Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 8.djvu/42

 36

NOTES AND QUERIES. ; [n s. VIL JAN. 11, 1913.

married a Mr. Comyns. or Cummins, a partner of the Mr. Hide mentioned above. Mary Antrobus and her brother-in-law Mr. Cummins, it will be remembered, were mourners at the poet's funeral.

H. P. STOKES. Cambridge.

The following copy of the inscription on a stone slab in the chancel of St. Mary's, Leigh, Kent, may interest COL. PRIDEAUX : Arms : Lozengy, on a pale three stars, and impaling other arms not decipherable. [These arms are carved on the stone.]

Heere lyeth buried

the body of Mary Antrobus

late Wife of Richard Antrobus

Second son of Robert

Antrobus, late Minister of

this parish (who lyeth buried neere hereunto)

The saide Mary was eldest Daughter of Thomas Sebaid [?]

late of Salmonds in this

County, Esq., Dec' 1. She dyed

the 8 th of Septemb 1 ' 1679

having bee" marryed but

a yeare and 11 dayes.

According to the ' Records of Rochester' (Fielding), Robert Antrobus was Vicar of Leigh from 1646 to 1653.

R. VAUGHAN GOWER.

WRECK or THE ROYAL GEORGE (US vi. 110, 176, 374, 436, 496). The poet's account of this disaster certainly states, as mentioned at the last reference by R. B., that

A land-breeze shook the shrouds ; but I have always taken this to be a poetical way of saying that there was not much wind at the time. The real cause of the sinkin" of the vessel is given in the previous stanza*:

Eight hundred of the brave,

Whose courage well was tried,

Had made the vessel heel

And laid her on her side.

The standard authority on the history of our Navy Clowes's 'Royal Navy 'has a very brief reference to the catastrophe where (at vol. iii. p. 540) it speaks of " ^nr celebr ated incident of the Royal George, a 100-gun ship, while being heeled for under- water repairs, oversetting and sinking at her eiticiiors.

Where can one find an account of the inquiry^ at which it appeared (according to K. B.) that the ship was old and decayed and that part of the bottom fell out " ?

The best account of the sinking of the Royal George known to me is that in Alarryat s Poor Jack,' where it is given in the form of a yarn told by a Greenwich pensioner. No doubt Marryat had heard the story himself from some seaman, though

he seems to have drawn upon the book referred to at 11 S. vi. 374, as the passage quoted there, about the men at the portholes looking as if they were trying to get out of the top of a chimney, is reproduced nearly word for word. According to the account in ' Poor Jack,' the ship was careened over to port in order to repair the water-cock, which was about 3 ft. below the water-line. The whole account is most graphic and interesting. T. F. D.

"HOGMANAY" (11 S. vi. 506). Is there any connexion between this word and Old Norse hokunott, explained by Eirikr Magnus- son (" Saga Library," vol. vi. p. 349) as " Midwinter night [which], corresponds to Hog- many night, the last day of the year. Another form is hoggunott, which comes nearer to the English form. But as midwinter night in Norway was the 9th of January, it is possible that the resemblance between the Engl. and Icel. term is accidental, yet hfiku, hoggu defies etymological explanation, and has all the appearance of a loan-word."

King Hakon the Good of Norway, or " Athelstan's fosterling" (934-61), who had been brought up as a Christian in England, " made a law that Yule should be holden the same time as Christian men hold it ... .But afore- time was Yule holden on [Hokunott], that is to say, midwinter night, and Yule was holden for three nights." "Saga Library," vol. iii. p. 164.

This name must be much older than the tenth century in Norway, and so could not be borrowed from England.

ALFRED W. JOHNSTON.

29, Ashburnham Mansions. Chelsea.

CURIOUS ENTRY IN REGISTER: NICK- NAMES (11 S. vi. 429, 513). The burial of people described by their nicknames is so common in Lancashire that in many regis- ters printed by the Parish Register Society a list of them forms a separate entry in the Index of Names.

In the Registers for Blackburn between 1600 and 1660 there are forty -nine such entries ; and at Ribchester, a small parish,, between 1598 and 1695 thirteen nicknames ap- pear. Amongst them are some very curious names, such as Thinke on, Numbd hard r Chrunchon, Dicked, Baculus, Thick Skin, My Lordes, Guyley, Frapps.

HENRY FISHWICK.

"TROW" (11 S. vi. 510). MR. PENRY LEWIS asks if a " trow '' is a " ketch." Not necessarily, though existing trows are prob- ably ketches in a majority of cases. The word " trow : ' denotes a flat-bottomed type of vessel, used originally for river navigation.,