Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 2.djvu/420

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s. n. NOV. is,

in February, 1861. He died in Dublin on Ma. 21, 1864, and was buried at Glasnevin.

Hayes was married in 1819, and was father of Michael Angelo Haves, a well-known painter of horses and military subjects. A portrait of Edwai-d Hayes a* a boy, executed by J. S. Alpenny or Halfpenny, io in the National Gallery of Ireland.

ARCHIBALD SPAEKE.

DUNS SCOTUS will find a biographical sketch and two portraits of this painter in vol. i. of W. G. Strickland's ' Dictionary of Irish Artists,' 8vo, London and Dublin, 1913. Castlemaine was evidently Richard, 3rd Baron (1791-1869) ; and Conyngham, Francis Nathaniel, 2nd Marquess (succeeded 1832, died 1876). They were both soldiers, and probably the other sitters were their fellow- officer? stationed in Dublin in the years mentioned. A reference to the Army Lists of those years would doubtless give some additional information.

EDITOR ' IRISH BOOK LOVER.'

AMERICANISMS (12 S. ii. 287, 334). At first I imagined that our good friend MR. JOHN LANE was in a jocular mood when he wrote under this head, but presently it occurred to me that he has spent the greater part of his life in London, where English of the most anaemic kind is current, and many genuine English words which are used in Devon and elsewhere are unknown. '' Rare,' ' as meaning underdone, is usual in Scotland and the North of England, and I have used it in other parts of the country without being misunderstood ; it may be that if food prices continue to go up, " rare " meat will have .another meaning, and we shall have to alter our dictionaries.

" Fall " I have always regarded as an Americanism. It is not even now in common use in most parts of the country for the season from which we are now suffering. It is not as good a word as " autumn," which has been in general use in our time and long before. Not only Keats, but Chaucer, Tindale, Shakespeare, Walton, Milton, Phillips, Southey, Tennyson, Morris, Donne, Lang- home, Fuller, Burns, Thomson, Hood, and Logan used it ; and doubtless many others. Since 1810, Liverpool has had an annual Autumn Exhibition of pictures, &c., a long record which almost establishes the some- what unusual employment of the word as an adjective.

" Jack " is good old English for " Knave," and in common use.

Hie cam-ing of a stick or umbrella in town streets is usual in London and

in Edinburgh in my youth we should have expected to catch cold as the result of going out without one. But in many parts of provincial England, including Liverpool, this reminiscence of the ancestral anthro- pomorphous ape is unusual here, as in Xew York, a man carrying a stick is at once recognizable as a stranger, or a person out of employment. Some of us used to carry purses, but not many, except perhaps watch- chain attachments for gold. The latter are now of necessity quite out of use, and in these war-times few of us have much need for purses.

In Glasgow doctors in a middling practice affect (or used to affect) consulting rooms in busy streets, usually in buildings intended for shops, where they attended at fixed hours. These were, I believe, styled offices, but I have never heard the word applied to a " surgery " or consulting room attached to a doctor's residence.

E. RlMBAULT DlBDIN. 64 Huskisson Street, Liverpool.

" Rear," signifying " underdone," is, or till lately was, commonly to be heard in North Lincolnshire. " Fall," meaning " autumn," was constantly used by elderly villagers thirty-five years ago. Though I have not heard either of the words lately, it is probable that they are still generally current among farm-people. The rapid decay of dialect is not so noticeable on out- lying farms as it is in large villages and little market town*;. Many words erroneously considered as mere Americanisms are still current in the rural districts of the British Islands.

I may add that " fall " occurs in a Lincoln- shire " print-book " :

" Th' esh-tree 'at grew i' th' hoss-cloase blew up i' th' wind last fall."' Tales and Rhymes in the Lindsey Folk-Speech,' by Mabel Peacock, 1886.

Surely, the word is also used occasionally in ordinary English literature. R. E.

In mid-nineteenth-century days I used frequently to hear the word "cricket" in Northamptonshire. It, however, referred to a low, four-legged stool, which is the meaning given in Miss Baker's 'Northamp- tonshire Glossary ' and also in Wright's ' Provincial Dictionary.'

The word " Jack"=the knave of cards, has been familiar to me all my life, both in Northamptonshire and Warwickshire. It also duly appears in Baker and Wright.

JOHN T. PAGE.

Long Itchington, Warwickshire