Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 3.djvu/239

 n s. m. MAR. 25, ion.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

233

DAY FAMILY or ESSEX (US. ii. 368). There is a valuable collection relating to various Days, including the family of John Day, the printer, in Davy's Suffolk Collec- tions, Add. MS., British Museum, 19,126. It may contain an abstract of his will.

I am interested in the probable connexion between these Days of Essex and Lieut. Thomas Day, one of the English settlers (most of whom came from Essex, Herts, and Devonshire) planted on the estates around Tralee, co. Kerry, by the Denny family in the early seventeenth century.

This Thomas Day, who might have been a son of the Rev. James Day, curate in 1583 of Waltham Abbey (where was then the chief Denny seat in England), was living in 1641, and was, apparently, father or grand- father of Richard Day of Tralee, living 1717. Richard was father of William of Tralee, and of Thomas of the Manor, co. Kerry. The latter had issue, besides Edward and Margaret, a son John, who m. Sarah FitzGerald of Dingle, and had, with other issue, Thomas, father of the Rev. John Day, who m. Charlotte, dau. of Sir Barry Denny, Bt., of Tralee Castle, and had issue.

H. L. L. D.

" SILIGO " : " SPRTG " : " BECKAB " : " DRAGET " (11 S. ii. 509). See the note on " Siligo " in ' Durham Account Rolls,' iii. 965, in the very useful glossary (Surt. Soc.). It and " draget '" occur in the ' Accounts of Bishop Gravesend,' e.g. at pp. 64, 75, 77, 78, 90. "Siligo" is also in 'Derby's Expeditions,' index, s.v., and in ' Accounts of Abingdon Abbey ' under " rye," all in Camd. Soc.

In the ' Chron. Mon. de Melsa,' edited by E. A. Bond, vol. iii., 1868, p. 319, "dragetum" is entered as " species of barley ? buck- wheat ? " Refer to 10 S. viii. 5, 114.

W. C. B.

" Siligo " is Latin for a kind of wheat : Lewis and Short say " a kind of very white wheat, winter wheat. Triticum hibernum" It has been taken to mean rye, an error Lyte refers to in his ' Herbal,' following Dodoens. Gerard says it is white or flaxen wheat ; and in the vocabulary appended to Henslow's ' Medical Works of the Four- teenth Century ' it is thus explained : " Siligo Triticum sativum, L., wheat, var. A lyght wheat, Turn. ' Names.' ' Lemery, however^ (' Traite Universel des Drogues Simples,' 1723), continues to give the name siligo to rye. C. C. B.

A " sprig " in parts of Scotland is a house sparrow.

Would " beckab " be a mill-dam or dam of any kind ? In the Orkney dialect an " ab " is a check, hindrance, impediment ; and in the north as well as the south of Eng- land a " beck " is a small stream or river.

As to the derivation of " druget " from " dragium," " a coarse sort of bread corn," Tusser in his ' Husbandrie,' p. 32, as quoted by Cowel in his ' Interpreter,' says : Sow Barley and Dreg with a plentiful hand, Lest Weed sted of Seed over-groweth thy Land. Thy Dreg and thy Early go Thresh out to Malt.

J. HOLDEN MACMlCHAEL.

" Sprig " is a term still in use, and has a variety of meanings. It signifies " a thin nail without a head." Or, more commonly, it denotes " a small piece of a tree or plant broken off from a larger portion." Leigh Hunt has an essay ' On a Sprig of Laurel.' The expression " a sprig of heather " is common in Scotland. There is a somewhat contemptuous use of the word, as when a person is called " a sprig of the nobility," that is, an offshoot from some noble family. In the survey cited in the query the term may perhaps stand for " a single corn-stalk taken from a bunch." SCOTTJS.

[MB. N. W. HILL also thanked for reply.]

AUTHORS OF QUOTATIONS WANTED (11 S. iii. 147, 177). The lines,

A Scot and Jesuit, hand in hand,

First taught the worldVto say That subjects ought to have command, And monarchs to obey,

are described by Prof. Hume Brown (' George Buchanan, Humanist and Reformer,' p. 291 n.) as "a squib produced during the English Civil Wars of the seventeenth century." The Scot referred to is, as PROF. BENSLY suggests, George Buchanan, in whose ' De Jure Regni' is upheld the doctrine that kings exist by the will of, and for the good of, the people ; and the Jesuit is, as PROF. BENSLY and MR. WAINEWRIGHT state, the Spaniard Juan de Mariana, author of ' De Rege et Regis Institutione,' a treatise in which the lawfulness of tyrannicide is discussed and affirmed.

M. A. M. MACALISTER. [MR. J. JACOBS also thanked for reply.]

'CASABIANCA' (11 S. iii. 67). In an edition of the poems of Mrs. Hemans, pub- lished by Blackwood in 1861 ' Casabianca ' stands among a group of " Miscellaneous Poems" written in 1825. 'The Forest Sanctuary ' and ' Lays of Many Lands '