Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 5.djvu/325

 ii s. v. APRIL 6, M2.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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Articles of food peculiar to America had to be named : so we have clingstones, hoe- cake, hominy, pot-pie, succotash.

In addition to all this, the inventive ' Yankee " mind (I put the word advisedly within quotation marks) has originated many characteristic phrases, some of them ephemeral, and others destined to live. It may not be elegant to talk of giving an objectionable person "particular Jesse," but it is forcible. Similarly, an impecunious person is said to be "as poor as Job's turkey " ; the rough longshore-men of the Mississippi were said to be " half horse, half alligator " ; and a man who makes his way in a crooked manner, by reason of drink, is laying out the plan of a " Virginia fence."

Some Americanisms, such as " hurry up " and " no two ways about it," have come to England within the last twenty or twenty - five years, and it may be predicted that others will be naturalized here as time go->s n. RICHARD H. THORNTON.

36, Upper Bedford Place, W.C.

SUGAR CUPPING AT EASTER. At Tides- well, in the Peak of Derbyshire, the ancient custom of " sugar cupping " is still observed. On Easter Monday large numbers of children may be seen throughout the day drinking from bottles in which sweets *of various kinds have been dissolved in water. The water is sometimes obtained from the nearest tap ; but the more correct method, which is usually followed, is to place the sweets in a bottle, and to catch the water as it issues from fissures in the " Dropping Tor,"' a limestone rock protruding from a bank in a field off the Manchester road, not far from the old " Tiding," or ebbing and flow- ing well, which was at one time supposed to give its name to the town (9 S. xii. 341-2. &c.). The bottles are replenished with water as often as needed. Doubtless the custom dates from the old times when Lent was generally observed as a time of fasting ; and the sugar cupping at Easter was a form of relaxation for the children when their Lenten fast was over, and they were allowed again to indulge in such luxuries as they could obtain.

Stephen Glover, in his ' History of Derby - slure, 5 Derby, Mozley, 1827. 8vo, vol. i. p. 307 (4to edition, 1831, vol. i. p. 261). in a chapter on ' Customs, Games, Super stitions,' &c., writes as follows :

"Sugar cupping is another of the remnants f ancient customs now running rapidly into Jsuse. On Easter Sunday, young people and luldren go to the Dropping Tor near Tideswell.

with a cup in one pocket and a quarter of a pound" of sugar in the other, and having caught in their" cups as much water as they wished, from the droppings of the Tor-spring, they dissolved the sugar in it."

Glover adds the foot-note :

" If this custom has really any claims to an- tiquity, we must suppose that originally honey waa used instead of sugar."

Two changes will be noticed to have taken place during the last eighty-five years. The day is now Easter Monday instead of Easter Sunday ; and sweets of various kinds (liquorice, as a general rule, forming a part of the mixture) have taken the place of sugar. According to the oldest inhabitants, in the days of their childhood, " the hungry forties." when, wages were low and the price of sugar was

. a pound, a quarter of a pound would be divided amongst a number of children, and many of them had to be satisfied with a single lump of loaf, or a teaspoonf ul of moist- sugar. JAS. M. J. FLETCHER.

The Vicarage, Wimborne Minster.

[See also -i S. ix. 417, 523 ; x. 50.]

'JPICKWICK ' : EARLY REFERENCE. ' Pick- wick ' was published in monthly numbers, April, 1836, to November, 1837/ Lockhart, in vol. vi. of his ' Life of Scott/ first edition., lias the following reference to the famous oook (chap. iii. p. 112) :

" He [James Ballantyne] was either editing his newspaper and he considered that matter as fondly and proudly as Mr. Pott in ' Pickwick ' does his 'Gazelle of Eatanswill or correcting proof- sheets, or writing critical notes and letters to the- Author of ' Waverley.' "

As this sixth volume is dated in the author's i prefatory ' Notice ' 10 Dec.. 1837, it can hardly be doubted that when Lockhart penned the reference ' Pickwick ' had not yet appeared as a book.

Is there any other allusion to ' Pickwick ' equally early in a book of similar eminence ?

PENNIALINUS.

ARCHBISHOP LAUD'S RELATIONS. In 2 S. i. 454 several relations of Laud are men- tioned. In The Kentish Express of 2 March, in ' A Saunter through Kent/ is noticed a memorial to Eliza Cade, daughter of Edward Layfield, and niece of Abp. Laud, wife of the Rev. William Cade, Rector of Alding- ton, died 1719, buried in Sellindge Church,. Kent. This is not mentioned by Hasted, the Kent historian, so has probably been dis- covered and restored since. William Cade, A.M., Rector of Aldington, Kent, was in-