Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 2.djvu/345

 12 -s. ii. OCT. 21, i9i6.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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was reported to have been introduced into Scotland from Flanders or Holland. Through- out Ayrshire and Renfrewshire the woollen- weaving industry is the principal one in all the towns and villages.

As the plaids were worn by all the Scottish clans, it is probable that they were woven in the cottages of the various districts throughout Scotland. Women's dress was also woven there, as well as blankets and bed-linen, &c.

ARCHIBALD J. DUNN.

ST. PETER AS THE GATEKEEPER OF HEAVEN (12 S. ii. 90, 177, 217, 273). Froude's remarks on ' Julius Exclusus,' quoted at the last reference, treat the authorship of the dialogue as uncertain. But see More's letter to Erasmus of Dec. 15, 1516 ; F. M. Nichols, ' The Epistles of Erasmus,' vol. ii. 446 sqq. ; and P. S. Allen's ' Erasmi Epistola?,' torn. ii. pp. 502 sqq. :

" From this direct statement [says Mr. Allen] of the existence of a copy written by Erasmus's own hand, there can be no doubt that he was the author of it ; although by many equivocal utterances none of which is a direct denial he attempted to conceal the fact."

EDWARD BENSLY.

The following story was told me by a Yorkshireman some thirty years since. St. Peter, at the gate of heaven, was sum- moned to open the door. Firmly grasping his keys, he asked the new-comer : " Where have you come from ? " Pudsey." St. Peter exclaims : " There is no such place" ; but on inspecting his map, and finding the village, grumbles; "Well, no one has ever come here from Pudsey before."

SUSANNA CORNER.

SIR JOHN MAYNARD, 1592-1658 (12 S. ii. 172, 238, 295). Peccavi ! I much regret having stupidly confused the judge with the earlier courtier and royalist.

A. R. BAYLEY.

BLUEBEARD (12 S. ii. 190). To my regret, I cannot tell your correspondent who it was that orientalized Bluebeard ; but I think it will interest her to hear that in an edition of Permult's ' Contes de Fees ' published at Lyons in 1865 the illustrator used Occidenta.1 costumes of the seventeenth or eighteenth century. Folk-lorists have a tendency to identify Bluebeard with Gilles de Rais, a monster of iniquity, who was born on the confines of Bretagne and Anjou about 1404, and who made charnel-houses of his castles of Machecoul and Tiffauges. For my part " I hae ma doots " concerning this identification.

Mr. Nelson Lee or some other pantomime- writer may have bestowed the name of ' Fatima " on the inquisitive wife.

ST. SWITHIN.

SNOB AND GHOST (12 S. ii. 109, 235). I have never known a tailor to be called a snob in regard to his trade ; but shoemakers,, in particular those who cobbled, were- " snobs," and in their case it was a trade name. The goose of a tailor, otherwise a "prick-a-louse," was known as a "gowse," often pronounced " gowst." I knew one of the fraternity who travelled around twice a year in Derbyshire to t mend and make clothes at out-of-the-way houses. He would sit on a kitchen dresser and while away part of his time by singing a ditty about himself,, some lines of which ran :

Of his sleeve-board he made a mare And rode her off to Winkum Pair

Cast threads away.

And so the proud prick-a-louse went prancing away.

THOS. RATCLIFFE. Worksop.

'COURT" IN FRENCH PLACE-NAMES- (12 S. ii. 249. 318). Two consonants have- been transposed in my reply. The word for "farm" in the Greek of Matt. xxii. 5- is d-ypov, not dpybv.

HERBERT MAXWELL.

Monreith.

on

Thf, Academ Roial of King James 7. By Ethel M^ Portal. From the Proceedings of the British- Academy, Vol. VII. (Humphrey Milford, ls.6rf. net.)

THEKK is some entertainment, if nothing else, to be gained by trying to imagine how the seventeenth century would have gone in England if politics and' the Civil War had not diverted to themselves a dis- proportionate share of the nation's energies. Suppose James I. not sixty when he died had lasted another fifteen years, we should at any rate have had a British Academy, known as the Academ Roial. This would have been an imposing institu- tion " for the study and encouragement of history, of literature, and of heroick doctrine." and it will depend on each individual student's rpading of the complex and rather incalculable English intellectual character whether he considers that it would or would not have made much difference to English letters and learning. Perhaps it would have kept alive so accurate and eager an interest in mediaeval things that the revival of attention to them, of which Scott was the main instrument, would have been unnecessary.

Miss Portal gives us here a pleasant and scholarly account of the attempt which was frustrated by the death of James and the indifference of his successor. It was made by the members oi the first Society of Antiquaries in Elizabeth's dav, who had failed to obtain a charter from her. There-