Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 2.djvu/300

 NOTES AND QUERIES.

[12 S. 11. OCT. 7. 1916

giv.-n in honour of Elizabeth of Austria on March 29, 1571 (pp. 92, 102).

I fancy that few people who had once enjoyed frogs done after the French fashion would object to face the dish again. I liked it well enough at an hotel at Tours, the one place where, as far as I can remember, such regale has been offered to me. I fancy the legs, and part of the back, were the only joints served up ; but in a note supplied by Franklin (p. 92) Du Cham pier is cited as saying :

" J'ai vu un temps oh 1'on ne mangeait que les cuissea ; on mange maintenant tout le corps except^ la tte. On les sert f rites avec du persil."

A paragraph on our subject occurs in Hackwood's ' Good Cheer ' (p. 299) :

"As every one knows, the esculent or edible frog is considered quite a luxury in France, Ger- many, and Italy. Those brought to the markets of Paris are caught in the stagnant waters round Montmorency, in the Bois de Vincennes, the Bois de Boulogne, and elsewhere. The people who collect them separate the hind-quarters, and legs, from the body, carefully skin them, arrange them on skewers, as larks are in this country, and so bring them to market. The dealers sometimes prepare toads in the same way, and as it requires an expert eye to detect the difference, the Parisians are sometimes literally, if unconsciously, ' toad- eaters.' "

One day I saw a market-woman at Bologna bearing a pendent mass of some- thing that looked strange to my English eyes. I asked the nature of it, and was answered Rane. Part of the good of travel is to taste strange meats and to return with thankfulness to one's native fare.

ST. SWITHIN.

At the end of a letter from Charles Lamb to John Clare, dated " India House, 31st August, 1822," is the following sen- tence :

" Since I saw you I have been in France and have eaten frogs. The nicest little rabbity things you ever tasted. Do look about for them. Make Mrs. Clare pick off the hindquarters ; boil them plain with parsley and butter. The forequarters are not so good. She may let them hop off by themselves.!'

JOHN T. PAGE.

Long Itchington, Warwickshire.

I have enjoyed a dish of edible frogs (Rana eaculenta) on many occasions, both "in Paris and Budapest. It is an expensive dish, as only the hind legs are consumed. They are either stewed or fried in breadcrumbs. In the late John Hartley's ' Seets i' Paris ' (1878), describing in dialect the trip of two Yorkshiremen to the Paris Exhibition, Sammy well Grimes' s travelling companion, Billy, unwittingly ate a dish of stewed frogs,

and thought he " nivver had owt as grand " in his life and " wor meeaning " to have another plateful, when he was told what lie had eaten, whereupon his face " went as white as mi hat, an' he dropt his knife and fork" (p. 45). It is difficult to distinguish fried frog from the best Vienna backhciull (young chicken), so much extolled by tra- vellers. L. L. K.

IBBETSON, IBBERSON, IBBESON, OR IBBOT- SON (12 S. ii. 110, 198). My great-grand- mother, G. Ord Ibbetson, on my mother's side (? maiden name) married Mr. Ibbetson of St. Antony, co. Durham, a collector of books, I believe. She had two daughters, one married to Cuthbert Ellison of Hepburn Hall, co. Durham, and called Isabella, whose eldest daughter, Isabella, married Lord Vernon.

Mrs. G. Ord Ibbetson died in London in the early 1840's, aged 94. I have a good lithograph of her, several Bibles and other books, a diary of hers, a journal of a trip from Antwerp to Lausanne, 1817 ; also some Oriental china, much riveted owing to a cat locked up accidentally in a large cup- board. I saw her soon after the smash.

There is Jewish blood no doubt in the Ibbetson and Ellison family. I fancy they came to England, merchants from Holland, in the seventeenth or eighteenth century. FRANCIS N. LAMBTON.

THE HORSE-CHESTNUT (12 S. ii. 172, 237). For the popular name, the ' N.E.D.' compares the German Roszkastanie, and other words with the same prefix, and shows that in names of plants, fruits, &c., it often denotes " a large, strong, or coarse kind," and gives over thirty instances of this, besides a few in which the prefix appears to be used for other reasons. Gerarde and Matthiolus are cited as saying that the people of the East " do with the fruit thereof cure their horses of the cough, and such like diseases." But it has always seemed to me to come under the class of larger and coarser fruits, as compared with the Spanish or edible chestnut. The ' N.E.D.' is not specifically committed to any explanation in this case. The prefix seems sometimes to include a pejorative suggestion, as in " horse-godmother," a large, coarse- looking woman. J- T. F.

Winterton, Lines.

MR. F. A. RUSSELL'S explanation of the English name of this tree is scarcely to be reconciled with the fact that in 1557. long before the horse-chestnut was introduced into Britain, Dr. Quackleben wrote to the