Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 4.djvu/181

 n s. iv. AUG. 26, ion.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

175

A garden party given by Miss Burdett Coutts at Holly Lodge, and another review at Wimbledon, terminated the fetes inaugu- rated in honour of theij visit.

At the first review at Wimbledon on the 13th the Prince of Wales, in a pouring deluge of rain, handed to each section of fours silver medals which had been struck specially for the occasion. On the 18th of July there appeared a letter in The Times, signed "Belgian Lion," calling attention to the fact that " Vive la Beige " had been in- scribed on the medal instead of " Vive la Belgique." This elicited an apologia in The Times of 20 July from Mr. W. J. Taylor, who, he stated, had made the medal at the Crystal Palace. In this letter he announced that the die had been recast, and that new medals would be replaced for those in which the error occurred. How many of the original recipients availed themselves of this offer, or how many preferred to retain the actual emblem they had received from the hands of the Prince, is more than I can say. WILLOUGHBY MAYCOCK.

It was in 1867 that a company of the Belgian Gardes Civiques visited Wimbledon and took part in the meeting of the National Rifle Association on Wimbledon Common, a party of London volunteers having visited Brussels in 1 866. On their return to Belgium one of the visitors wrote an account of his experiences in the columns of Le Commerce de Gand, afterwards published in a brochure entitled ' Les Beiges a Wimbledon : Impres- sions de Voyage d'un Artilleur Gantois.' Some amusing extracts from this pamphlet were printed by Mr. H. v. d. B. Copeland in the ' Wimbledon and Merton Annual,' 1904. There are references to the distribu- tion of medals at a grand review on the Common on July 13 ; but nothing is said as to the inscription. G. L. APPERSON. Wimbledon.

JOHNSON AND TOBACCO (US. iv. 148). The contradiction in the review of Mr. Nevill's book of the idea of Johnson as smoking is, doubtless, founded on the follow- ing reference in Boswell's Life, &c., of the Sage (cetat. 47, vol. i. p. 317, in Birkbeck Hill's annotated edition). The Dutch are said to be fond of draughts, and of " smoak- ing, of the sedative influence of which, though he [Johnson] himself never smoaked, he had a high opinion."

Dr. Hill makes a reference here to 'The Tour to the Hebrides ' (vol. v. p. 60 of his edition, 19 Aug.) where Johnson wonders that " a thing which requires so little exertion,

and yet preserves the mind from total vacuity, should have gone out. Every man has some- thing by which he calms himself : beating with his feet or so." POURQTJOI PAS.

MB. RALPH NEVILL'S imagination triumphs over fact. Dr. Johnson did not smoke, but he was graciously pleased to express little or no disapprobation of those who did. He had a high opinion of the sedative influence of the practice, and was heard to say that " insanity had grown more frequent since smoking had gone out of fashion." (Boswell's ' Life,' edited by Croker, 1 vol., p. 106), and again he observed :

" To be sure it is a shocking thins:, blowing smoke out of our mouths into other people's mouths, eyes, and noses, and having the same thing done to us. Yet I cannot account why a thing which requires so little exertion, and yet preserves the mind from total vacuity, should have gone out. Every man has something by which he calms himself : beating with his feet or so." P. 282.

The present vitality of the smoking habit would please Dr. Johnson, but, alas ! it does not coincide with any diminution of insanity. ST. . SWITHIN.

[MR. WM. E. BROWNING also thanked for reply.]

" SWALE," ITS AMERICAN AND ENGLISH MEANINGS (11 S. iv. 67, 114)." To swale," in the sense of burning furze or heather, as used on Dartmoor and in the Highlands, is closely connected with the German verb schwelen (the accented vowel is either closed or open), which means to smoulder, to burn slowly and without flame, O.E. swelan, to burn, to glow, with the causative swcelan, O. Fris. swila, to parch ; of the same stem as the adj. schwiil, sultry.

In its American sense " swale " may be akin to "to swallow " and the German Schwalg, an obsolete word, M. H. G. siualh = water-hole, whirlpool. G. KRUEGER.

Berlin.

In * Manipulus Vocabulorum : a Rhym- ing Dictionary of the English Language,' by Peter Levins (1570), E.E.T.S., will be found "to sweal as y e fyre, efflammare," and "sweal, to, as the fire, to burn out." In Wycliffe's translation of the parable of the sower, Matt. xiii. 6, "Sotheley the sonnet sprung up, thei swaliden" (or brenden for hete), Bosworth's ed., Smith, 1865. In Grose's ' Provincial Glossary,' ed. 1839, "swale" or "sweal" is defined as to singe or burn as to swale a hog, sweal a cat ; a swealed cat whose hair is s wealed by sleeping on hot ashes. In Worcestershire the term is applied to the practice of burning off the hair of pigs when killed for bacon the