17th of January began a great Frost, with extreame Snow \vhich continued untill the 14th of February, and albeit the Violence of the Frost and Snow some dayes abated, yet it continued freezing and snowing much or little untill the 7th of March."

Some account of this severe frost is to be found in a contemporary chapbook, the title-page of which runs as follows :

The Cold Yeare, 1614.

A Deepe Snowe :

In which Men and Cattell have perished, To the generall losse of Farmers, Grasiers, Hus- bandmen, and all sorts of People in the Countrie ; and no lesse hurtfull to

Citizens.

Written Dialogue-wise, in a plaine Familiar Talke betweene a London Shopkeeper, and a

North-Country-Man, [n which, the Reader shall find many thinges for.

his profit.

mprinted at London for Thomas Langley in luie Lane, where they are to be sold. 1015.