Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 5.djvu/239

 ii s. v. MAR. 9, i9i2.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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are the wares of devils, and the whole Fair is the shop of Satan : they are hooks and baits, very foaits, that are hung out on every side, to catch you, and to hold you, as it were, by the gills, and by the nostrils, as the fisher doth ; therefore you must not look nor turn toward them."

See also ' Memoirs of Bartholomew Fair ' by Henry Morley, who shows how the three fundamental features of the celebration namely, religion, trade, and pleasure de- generated one after another, till the last, when left alone, became an excess that was its own undoing. THOMAS BAYNE.

The phrase is the subject of a note in Mr. Joseph Jacobs's elaborate edition of Howell's 'Familiar Letters.' "Bartholomew ware" is obviously ware sold at Bartholomew Fair. Such ware would be trivial and worthless, or, in Mr. Jacobs's phrase. " cheap and nasty.'' T. B. W.

By " Bartholomew ware " Howell means " rubbish, such as the goods sold at St. Bartholomew's Fair at Smithfield." He is thinking of the bombast, trite phrasing, and excessive compliments in which 1 he Latin epistolizers indulged. "Tawdry finery" is perhaps a fair paraphrase.

L. R. M. STBACHAN.

Heidelberg.

[MR. TOM JONES and W. B. S. aho thanked for replies.)

MAID A : XAKED SOLDIERS (US. iv. 110, 171, 232, 271, 334, 492; v. 14, 115). Soldiers have fought naked often enough. The passage of the French across the canal at Louvain in 1794, was effected by men stripping and swimming over ; but the most considerable example occurred in 1799, at the battle of Zurich, when Soult's wing of the army under Massena passed the Linth at night, led by 120 men, who swam across, stripped, each supplied with a lance on his teft shoulder, a sword at his left side, and on his head, fastened by a handkerchief, a pistol and a packet of cartridges. The sword, borne in the mouth, was to kill the j sentinels, the lance was for the melee, and the pistol to carry dismay in the darkness of t he night. Ten trumpeters and f our drum- mers went also. One drummer was drowned by his drum slipping under him, preventing him from swimming, and then, as it filled, dragging him down. , The Austrians were taken by surprise, and such confusion was caused amongst them that the rest of the force got across easily enough in boats and then by bridges. R. PHIPPS,

Col. late R.A.

COLKITTO AND GALASP (11 S. V. 104).

In the interesting communication at the above reference it is suggested at the close, p. 105, that the late Prof. Masson may have confused young Colkitto with his father. With all deference I beg to traverse that suggestion. If old Colkitto was known as ! Coll Keitache MacGillespick M'Donald, the " Gillespick" with " Mac " prefixed, became a kind of surname, and pertained to the son as much as to the father. The name of the son would therefore be Alexander M'Coll Keitache MacGillespick M'Donald, or, in other words, Alexander, son of left-handed Coll, son of Gillespick, son of Donald.

Unlike such common designations as " James Smith " or " John Jones,"' Gaelic personal names were intended for purposes of individual discrimination, and were con- structed on the principle of the Biblical genealogies. "If a man had no personal mark, or patrimonial distinction," says Stewart of Garth (' Sketches of the High- landers,' p. 345),

" he was known by adding the name of his father, as the son of John. This perhaps ran back for three or four generations. However absurd a long string of names may appear in English, it is not so in Gaelic, from the facility of compounding words in that language."

A note by Dr. R. Chambers in ' Rebel- lions in Scotland under Montrose," vol. i. p. 322. confirms Prof. Masson's opinion. Speaking of Alexander Macdonald. Dr. Chambers says :

" His father's name was Col Macdonald ; but, being left-handed, he was more generally known by the term Col Keitoch Col of the Lett Hand. Alexander himself, according to the practice of the Highlands, inherited his father's name as Mac- Colkeitoch Son of Col of the Left Hand : some- times even the name of his grandfather was added, and he then became, in the language of the Gael, Alaster MacColkeitoch Vich Gillespic. From some unaccountable reason, however, he has been generally known in history by the name of CoUdtta, which, at the best, was only his father's sobriquet, or nickname."

That the dust of oblivion, long settled over the Rev. George Gillespie's once fragrant memory, should have been disturbed, in order to drag him into touch with the war- like shade of Colkitto by coupling their names together, was quite unnecessary. Gillespies were tumbling over one another to claim Sir Walter Scott's attention. If the Gillespic in Colkitto's name was not sufficient for his purpose (and possibly Sir Walter may have been oblivious for the moment of the fact with which Prof. Masson was acquainted), he ought at least to have remembered that Montrose's great rival