Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 1.djvu/199

Rh was of massive oak, not of usual coffin design, but more the shape of a coffer or large oblong box. The lid was on hinges, and fastened with three locks, one of which was secured with a bolt in it. The handle was massive and of iron, and fixed with brass-headed nails. The bones were gathered up and buried in the soil, and the locks and handles preserved. One large double tooth was saved by way of curiosity, and is now safely deposited in the church tower. It measures five-eighths of an inch long and seven-eighths of an inch in circumference."

The Andertons were Roman Catholics, and, as lessees of the rectory estates, had the right of burial intra magnam capellam, and the vault was situated under the Communion table in the old church. It is curious to note that when the vault was discovered and laid bare the Anderton family expressed a desire to mark the spot by placing a marble stone on it, but permission was refused by the vicar and churchwardens.

In reference to the side issue raised on this gruesome subject, as to a piece of leaden pipe being found inserted in a coffin, I have heard of a case, when the body was in an advanced state of decomposition and immediate burial was impossible, of a hole being made in the metal coffin and a length of pipe inserted and carried out of a window to carry off the gas generated, and so prevent the coffin being burst open. This may be the explanation.

(12 S. i. 91).—Is not "coffin" for "coffer," an architectural term, meaning an oblong panel of ornamental character ('N.E.D.')? The French word coffre is used by gardeners in a somewhat similar sense (Littré). But this is a mere suggestion; and it is quite possible that the so-called "coffins" may have been a most interesting feature belonging to a "park in mourning." M. de Brunei, according to Prudhomme (a French author of about 1792), had such a park for his mother's death, and "he had barrels of ink sent from Paris to put his jets d'eau in mourning also " (quoted by R. Southey in his 'Common-Place Books,' iii. 779).

(12 S. i. 126).—Some of the Cornish family of Gennys or Gennis, which was resident in the neighbourhood of Launceston from early in the fourteenth century, were tenants on the lands there of Pierce Edgcumbe of Mount Edgcumbe. Pierce Edgcumbe had a daughter Margaret, who married Sir Edward Denny, knight banneret, grantee of Tralee Castle and the surrounding lands, and died in 1648. The Dennys "planted" on their Irish estate various tenants of "British race and blood," most of whom came from their own and their relatives' estates in England. Amongst these tenants we find, in 1677, John Gennis of Tralee, who was probably one of the settlers brought over to take the place of those exterminated in the rebellion. It is highly probable that he was a Gennis from Launceston. The names John and William, most common in the Tralee family, are also most common, with the exception of Nicholas, in the Cornish family. See memoir and pedigree of Gennis or Ginnis of Tralee, by the present writer, in J. King's 'History of Kerry,' pt. iii. p. 261.

(12 S. i. 29, 79, 117).—Your correspondent mentions that "in Herts the impounder went by the name of the pinner." I was once shooting in Northamptonshire, near Kingscliffe, and came, with my host, on to a pound at the edge of the so-called "forest." To my casual remark he replied: "Oh, that's the old pin-fold, where they [I think he said] used to impound stray beasts."

The pound at Amersham, Bucks, still remains. It is situated on the east side of the town, on the north side of the main road leading to Chalfont St. Giles, and almost, opposite the turn leading to Coleshill and Beaconsfield.

(12 S. i. 67, 130).—When writing the second line,

Scaliger was most likely recollecting the following words from a comedy of Antiphanes of Rhodes:—

They are to be found in Athenæus, i. 22, and some lines of the same comedian describing the game at ball called , which occur in the same book of the 'Deipnosophists,' 15 , are quoted by Scaliger in his 'Poetice,' I. cap. xviii. That Scaliger's epigram, though quoted by its author, does not appear in his collected poems is explained by a remark in the dedication to Carolus Sevinus of the 'Novorum Epigrammatum liber unicus,' Paris, 1533, from which we learn that these