Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 3.djvu/283

 i28.in.ApRir-i4.i9i7.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

277

"As crazy as loons." I have frequently heard this in the Midland Counties in the form " As crazy as a loon. '

47. " As drunk as a besom." The besom shares with the beetle (mallet) the distinction of being an emblem of insensibility. Hence the Lincolnshire phrase, " Thou gret besom- heead."

58. " As dull as ditch-water." This I Jiave usually heard as " As dead as ditch- water."

Here are two or three more similes, not, I think, in very common use :

As towzled as a mop.

A8 sweet as wort.

As short as pie-crust-

As fast as a church.

Like Bessie Harris's barn. Fairly common in some villages in South Notts, but what the barn was like I cannot say. No doubt the widely spread " Dick's hatband " simile was once as purely local as this.

C. C. B.

The following are, or were, in use on Tyneside :

" A'm as holler as a humlock," said by one to another when he is hungry (I am as hollow as a hemlock)

" As daft as a buzzom " (a variant of 47).

42. " As mad as a hatter," which my father used to say in the " fifties " when I was a child. R. B R.

42. " As mad as a hatter." This is said in ' Tom Brown's Schooldays ' of Martin, the naturalist. The book was published in 1856.

52. " As stupid as an owl." This is said by a friend of Miss Fotheringay after she had made her great match. The first number of ' Pendennis ' was published in 1848. " As drunk as an owl " is not un- common. The term oolu (owl) is one of the mildest terms of abuse in the Indian vocabulary for expressing stupidity.

W. A. HIRST.

41. " Mad as a weaver." The weaver is certainly the weaver-beetle, or whirligig, and the application obvious. Compare " Merry as a grig."

42. " Mad as a hatter." Brewer explains " hatter " as a corruption of " adder " (after in Saxon ; natter in German).

47. " As fond as a besom." " Besom " or " bissome " is common in Scotland, a lewd woman, or a noisy scolding le.

56. " Dull as dun in the mire " (Chaucer). -" Dun is a donkej^. The meaning is one reatly embarrassed. Shakespeare refers to ie game so called in ' Romeo and Juliet.'

F. G. B.

FOREIGN GRAVES OF BRITISH AUTHORS : EUSTACE CLARE GRENVILLE MURRAY (12 S. iii. 177). The inscription on the grave of this notorious diplomatist and journalist furnished by COL. NICHOLSON possesses something more than passing interest, for although he was always supposed to be a natural son of the 2nd Duke of Buckingham, the epitaph finally disposes of the question of his parentage. I feel convinced, however, that the date of his birth, which is given as 1810, cannot be accurate. Richard Plan- tagenet, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, was not born himself until 1797, and would, therefore, only have been 13 years old in 1810. Gren- ville Murray was, I believe, born in 1 824, and was appointed attache to the Embassy at Vienna in 1 852 or thereabouts ; and his subsequent meteoric career, his chastisement by the present Lord Lincolnshire in 1869 on the steps of the Conservative Club, the rough- and-tumble " scrap " which followed at the Bow Street Police Court to get possession of a certain tin deed box, and the subsequent flight of Murray to France, where he spent the remaining years of his life, are probably too fresh in the memory of the older readers of ' N. & Q.' to warrant repetition.

WlLLOUGHBY MAYCOCK.

MOSE SKINNER (12 S. ii. 251). American catalogues give " Mose Skinner " as the pseudonym of James E. Brown, but on what authority I do not know. Such booklets of his as I have seen were all pub- lished in Boston, and hence it may be assumed that he was a Bostonian. I do not find Mr. Brown's name in any bio- graphical dictionary, and can give no further information about him.

ALBERT MATTHEWS.

Boston. U.S.

CARLYLE AND NEWMAN (12 S. iii. 211). Possibly it was F. W. Newman of whom Carlyle is alleged to have said that he had the intellect of " a sick rabbit." Carlyle met F. W. Newman some time in 1860 at one of James Martineau's Monday evening salons, at what was then numbered 10 Gordon Street (it was long after that Martineau moved to 23 Gordon Square). I had the honour of meeting them there (though not together) in 1861. Martineau told me this : When Carlyle and F. W. Newman met under his roof, there was a passage of arms between them, in which Carlyle employed his " brow- beating " manner, Newman his " keen, insinuating logic." The next time Martineau met Carlyle, he asked his opinion of Newman.