Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 5.djvu/501

 us. V.MAY 25, i9i2.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

ARMS FOR IDENTIFICATION (11 S. v. 329). The arms described are those of .the (then) Earl of Dorchester.

J. DE BERNIERE SMITH.

The arms MR. BARTELOT describes are those of Joseph Darner, first Earl of Dor- chester. He was M.P. for Weymouth 1741, Bramber 1747. and Dorchester 1754. Created Baron Milton of Milton Abbey, Dorset, in 1762. and Earl of Dorchester 1792. The earl died in 1798. and was succeeded by his son George, upon whose death in 1808 the title expired.

The D'Amory and Amery families bear the same arms and crest, with a slight difference in the latter.

WILFRED DRAKE.

The arms asked for by MR. BARTELOT are evidently those of D'Amorie or Amory. Lord Amorie was summoned to Parliament 1317. the title becoming extinct by attainder 1404. JOHN HAUTENVILLE COPE.

I. do not quite follow MR. BARTELOT'S blazon, but the coat and crest are those of Amery, Amory. D'Amorie, Damory. The motto was used by Amory (of St. Ann's, near Bristol. Bunratty Castle, co. Clare, and Boston, U.S.A.). There appears to be no authority for the assumption of the earl's coronet or the supporters.

S. A. GRUNDY NEWMAN. [THE REV. H. A. HARRIS also thanked for reply.]

PLACE-NAMES (11 S. v. 289). In a large collection of place-names, compiled prin- cipally from the maps of the Ordnance Survey, I have not seen duplicates of the Herts examples. Breaches I should be disposed to class as descriptive, from its shape, as Breastplate. Cocket Hat (three times), Rainbow, Kite, &c. This would not apply to Round, which has a totally different meaning ; nor to Stocking, which I should imagine has something to do with stocks of trees. What is really wanted is a knowledge of why and when the name was bestowed, and by whom ; beyond this conjecture has full fling. A. RHODES.

Breaches is a common local name in the Midlands, generally found on the borders of forests or old wastes. It is Anglo-Saxon bryce, brice (ce = ch), Middle-English bruche, '" a breaking up " ; in place-names " the enclosure and cultivation of wild land." [ have frequently met with the Middle- Enelish form bruche in Staffordshire docu- ments of that period, but (by metathesis)

all these forms have become birch. They refer chiefly to places on the ancient bordei> of Cannock Forest. See 'N.E.D.,' s. Breach. Redding, Old Fallings, Old Falls, Stockings, have similar meanings, " a clearance in the- wilderness." May not Barnet, near London,, mean " a clearance by fire " (A.-S. bcemet. bernet), a common mode of clearance to this day ? SeeSkeat's ' Place-Names of Hertford- shire,' 60. W. H. DUIGNAN. Walsall.

I do not think Breaches is an uncommon field-name, for the reason given on p. 377 of ' The English Village Community ' (2nd ed.. 1883), by the late Dr. Frederic Seebohm. There are some fields called " The Breaches " in the parish of Didbrook, Gloucestershire,, but I am not at all sure that the name may not sometimes have been applied, for a- different reason, to long narrow fields, or to- those forming an opening between wood- lands. Mr. Henry Harrison, in the com- pleted volume of his ' Surnames of the United Kingdom ' (1912), considers the family name Breach to signify " dweller at the breach or opening"; and the same idea, applied to " a creek," is conveyed by the use- of the word in Judges v. 17.

May not Great and Little Nats have had some connexion with the word nate, meaning " good for naught " or " bad," and thus,, like other field-names, disclose the quality or reputation of the land ? A. C. C.

PIGTAILS (US. v. 188). The following extracts from "The History of That Great and Renowned Monarchy of China, Lately written in Italian by F. Alvarez Semedo. Now put into EnglLsh by a Person of Quality," London, 1655, will show how the pigtail came to be worn by the Chinese and also their great objection to it.

Describing the Chinese method of wearing the hair before the Tartar conquest, the translation says (p. 22) :

" They suffer the haire of their heads to grow as long as it will, both men and women. . . .They clippe not their beard, letting it grow according- to nature. They will be more troubled to loose one haire of their head then all the haire of their face."

The Tartars, on the other hand (p. 262),

" do shave both the Head and Beard, reserving only the Mustachoes, which they extend to a great length, and in the hinder part of their Heads they leave a Tuff, which being curiously woven and plated, they let hang down carelesly below their shoulders."

In their war with the Chinese the Tartars appear to have killed none who would " cut their hair and use the Tartarians Habit "