Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 9.djvu/423

 us. ix. MAY 23. 19H.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

417

to drainage systems might, perhaps, be found in it. Man's work on Pompeii might also give some information.

A. MORLEY DAVIES. Arngrove, Pinner.

" BLOOD-BOLTEBED," ' MACBETH,' IV. i. 123 (11 S. ix. 369). Malone (' Shakespeare,' xi. 206) says that bolter ed is a provincial term of Warwickshire. He supports the statement thus :

" When a horse, sheep, or other animal, per- spires much, and any of the hair or wool becomes matted in tufts with grime and sweat, he is said to be ' boltered ' ; and whenever the blood issues out and coagulates, forming the locks into hard clotted bunches, the beast is said to be ' blood- boltered.' "

Steevens illustrates the passage from Hol- land, who was a Coventry man. Translat- ing Pliny, xii. 17, with reference to a goat's beard, Holland writes :

" Now by reason of dust getting among, it bnltereth and cluttereth into knobs and bals."

See also baiter and blood-boltered in Halli- well's ' Archaic Dictionary.'

THOMAS BAYNE.

The world bolter, according to the * E.D.D.,' is used in Warwickshire to indicate a forma- tion into lumps, to cohere, to coagulate :

" Dirt collected on the hairs of a horse's leg. and forming into hard masses, is said to bolter." Halliwell-Phillipps in his notes to the fourth act of ' Macbeth ' gives

" Blood-boltered, i.e., matted with blood. It means more than smeared, and refers to t ie^ clotted, matted blood of Banquo, who had ' twenty trenched gashes on his head.' " According to Sharp's MS. Warwickshire Glossary, snow is said to baiter together ; and Batchelor in his ' Orthoepical Analysis,' 1809, p. 126, says :

" Hasty pudding is said to be boltered when much of the flower [sic] remains in lumps." Warburton in his edition of Shakespeare gives

" Blood-boltered : stained with blood ; from a bolter or sieve, whose blood issues out at many wounds, as flour passes through the holes of a sieve." From Johnson s ' Dictionary ' we get

" Blood-bollered, or sprinkled with blood, as ' if with meal from a boulter."

ARCHIBALD SPARKE, F.R.S.L.

Bolter, moaning to cohere, coagulate, to form into lumps, and boltered, coagulated, formed into lumps, are both given as War- wickshire words on p. 333, vol. i., of the ' E.D.D.' ; and the expression in ' Macbeth,' IV. i. 123, is similarly explained by Messrs.

Foster and Onions (see ante, p. 376). At- vith Warwickshire farmers and labourers 'or thirty-five years, I have never myself heard them use either word. A. C. C.
 * hough I have been in almost daily contact

The word bolter =io cohere, to coagulate, s still in common use both in Warwickshire and Northamptonshire. Gruel is said to be " boltered " if the flour is not well stirred in. [ take the following from Miss Baker's ' Northamptonshire Glossary,' s.v. * Bolter ' :

" The Shakesperian commentators on this word furnish a striking instance of the superiority of local over bibliographical knowledge in the elucidation of our early poets. \Varburton, Johnson, and others consider it to signify stained or sprinkled with blood, as from a bolter or sieve ; and Nares, by copying them without comment, may be presumed to have adopted their error. Our provincialism gives the clear and simple meaning, and no epithet could be more appro- priate and expressive than ' the blood-boltered Banquo.' The term is still current in Warwick- shire, and is one of many instances in which the bard appropriated familiar localisms with singular ^icity."

JOHN T. PAGE.

Long Itchington, Warwickshire.

Mrs. Wright in her delightful book ' Rustic Speech and Folk-Lore ' mentions blood-boltered as part of

" the convincing mass of evidence which proves Shakespeare's intimate acquaintance with the Warwickshire dialect." P. 54.

ERNEST B. SAVAGE. S. Thomas', Douglas.

[MR. A. R. BAYLEY, J. F., ST. SWITHIN, and MR. TOM JONES also thanked for replies.]

SIR JOHN STEUART, BART. (US. ix. 26). Since sending this query I have obtained from London an abstract of Steuart's will (P.G.C., Lynch 172). This, dated "Isling- ton, 15 July, 1753," was proved 9 April, 1760. In it the testator is called " Sir John Stuart, of Kettleston, Scotland, Bart." He bequeaths one shilling to

" Mary Randall, formerly Mary Viscount .... now wife to one M r Randall .... for all claims she may have on my estate " ;

and

" to the boy John Viscount Stuart or by what- ever other name he is or may be called said to be begotten by me on the body of the said Mary and who passes for rny son,"

he gives

" one shilling and no more in full for any share

he may claim to my estate."

The " rest and residue " of his estate is to go

" to my wife Mary Stuart, formerly Mary Lee, of Tower Hill, widow, and to my three daughters by her, Ann, Elizabeth & Henrietta."