Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 5.djvu/447

 n 8. v. MAY 11, 1912. i NOTES AND QUERIES.

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were married in the church by licence 7 Octo- ber, 1775, by Wm. Colby, curate, in the presence of Thomas Fearnley and Thos Lacon. DANIEL HIPWEIX.

"GENDER." Under 3 the 'N.E.D.' says " Transferred. Sex. Now only jocular.' But the new Protection of Animals Act o: 1911, in its first schedule (6), states :

" The knacker shall enter in a book kept for the purpose such a full and correct description oJ the colour, marks, and gender of every anima delivered to him as may clearly distinguish anc identify the same," &c.

G. KBUEGER.

Berlin.

PONTIFICAL ZOUAVES AND THE BANNER OF THE SACRED HEART. The following interesting letter is taken from The Daily Telegraph of April 5th : To THE EDITOR OF ' THE DAILY TELEGRAPH.'

Snt, Since the death of General de Charette many inquiries have been made as to who has taken his place as chief of the Pontifical Zouaves, and what has become of the banner of the Sacred Heart, which was in his possession, and under which the volunteers of the West (who were recruited from the ranks of the disbanded Ponti- fical Zouaves) fought so heroically at Laigny.

I am now requested by the senior officer of the regiment to ask you to be so kind as to publish in your columns the following details, which have already been published by him in the French Press : In accordance with the dying wish of General de Charette, the banner was confided to the keeping of the senior officer of the Pontifical Zouaves-^-the Count le Gonideo de Traissan but he died some three months after General de Charette, and it was then placed in the keeping of the next senior officer of the regiment, the Count de Cpuessin who now holds it, as chief of the Pontifical Zouaves. Believe me yours faithfullv, BARTLE TEELIXG (Pontifical Zouave)."

A. N. Q.

MODERN PRONUNCIATION : " IDEA." ' The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English,' which, according to the title-page, is " adapted from " the ' Oxford Dictionary,' may be supposed to give the most recent and authoritative method of pronunciation. In it I find that the word " idea " should be pronounced ider. The authors of this work would therefore seem to adopt as " current English " what, in the northern part of the kingdom at all events, is still considered a vulgarism. Along with many others, I had hitherto looked upon the pronunciation idear (or ider) as belonging to the same class as "Indiar," "Mariar,"&c., for India, Maria, and similar words. Are we to believe that this usage, which we had supposed was confined to Cockney nursery-maids and such like, is regularly and properly to be found among

educated people in England ? It has cer- tainly not the support of the ' Oxford English Dictionary,' from which the work referred to above is stated to be adapted. T. F. D.

ms.

WE must request correspondents desiring in- formation on family matters of only private interest to affix their names and addresses to their queries, in order that answers may be sent to them direct.

ROBIN HOOD SOCIETY. What was the constitution or raison d'etre of this society, and why was it so called ? Dr. Axon (' Lancashire Gleanings,' p. 325) alludes to it as " the famous Robin Hood Society, of which Burke and Goldsmith were in later years members." Archery would be little in the way of either of those worthies ; if it was a debating club, how came it to bear the name of the renowned outlaw ? I can only connect them on the conjecture that the society was regarded as a quiver containing shafts of rhetoric and irony, and the prince of archers its appropriate if figurative patron. J. B. Me GOVERN.

St. Stephen's Rectory, C.-on-M., Manchester.

TERESA MERCANDOTTT. I wish to know the date of the death of this lady, and where a portrait of her can be seen. There used to be one in Duff House, Banff (in which she was painted with ringlets), and it is said that there is another in the library of the London Corporation, but it cannot be identified now. She was the daughter of an officer in the Spanish army, and when her father was killed in battle, the third Earl Fife, an officer in the same regiment, undertook to educate her, then a young child. She was trained to be an opera dancer, and on her appearing in the Italian opera in London she was greatly admired by the dandies of the reign of George IV. She eloped with one of them, Mr. Hughes Ball Hughes, ivho was so wealthy that he was called the ' Golden Ball." The Times of 8 April, 1823, says they were married in the church of Banff after proclamation of banns, but they lad not been six weeks in the parish, and he minister was liable to be punished. Local tradition says that to ensure secrecy
 * he marriage took place on a wooded island

n the river Deveron, which is the boundary jetween Banff and Aberdeen, and that, jesides the principals and the officiating minister, there were present only the mother if the bride and Earl Fife. For his services