Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 1.djvu/323

 i2s. i. APRIL is, 1916.) NOTES AND QUERIES.

317

" PARTED BRASS-RAGS" (12 S. i. 268). It is a custom in the navy for two men in a gun's crew, or otherwise, to have a common supply of rags and other cleaning material ; if they quarrel sufficiently badly to dissolve partnership, they are said to " part brass- rags." Hence it becomes a colloquialism in the navy for a severe quarrel.

Perhaps, in return, MR. THORNE can give the origin of the expression which I have only heard in use in the navy " like the Dutchman's anchor, at home," used when you are asked for an article which you possess, but have not with you at the time.

A. G. KEALY, late Chaplain, Royal Navy.

" Parting brass-rags " is, or was a few years ago, a " lower-deck " expression used when two friends "fall out."

The term Craggy" is lower -deckese for ""chum" blue-jacket "pals" being wont to share their " cleaning-rags " and it forms the subject of a pathetic little ballad in ' A Gun-Room Ditty-Box,' by G. Stewart Bowles {1898), one of the verses running thus :

'E wos a-tryin' to clear the nets<

Layin' acrost the line.

Tryin' to worry 'em clear o' the screw,

Workin' with ''art' of 'is leg stuck through :

Lowered the nets an' lowered 'im, too,

Raggy, ah, raggyo' mine.

G. B.

[MR. HOOLE and LIEUT. JAGGARD thanked for replies. ]

BRITISH HERB : HERB TOBACCO (12 S. i. 48, 136). MR. PIERPOINT is correct in stating that rose-leaves are used in the preparation of tobacco for the Indian hookah. Jaffur Shurreef (' Qanoon-e-Islam,' trans. G. A. Herklots, Madras, 1863, Glossary, p. Ixxxii) gives a receipt which provides that to 4 sers (about 8 Ib.) of tobacco leaves should be added 4 sers preserved apples, raisins % a ser, conserve of roses a ser ; pound well and keep buried in an earthen pot for three months before use.

The term goracco or guraccu which MR. PIER- POINT mentions is derived from Sanskrit guda, Hindi gur, coarse sugar, and Telugu dku. a leaf ; the proper form in Canarese and Telugu begin guddku. W. CROOKE.

In a MS. book of recipes about 250 years old I find the following :

" An excellent Tobacco prescribed to the Lady Marchionness of Dorchester, and found by her of good virtue for great paynes in the head and when there is obstructions of the nerves. July 17th,

" Take Sage flowers, Rosemary flowers, Cow- slip flowers, and Bettony flowers, of each, a like quantity, dry them ; put to them some Verginia Tobacco, what quantity you please, mix yem altogether, put in some drops of Spirit of Amber what you think good, according to the proportion of ye rest."

The recipe does not say whether the mixture is to be taken as a decoction, or if you are to " put it in your pipe and smoke it,'* but I take it as to be smoked.

THOS. RATCLIEFE.

Southfield, Worksop.

THE NEWSPAPER PLACARD (11 S. xii. 483 ; 12 S. i. 13, 77, 129, 230). Two placards of evening newspapers stick in my memory : one when an Archbishop of Canterbury (Tait, I think) was dying :

Health of the Archbishop.

Latest Betting. The other :

Death of Mr. Bradlaugh.

Scorcher's Finals.

J. J. FREEMAN.

FOLK-LORE AT SEA : THE RABBIT IN BRITAIN (12 S. i. 66, 154, 235). It is a mistake to suppose that " the introduction [of the rabbit] into Scotland and Ireland dates from the nineteenth century." Without going into details it will be sufficient to say that there is documentary evidence of its presence in Scotland at least as early as the fifteenth century. It was mentioned in Aberdeen in 1424 ; in many of the isles of Orkney it was abundant before 1529 ; and about the same date it was plentiful on the margins of the Firth of Forth. In Ireland it was mentioned in the twelfth century, and at the end of the thirteenth century conies and their warrens appear to have been familiar. JAMES RITCHIE.

Edinburgh.

MR. HOWARD S. PEARSON'S useful note renews my regret that I did not mention, in my reply, the fact that on a robe removed from St. Cuthbert's body at one of its exhumations, there is round the bottom a decorative border of rabbits. Bishop Forrest Browne, who refers to this in his ' Recollec- tions,' dates the fabric 1085-1104, and says it was woven by Arabs in Sicily (see p. 406). I suppose this relic is still on show in the Cathedral Library at Durham. Dr. Browne numbers rabbits among various wild crea- tures associated with St. Cuthbert, actually or in legend.

Many local names which seem to refer to rabbits are really memorial of royalty. Coney Street, York pronounced Cunny by