Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 6.djvu/543

 ii s. vi. DEC. 7, i9i2.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

447

The lines would then mean this, :

" O thou, my lovely Boy, who dost hold Time's hourglass in thy power, who hast grown in beauty as its sands run out, and in this way showest thy lovers fading as thy sweet self growest ever brighter."

Glass is called brittle in ' King Kichard III., IV. ii. 60, also in ' The Passionate Pilgrim, viL, where " brittle " rimes with " fickle."

W. B. BROWN.

"PROCK." This curious animal has been commonly regarded as an invention of the New Englanders. He appears in Th Knickerbocker Magazine for 1849 as an animal

" which has two short legs on the one side and two long ones on the other, to enable him to keep his perpendicular while browsing on the sides of steep mountains."

And in Maine he is called a " side-winder ' or "side-hill badger."

I have now " run him to earth " in old England. In Kersey's edition of Phillips's " World of Words,' 1720, the badger himself is described as

" a kind of wild Beast, whose Legs are said to be shorter on the Bight Side than on the Left .... It is otherwise call'd a Brock, Grey, Boreson, or Batcson."

So the fable about the unequal legs of the "badger went across the ocean, and from being a brock he became a prock.

" AT OUTS." This phrase, meaning " at variance," is not, I think, in any of the dictionaries. It occurs in the Congressional debates of 1884, and is probably an Ame- ricanism. RICHARD H. THORNTON.

36, Upper Bedford Place, W.C.

A MARYLAND WITXTAMITE FOUNDATION. King William's School, Maryland, was named after William III. ; it is situate in Annapolis (named after the Princess Anne, afterwards Queen of England). It is notable (when King William's School) as the first public free school estab- lished on the Xorth American continent ; also as the first gift of the Colonial Church for the work of Christian education on that soil. The earliest paper relating to the Church in Maryland, preserved amongst the MSS. at Lambeth Palace Library, is dated 18 Oct,, 1694, and refers to King William's School, Maryland (also to another Williamite foundation, the William and*VIary College in Virginia).

A full account of King William's School, now St. John's College, is given in a work compiled by the present distinguished

President of the College, Dr. Thomas Fell, published in 1894. The old link between the United Kingdom and the fourth existing collegiate institution in the American Union, in point of age, and now claiming nearly two centuries of continuous life and educational work, is worthy of record.

WILLIAM MACARTHUR. Dublin.

ERMENGARD, COUNTESS OF RENNES : HER PARENTAGE. Conan I., " le Tort," Count of Rennes, married, " Tan 970, Ermengarde, fille de Geofroi Grisegonelle, Comte d'Anjou " (' L'Art de Verifier les Dates,' second edition, p. 695), by whom he had, with other issue, Geoffrey, who took the title of Duke of Brittany. This marriage is of importance to Angevin history, because of its bearing on the difficult question of the marriages of Geoffrey Greygown. Miss Norgate, who devoted a long note to the latter subject in her ' England under the Angevin Kings,' i. 134-6, decides that Geoffrey cannot have married Adela or Adelaide of Chalon before 978, and continues :

" Geoffrey, hov.-ever, must have been married long before this, if his daughter Hermengard was married in 970 to Conan of Brittany (Morice, ' Hist. Bret.,' vol. i. p. 63. His authority seems to be a passage in the Chron. S. Michael, a. 970, printed in Labbe's ' Bibl. Nova MSS. Librorum,' vol. i. p. 350, where, however, the bride is absurdly made a daughter of Fulk Xerra instead of Geoffrey Greygown)."

From this it would seem that the prime authority for affiliating Ermengard to Geof- Tey I. is the statement of a chronicle that she was the daughter of his son Fulk III. This, of course, is absurd, as Miss Xorgate says ; but I do not see why it should be .akeii for granted that Fulk is a mistake for Geoffrey. The purpose of this note is to uggest the possibility that Ermengard may lave been the sister of Geoffrey instead of lis daughter, i.e., daughter of Fulk II. the Good. In that case the Chronicle would have ler father's name correctly, but woxild have nixed up the two Fulks. I do not think hat the date presents any difficulty. If, lowever, it is considered that 970 was a some- what late date for the marriage of a sister of he whole blood of Geoffrey, Ermengard might >erhaps be a stepsister, i.e., daughter of ?ulk II. by his second wife. It is true that no such child is on record, but Ermengard loes not seem to be recorded anywhere in he Angevin pedigree ; and Miss Xorgate uggests that another lady whose parentage s doubtfnl may have been the child of ulk II. 's second marriage (' England under