Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 5.djvu/155

 12 s. v. JUNE, i9i9.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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of the sale. The title of the sale catalogue only claims this to be " of part of the Elegant Household Furniture," &c. ; and the only building material offered, and which as a matter of fact was bought in, consisted of the fireplace.?, " Chimney Pieces and Slabs ; Plate-Glass Sashes ; Seasoned right Dutch -Oak Floors ; Portland Stairs and Paving." ALECK ABRAHAMS.

DOORKNOCKER: "BAT." I have seen on several doors here in Yorkshire a knocker fashioned to represent a bat, sometimes with outstretched wings.

The whole point of the design is that a bat is a dialectal word used here in the North with the sense of a knock. " Shoo gav him a bat on his lug-hoil," i.e., she .boxed his ear. J. H. .R.

Bradford.

MILLS 'AT BRANSFORD, WORCESTERSHIRE' It may be noted that the mills on the Hiver Teme at Bransford, erected about the year 1850, which mark the site of the ancient mills, have been recently pulled down ; and the water rights have been acquired by the Worcester Corporation, so that these may become subservient to the flow of water required lower down at Powick for the Corporation electrical works. The mills have been derelict about twenty years.

In Domesday it is mentioned that there are two mills in Lege (Leigh), of which parish Bransford is part, one evidently being that succeeded by the mill near the church, and also that " Urso the sheriff has at Bradnesford, in Leigh, a mill worth twenty shillings : it is worth four pounds." The last - mentioned mill was the predecessor of the 'mills now in course of disappearance.

OBSERVER.

THE LAND OF PUNT. In Uganda the i natives appear to call the coast " Pwani " ('Mackay of Uganda,' 1890, p. 208). Has this word Pwani any connexion with the i Egyptian name of Punt, supposed to be the Phut of the Book of Genesis and the home of the Phoenicians ? The addition of the Egyptian terminal t at once makes it Pwanit, which is identical with Puanit, as Prof. Maspero read the Egyptian name (' The Dawn of Civilization,' p. 396). The late A. H. Keane (' Man,' 1899, p. 494, note) explains Punt as " Red Land." Whether it means " red land " or " coast," it would pression than the distinctive name of a particular country. Some light might be tthrown on this subiect by knowing how
 * appear rather to be a topographical ex-

the words " coast " and " red land " would be written in the ancient Sabsean and Ethiopic languages. It is by piecing together such fragments that we are able to build up the history of the far-distant past. The Waganda probably derived the word " Pwani " from the Arabs and their followers ; and the Arabs are the descendants of the Sabseans of old, the dwellers in South Arabia, the Arabia Felix of later Roman times, who were not distant kinsmen of the Phoenicians. FREDERICK A. EDWARDS. 34 Old Park Avenue, Nightingale Lane, S.W.

"FLUMMERY." I came across this word in North Wales, but could not get much information about it at the time, except that it was "something to eat." The ' N.E.D. ' says it is "a kind of food made by coagula- tion of wheat flour or oatmeal." After considerable search I have gleaned the following information, which is worth recording. The Welsh call it llymru, the English flummery. It is a vegetable^ mucil- age, and is made by adding as much water to finely ground oatmeal as it can well absorb, to which some sour butter-milk is added ; in three or four days' time more warm water is put in to make it thin enough to be strained through a hair sieve ; it is then boiled, after which it is ready for use. The slight fer- mentation which it undergoes gives it a pleasant acidity, which contrasts well with the sweelbness of the milk with which it is generally eaten. L ARCHIBALD SPARKE.

JENNER FAMILY. At 11 S. vi. 469 I drew attention to the obituary notice of " the widow of the celebrated Dr. Jenner " in Gent. Mag., vol. ciii. p. 284, which stated that she died at the residence of '' her son-in-law, Mr. Eccles, Plymouth."

Mr. W. Soltau Eccles wrote to me on. Jan. 31, 1914, that his

" paternal grandmother was a Miss Harriett Jenner, and she married Mr. John Eccles, and they at one time lived in Princes Square, Ply- mouth. Miss Harriett Jenner was a cousin of Dr. Edward Jenner of Gloucestershire."

Mr. George H. Eccles, of Sherwell House* Plymouth, also wrote about the same time ; he expressed the opinion that the obituary notice must be an error :

" The Mr. Eccles of Plymouth was probably my grandfather, who married a Miss Jenner, who survived him some years. I never heard through any of my relatives of a widow of Dr. Jenner dying at Plymouth, and have always understood my grandmother (nee Jenner) was only distantly related to Dr. Jenner. I think I should have been told if a widow of his, who must have been a second wife, had died under my grandfather's roof. I do not, however, know much about the