Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 6.djvu/94

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NOTES AND QUERIES. t ii s. vi. JULY 27, 1912.

The second reply at the latter reference does not help the matter much. The state- ment that the adjective occurs in Chaucer is erroneous, because ' The Testament of Love ' was not written by him, but by Thomas Usk. The references to other authors are in my ' Etymological Dictionary ' already.

But the notion that sleeve can be got out of the " O.N. sliofr, Dan. slor, dull," is as absurd as it is inaccurate. There is no io in O.N., and no sliofr ; the word meant is the O.N. sljor. And the Dan. is not slor, but slov. The Icel. sljor, Dan. slov, means " blunt," and is merely the same word as the A.-S. slaw, mod. E. slow, the only connexion being that sleeve and slow both begin with si. I have already shown that " sleeveless " is the A.-S. slef- leas, which occurs in the tenth century.

WALTER W. SKEAT.

If, as Todd says, " sleeveless " means " wanting reasonableness, propriety, solid- ity," may it not be connected with an expression I used to hear in my boyhood, which, I think, came from the Royal Navy, which characterized talk deficient in those respects as " like a soldier's coat without sleeves " ? JOHN R. MAGRATH.

Queen's College, Oxford.

GUIDARELLO GUIDARELLI (11 S. V. 469).

RAVEN'S query recalls my visit of two days in 1885 to Ravenna. I can add very little to his scanty knowledge of the Guidarelli, although I have sought in vain through the chronicle of the Borgia family. Hare speaks in his ' Central Italy ' of the tomb as a gem of sculptural art by Baldaldo Gio- venaldo di Ravenna, representing " a perfect figure of Death in a youth clothed in armour, and lying on a simple couch with his head fallen on one side, his teeth locked tight, and long eyelashes closed."

I gather from other sources that Guida- rello was a youthful condottiero of Ravenna, and a partisan of Cesare Borgia.

Gaston de Foix, the French leader, was slain there in the Battle of Ravenna against the Spaniards and their faction in A.D. 1512, and a beautiful column marks the spot where he fell, but his effigy and tomb are removed to the Milan Museum. That of Guidarello of the beautiful mien " dear at once (as it has been said) to Mars and Minerva" who followed the fortunes of Cesare Borgia, remains in Ravenna as a memorial of his " death by treachery in Imola." Spreti's history of Ravenna (1793), can be examined at the British Museum. WILLIAM MERCER.

POET'S ROAD, CANONBURY (11 S. v. 389, 517). I feel confident that this road was named after Samuel Rogers, whose country house was at the corner of (what is now) Poet's Road and Stoke Newington Green. The eastern end of the road at least, on its northern side is built upon the grounds of the poet - banker's property.

The house was demolished and the grounds cut up some twenty-five to thirty years ago. W. C. J.

I am obliged to MR. PAGE for his reply. I was aware of Goldsmith's residence in Canonbury Tower, which is at least half a mile from the road, partly cul-de-sac, called " Poet's Road." Assuming it was all meadow land in the eighteenth century, with a track between the given points, I fail to see why the smaller strip should have been honoured with the name, unless Gold- smith actually lived there for a period.

M. L. R. BRESLAR.

CHURCH ALES : CHURCHWARDENS' AC- COUNTS (11 S. v. 470). It would be inter- esting to learn whether Wootton St. Law- rence was one of the many parishes which in 1600 possessed a church house, because this was thirty years after the canon for- bidding the churchwardens to hold public entertainments in the church, although we know from Stubbes that the canon was not infrequently disregarded, even in 1585.

The receipts from " the tronkes " may possibly refer, I think, to a sort of shooting gallery from "trunk," a tube from which peas or sugarplums were shot. "The horse" was probably the " hobby-horse." If there was a church house at Wootton (vide pp. 253-- 258 of ' Church Folk-Lore,' 1902, Vaux) may not " the pewter " on both sides of the account have been due in some way to the hire and letting of it out ? Dugdale (who died in 1686) states that when he visited Henley- in -Ar den there was a lot of pewter, " which the churchwardens let out at four- pence a dozen, when a feast was made."

A. C. C.

The forerunners of modern bazaars " for church purposes," church ales devoted their proceeds to similar ends. Games of chance and many other sorts of catchpennies were used to lighten patrons' pockets ; commonly these ales were held in the churchyard on or about the particular church's patronal festival and the annual parish fair. The game of " tronkes," noticed in Brand's ' An tiquities,' was also known by two other