Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 3.djvu/32

 NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s. in. JAN. is, 1917.

-As I get the ' N.E.D.' by the volume and not by the section, I do not know what examples of " vail " in this sense are given. But it is curious that practically the same sense can be got from the word in this case, whether you wrongly take it to represent " raise " or rightly take it to mean " lower." That, of course, is due to the fact that when you take off your hat to bow, you may raise it or lower it, according to the fashion of the day. If we had no other way of knowing how they bowed in the seventeenth century, yet we should know it by this use of the word " vailing." I think about forty years -ago a fashion of bowing came in which might certainly be called " vailing the hat," but which could hardly be called " gently vailing " it, for it was banged down to the knee with all the force possible, as if one was trying to fell an ox. I believe that this fashion has had its little day and is now gone out. S. H. A. H.

" To TOUCH FOB " The phrase " to

touch (a person) for" (money, &c.), in th e sense of " to get something out of a person,'' with implication of some craftiness, I had supposed to be quite a recent birth of slang ; but the ' N.E.D.' carries it back to 1760. .1 have recently noted a coincidence which invests the phrase with an antiquity not only respectable, but venerable. In colloquial Latin tangere (aliquem aliqua re) is used in the same way. See Plautus,' Epidicus,' 705, istam ob rem te tetigi triginta minis (I touched the anonymous line quoted in Cic. ' de Or.,' ii. 64, 257 ; tangere hominem vult bolo (for -a] good haul), Plaut., 'Poenulus,' 101; cere militari tetigero lenunculum, 1286 ; bene ego ilium tetigi, ' Pseudolus,' 1238.
 * you for, did you out of, 30 minae). Cf. also

Analogous is a phrase in ' The Vicar of

Wakefield,' cap. xx., which seems to have

been missed by the ' N.E.D.' The needy

scholar, describing his methods of raising

".the wind, says :

"The moment a nobleman returns from his

travels I strike for a subscription If

they let me have a dedication fee, I smite them once more for engraving their coat-of-arms at the top."

H. K. ST. J. S.

THOMAS DE QUINCE Y'S STAY IN EIFIONYDD, SOUTH CARNARVONSHIRE. De- tailing retrospective impressions of a visit to North Wales after a lapse of eighteen years, interesting particulars are given in the fascinating ' Autobiography' appertaining to rural Llanystumdwy. In recalling past ^memories De Quincey erroneously concluded

that the parish alluded to Eifionydd was in Merionethshire. It is in South Carnarvon- shire. He stated his having spent four months in Wales July to November, 1802. Light has incidentally been thrown on certain incidents by investigations directed towards substantiating recorded annals and supplying omissions in detail and personalia. The Rev. Henry Hughes, Brynkir, South Carnarvonshire, an authority on religious antecedents and facets of history bearing on this part of the principality, has been at especial pains to verify information as to the exact sojournable spot in a lengthy, luminous sketch on ' De Quincey, Wales, and Methodism,' appearing in Y Drysorfa (The Treasury), July, 1900.

After translating some memorabilia in extenso from undoubted attestations cir- cumstantially ascertained, he unhesitatingly affirmed the place to be Glanllynau a farmhouse not only tallying with De Quincey's description, but in near proximity to the Cambrian line of railway, a short distance from Afonwen Station, on the journey to Criccieth, and within the parish of Llanystumdwy. Following up the thread of discovery, the narrator declared the name of the farmer and host. Evan Owen was then 59, and his wife five years younger, both zealous Calvinistic Methodists. They had a family of seven children, four sons and three daughters. ANEURIN WILLIAMS.

CONTESTED LONDON LORD MAYORAL ELECTIONS. As, despite much prefatory muttering in the City, there was no con- test for the 1916-17 Lord Mayoralty, there can be recalled, without fear of its being drawn into a precedent, what is probably the earliest journalistic account of such an occurrence. In Dawks' s News- Letter of Oct. 1, 1698, it was recorded that

" On Thursday (according to Custom) com- menced the Election for a Lord Mayor of the City of London : The Candidates were Sir Francis Child, Sir Richard Levit, and Sir Peter Daniel, but upon view, the Majority, by Hands in the Hall, was declared for Sir Francis and Sir Richard; however a Poll was demanded by Sir Peter, which was readily granted, which begun at five a-clock the same Afternoon, which still continues, so that we cannot judge how it will go, the Common- Hall being to return Two out of the Three to the Court of Aldermen, out of which they are to make choice of One of them to be Lord Mayor of this City for the Year ensuing."

In his next issue Dawks was able to give the result, stating that the poll which had opened on the Thursday

" continued until Seven a-Clock on Saturday night, at which time the Books were shut up by joint consent, and the number of the Poll cast