Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 8.djvu/22

 16

NOTES AND QUERIES. [n s. VIL JAN. *,

(anger) and dandy (distracted), the former common to several English counties, and the latter peculiar to Somersetshire.

Wut '11 make ye act like freemen ?

Wut '11 get your dander riz ?

J. Russell Lowell's ' Biglow Papers.' ' He was as spunky as thunder, and when a Quaker Sets his dander up, it's like a North-wester.' Major Jack Downing's Letters,' p. 75."

A " spunk," it may be noted, is a spark in some parts of the British Isles.

ST. SWITHIN.

The phrase " to get one's dander up " was familiar to Londoners fifty or sixty years ago. It came over from America in some works of the period. Thackeray uses it in ' Pendennis.' xliii. : " When my dander is up, it 's the very thing to urge me on." Its origin is uncertain, but it is con- jectured to be a figurative use of " dander " = ferment, now commonly called " dunder," which is the lees or feculence of previous distillations. It is very rapid in action, and is used in the West Indies in the making of rum. TOM JONES.

THE STONES OF LONDON (11 S. vi. 429, 515). Totternhoe stone :

" The great church and priory of Dunstable, as well as parts of St. Albans Cathedral and West- minster Abbey, were built of this stone." ' Dun- stable : its History and Surroundings,' by \Vorth- ington G, Smith, " Homeland Library Series."

H. H. W. FYNMOBE. Dunstable.

J. H. R. will find much interesting informa- tion on this subject in Mr. John Watson's ' British and Foreign Building Stones,' published in 1911 by the Cambridge Uni- versity Press. G. F. R. B.

"JAG" (11 S. vi. 411). As the subject has been reopened by MB. DEFEBBABI, I ask permission to re -enter the field by assert- ing, good-naturedly, but decisively, that " jag " never was used for or understood as "umbrella" by any American from ocean to ocean Yankee, Cracker, Wol- verene, Pogonipper, or what not. Mr. Far- mer, in his ' Dictionary of Americanisms,' has simply misconstrued the joke in the news- paper clipping there given. As not all readers of ' N. & Q.' may have the dictionary at hand, I copy the extract :

" He came in very late (after an unsuccessful effort to unlock the front door with his umbrella), through an unfastened ; coalhole in the sidewalk. Coming to himself toward daylight, he found him- selfspring overcoat, silk hat, jag, and all stretched out in the bath-tub.'"

Every native or fairly acclimatized reader of this understood that his " jag " was his "load," his "drunk"; that, this night- bird so far over-seas as to use his umbrella for a latchkey, disregard the grime of the coalhole for his costliest clothes, and go to bed in the bath-tub with his overcoat and silk hat on must have waked up to a realization of a heavy load (" jag ") on hi* head, very much with him.

FOBBESl MOBGAN. Hartford, Conn.

IBISH ( ANGLO -!BISH) FAMILIES : TAYJLOK OF BALLYHAISE (11 S. vi. 427). Wm. Taylor of Romney, Kent, and his wife Mary, dau. of Richard Taylor of Cranbroke in the same county, had a son, John Taylor of Cambridge, gent., the patentee, in 1609, of Ballyhaise, co. Cavan, who m. Anne, dau. and heir of Henry Brockhill of Allington, in Thurnham. and was succeeded by his son, Brockhill Taylor of Ballyhaise (M.P. for Cavan Borough, 1634, till his death, 10 July, 1636), who left 2 daus., his coheirs, Eliza, bom 1625, and Mary, born 1632. The latter m., 1654, Capt. Thos. Newburgh, and carried Ballyhaise into his family, now extinct in the male line, though there are various known representatives of female lines. I inserted some notes on the Taylors and Newburghs in my ' Henry's Upper Lough Erne in 1739,' 1892.

CHABLES S. KING, Bt.

VABIANTS IN THE TEXT OF '!VENIL- WOBTH' (11 S. vi. 488). I have not at the moment access to the " original " editions, but in the first collected edition of the Waverley Xoveh, edited by the author, 1829-32, in forty-eight volumes, the passage in question (vol. xxii. p. 251) stands thus :

' ' And is this all that are of you, my mates., said Tressilian, ' that are about my lord in his utmost straits ? ' '

As Sir Walter Scott in his Advertisement to the edition here referred to tells of the errors of the press, and other emendations made by him in the text, it is held to be the correct one. WM. E. BBOWNING.

In the first edition of * Kenilworth,' 1821 (which is before me), the passage cited from the chapter now numbered xiv. runs, " ' And is this all that are of you ? ' But in this first edition a fresh numbering of the chapters begins with each of the three volumes, and the chapter in question is chap. ii. of vol. ii. BEBNABD RIOE.

[MRS. HUSBAND and MR. WM. JAOGARD also thanked for replies.]