Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 3.djvu/377

 n s. in. MAY 13, ion.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

371

from the "Black Boy" public-house, which stood on the left going down. Black Boy Hill, Bristol, and Black Boy Road, Exeter, were most likely in the same manner named after inns.

Sipprie probably played the kettledrums, and the entry may be taken to imply that there was a drummer attached to each troop of horse. The parish register of Taunton, St. Mary Magdalene, contains several entries relating to soldiers, the King's Way or Great Western Road, from London to Exeter passing through the centre of Taunton. ALFRED JAS. MONDAY.

In my quotation from Sibbald Scott's ' British Army,' ante, p. 337, the I from the word " clash -pans " has slipped into the word above it. W. S.

In Caton Woodville's picture of the only existing cavalry which belonged to the Parliamentary Army in ,the reign of Charles I., namely, what are now "called "the Blues," the kettledrums are being played by a black. J. E. F.

[ScoTus also thanked for reply.]

the ground that " it would certainly be very unbecoming in me to exhibit my honoured father and my respected friend, as intel- lectual gladiators, for the entertainment of the public."

Fortunately Boswell's conscientious omis- sion was remedied by the delightful note of Sir Walter Scott's in Croker's edition, where we learn that

raged with great fury, and ended in Johnson's pressing upon the old judge the question, what good Cromwell, of whom he had said something derogatory, had ever done to his country ; when, after being much tortured, Lord Auchinleck at last spoke out, 'God, doctor! he gart kings ken that they had a lith in their neck.' "
 * ' the controversy between Tory and Covenanter

The raciness of this remark naturally appealed to Carlyle. He quoted it, but not quite verbatim, in his review of Croker in Fraser's (1832\ See Carlyle's ' Critical and

Miscellaneous edition, p. 97.

Essays,' vol. iv., shilling EDWARD BENSLY.

MADAME VESTRIS (11 S. iii. 328;. The brochure referred to by MR. MAYCOCK is, I regret to say, not "rather scarce." It is an enlargement of John Duncombe's scurri- lous print, n.d., but on Lowe's authority 1826. See 'A Bibliographical Account of Theatrical Literature,' 1888. The edition of 1839 is a compilation of Duncombe's and others dealing with the same subject with a very free-and-easy hand.

Public people are public property, but even the curiously disposed may well rest contented with the authorities quoted by your correspondent and the account of the stage career of Madame Vestris contributed to the 'D.N.B.' by Joseph Knight.

PLAYGOER.

CARLYLE AND CHARLES I. (11 S. iii. 328). The author of the aphorism after which MR. EDGCUMBE inquires was James Boswell's father, Lord Auchinleck ; the occasion, the visit made by Dr. Johnson and his young admirer to the elder Boswell's house in November, 1773. The son says in his 'Life of Johnson,' p. 397, ed. 1876, "If [ recollect right, the contest began while my father was showing him his collection of medals ; and Oliver Cromwell's coin un- fortunately introduced Charles the First and' Toryism " ; but he suppressed the details, on

The epigram was uttered by Lord Auchinleck, the father of Boswell. Birk- beck Hill (' Boswell,' v. 383) reminds us that Quin the actor is said to have made a similar remark : but Lord Auchinleck' s clincher was due to his own brain.

W. P. COURTNEY.

[Several other correspondents thanked for the reference to Boswell.]

DAY : MAY - GAMES : MAY - POLES iii. 321). : Stow, in his 'Survey of

MAY (11 S.

London,' which was published in 1603, states that in the month of May the citizens of London of all estates, lightly in every parish, or sometimes two or three parishes joining together, had their several mayings, and did fetch in may-polers, with divers warlike shows, with good archers, morris dancers, end other devices, for pastime all the day long, and that toward the evening they had stage plays, and bonfires in the streets. He also quotes Edward Hall, the historian, from whom he frequently borrowed, as recording that King Henry VIII. one May day in the morning, with Queen Catherine, accompanied with many lords and ladies, rode a-maying from Greenwich to Shooter's Hill, and how delighted they were with the sports they witnessed. STAPLETON MARTIN.

The Firs, Norton, Worcester.

Philip Stubbes in ' The Anatomie of Abuses ' (1 May, 1583) denounces May- games and such like amusements :

'They haue twentie or fortie yoke of Oxen, euery Oxe hauing a sweet nose-gay of flouers placed on the tip of his homes ; and these Oxen drawe