Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 2.djvu/532

 526

NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s. n. DEC. so, wie.

Colonel Descury's Regiment of Foot (continued).

John Kendall (4) Charles Bailie (5) Sir George Suttie (6) Peter Desbrisay

d Lieutenants (8)

William Douglass James Weyms Andrew Agnew John Macdowall Henry Descury (7)

Dates of their present commissions. 31 Mar. 1733. Sept. 1736. 26 Aug. 1737. 14 ditto 1738. ditto.

1 June 1739.

2 ditto.

3 Feb. 1739-40.

4 ditto.

Dates of their first commissions.

The following were appointed Ensigns on the dates shown against their names : John Lindsay, Feb. 27, 1741 ; John M^lin, March 7, 1741 ; Thomas Morgan, April 25, 1741.

(4) Lieutenant, Feb. 25, 1741.

(5) Second Lieutenant, Feb. 26, 1741. The name is also spelled " Boyley."

(6) Third Bart. Lieutenant, April 25, 1741. Died Nov. 25, 1783.

(7) The only officer still serving in the regiment in 1755, then being the junior Captain, Nov. 27, 1752.

(8) Probably should be " Ensign." J. H. LESLIE, Major, B.A. (Retired List).

(To be continued.)

GRAY : A BOOK OF SQTTIBS. (See ante, p. 285.) May I, not to multiply headings and references, add the subjoined, which -concerns the dispersion of Gray's books and MSS., to the above reference ? In ' N. & Q.,' 1 S. i. 221, W. L. M. wrote :

" At the sale of [Mason's collection of Gray's books and MSS. in December, 1845, I purchased Gray's copy of Dodsley's collection (2nd edition, 1758), with corrections, names of authors, &c., in his own hand."

Mr. Gosse does not seem to have been aware of this sale, and refers only to some " unpublished letters and facetious poems, many of which were sold at Sotheby & Wilkin- son's, on the 4th of August, 1854"; neither does Mr. Tovey at least in his volume referred to in my previous note. One wonders what was the nature of these MSS., and where they and the books now lie. Let me remind levers of Gray that De- cember 26 was the bicentenary of his birth, and that, in the plaintive words of Mr. Gosse in 1882,

" No monument of any kind perpetuates the memory of Gray in the university town where he resided so long, and of which he is one of the most

illustrious ornaments Not a medallion, not a

tablet within Pembroke College bears witness to

any respect for the memory of Gray If

strangers did not periodically inquire for his room, it is probable that the name of Gray would be as completely forgotten at Pembroke as at Peterhouse, where also no monument of any kind preserves the record of his presence."

Two centuries since Gray's birth and nearly (1921) one and a half more since his death, and yet nothing to commemorate him in Cambridge, where he resided for twenty-nine years ! J. B. McGovERN.

St. Stephen's Rectory, C.-on-M., Manchester.

" WIPERS " : YPRES. The superior person has fairly often of late made game of our soldiers' pronunciation of Ypres as Wipers, but, at the same time, he seems generally unaware that this is by no means a product of the present war. It almost appears a pity to deny Tommy's originality in this matter, but, as a matter of fact, " Wipers " dates some centuries back to the time when Ypres was one of the great commercial cities of Europe and did a large and nourishing trade with this country.

Our close connexion with this famous city not only led to its name being pronounced in the manner which our soldiers have made familiar to us, but it also became actually raised to the dignity of a proper name in Scotland. The surname " Wyper " cannot, of course, claim to be in any way a common one, but it certainly has existed in Scotland for many generations now. In the Glasgow Post Office Directory for 1916-17 there are eleven Wypers, and the name occurs three times in the Edinburgh and Leith Post Office Directory. Slater's Directory for Scotland, 1915, mentions four Wypers: two from Glasgow and two from Motherwell.

It is a curious fact that this surname seems practically non-existent in England, for it does not appear in any of the direc- tories which the present writer has consulted, and he has looked through those of nearly all the leading cities. Its rarity as a sur- name is likewise proved by the fact that it has escaped the notice of all the compilers of books dealing with surnames. The pre- sent writer has examined quite a formidable array of such works, including Smith's ' Cyclopaedia of Names,' Long's ' Personal