Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 2.djvu/145

 12 s. ii. AUG. 12, 1916.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

PEAS POTTAGE (12 S. ii. 90). It was during the Peninsular War that here French prisoners were refreshed on the road with peas pudding, and hence this name.

HAKOLD MALET, Col.

Racketts, Hythe, Southampton.

LAKGEST BAG OF GAME FOB A DAY'S SHOOTING (12 S. i. 510 ; ii. 55). In those days hares and other ground game were rounded up with nets, and slaughtered. Tuer means to slaughter. W. H. M. GRIMSHAW.

Junior Carlton Club, Pall Mall, S.W.

0n

London Street Games. By Norman Douglas. (London, St. Catherine Press, 5s. net.)

THE author, in the dedication, speaks of his book as " this breathless Catalogue " and thus characterizes it very aptly. It is a list of names of games, poured out with rapid interspersions of description, as if in the monologue of a Cockney wiseacre who divides his subject roughly into boys' games, girls' games, and small children's games, and, in the second division, gives a great number of " chants " as they are used to-day some blatantly of modern invention, others adaptations of older incantations. Bules for playing some of the games are given as the players give them, and a specimen of one of these, with its immediate setting, may indicate, as a description could not, the general character of the book :

" Then there's PROG IN FIELD and FROG IN

THE MIDDLE and FROG IN THE WATER and INCH

IT UP and SHRIMPS (where you have to go over a boy's back with your cap doubled up on your head many duty-games have to be played with caps) and LOBSTER (also called EGGS AND BACON, where you have to throw down your cap while going over his head and pick it up with your teeth without rolling off his back) and EGG IN A DUCK'S BELLY (holding the cap between your legs) and

CAT O' NINE TALES and SPUR THE DONK and OVER

THE MOON and FOOT IT (where you jump sideways)

and CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE and CAT ON

HOT BRICKS (about as good as any) and POSTMAN

and HOPPING ALL THE WAY TO CHURCH and

MUSSENTOUCHET ' In mussentouchet one boy flies over back and then he puts the boys hats anywhere he likes [on their bodies] and tells them to run to certain spot and they must not touch their hats the one whose hat falls off is down.' "

So the entire book goes on, with the exception of a few groups of lines (they can hardly be called sentences) in which Mr. Douglas introduces such reflections into the talk of his supposed informer as plainly show that he is himself fully aware of the antiquarian or " folk-lore " interest of the games, names, and rimes. (By the way, what is the adjective corresponding to " folk- lore " ? Has one been invented ?) He has not chosen to tell us how or from whom or in what several parts he collected this lively learn- ing, and has left it to the reader to notice par- ticular matters of interest, such as the version

of " Madame, will you walk," or the small chil- dren's games which remain old - fashioned, or the discourse on the waning popularity of marbles and the reason for it. We like the book the better for its odd nianner ; indeed, we like)the book very much. It is spirited and quite funny full of that crude young wit of the street-arab, which, insouciant, often rather cruel, often rotesquely coarse, is oddly exempt from real vulgarity a mischief which, perhaps, does not infect a person's- wit till he is too old for street games.

The Celtic Christianity of Cornwall. By Thomas

Taylor, F.S.A. (Longmans & Co., 3s. Qd. net.) THE Celtic Christianity of Cornwall has become almost a by- word by reason of the multiplicity and obscurity of the saints for which it is famous

If Mr. Taylor has not always succeeded in< bringing light into its darkness, he has at least always taken care to ground himself upon- excellent authorities, such as the archaeological works of MM. Gougaud and Dechelette, ancT he has obtained valuable help from two masters of the Cornish tongue in Prof. Loth and Mr^ H. Jenner. But the true answer to very many of the difficulties involved in this ancient faith will still be that a certain percentage of these- mysterious saints were survivals of old local" divinities of pagan origin. The author admits that the cult of the sun was rife in Cornwall a thousand" years ago, and that the Church history of the county before the Norman conquest was chiefly matter of legendary lore. Giving his own experience- as one who has spent a quarter of a century as a teacher among the people, he notes that a marked change has passed over the face of Cornish Noncon- formity, which once was so pronounced that many of the old doctrines are being recast, and that the drift is towards a moderate rationalism. But the impress of the once prevalent monastic! sm can everywhere be distinctly traced. The picture drawn of the mediaeval Hermit who was the pioneer of the monastery is by no means that of a mere- spiritual solitary, as generally imagined, but rather that of an active philanthropist who ministered as a friend to all, and enjoyed wide influence (p. 123). He was, in fact, a practical philanthropist who devoted his life to the service of his fellow-men.

Selections from the Poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Edited by A. Hamilton Thompson. (Cambridge University Press, 2s. net.) THERE cannot often be two opinions, when a some- what restricted selection of Coleridge's poems- is compiling, as to what to include and what to omit, and we cannot flatter ourselves that we might have improved this selection, except,, perhaps, by effectually protesting against the dismemberment of ' Christabel.' This, on several, counts, appears to jus a great mistake, and if it seemed forced upon Mr. Thompson by want of space, we would have recommended him to shorten his Introduction and curtail the lavish quotations in his notes, as well as several remarks- which appear twice over, in order to get the whole poem in.

One of the most useful features in the volume is the conspectus of principal dates in the life of Coleridge a humble bit of work, perhaps, but done with an unusual nicety and fullness of detail. The Introduction is devoted largely to a study of the relation of Coleridge's poetry to Nature on