Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 5.djvu/171

 12 S. V. JUNE, 1919.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

165

Eldred Smith. Anthony Todd did not marry Eleanor Smith, nor John Robinson, M.P., Elizabeth Smith, as there stated ; and although uncle and nephew do sometimes marry two sisters, they do not die at an interval of sixty years."

Mr. Norcliffe was an. eminent genealogist and he. informed me that the Rev. H. J. Todd, who edited Dr. Johnson's Dictionary, was a relative of his. Therefore the Rev. H. J. Todd would be a descendant of Anthony Todd. G. D. LTJMB.

Leeds.

ANGUISH STREET: "SCORES" (12 S. v. 122). J. R. H. is clearly mistaken. Anguish Street has no such intriguing deri- vation as he imagines, but the commonplace one of having been named from the Anguish family of Somerleyton, who held the manor of Lowest oft with other manors adjacent in the hundred of Lothing, Suffolk, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The street is a merely modern compliment to a very prosaic memory.

" Scores " is still a general term in Norfolk and Suffolk for the deep narrow indentations in a hillside.

The gangways to the sea and to the marshes by the sides of the rivers Ore and Deben in Suffolk are often called " scores " hence the term as applied to the steep lanes running down to the seacoast at Lowestoft. I hazard the suggestion that the word is Norse in origin. H. W. B. A^AYMAN.

I do not suppose that the " wives and mithers ' maist despairin' " of Lowestoft have been accustomed to speak of " anguish," or believe that the street mentioned by your correspondent was called after their emotion. I suspect that the name imports narrow street. Elsewhere than at Lowes- toft a " score " denotes, as the ' E.D.D.' assures us, " a vertical indentation in a hill, a gangway down a cliff," and so forth : roughly speaking a score is a mark, a track, a dividing line or lines. ST. SWITHIN.

In St. Andrews, Fife, there is what though now a street was within my memory a roughish pathway ; but it still goes under the name of " The Scores." This runs parallel to, and within a few yards of, the cliffs which are washed by the North Sea. There appears to be little or no doubt that this name is a corruption of the old Scottish word " scaur " or " scar " vide Jamieson's ' Scottish Dictionary ' " a cliff " or "a bare place on the side of a steep hill, from which the sward has been washed down by rains."

What may further corroborate ' this ex- planation is that this road probably co- incides with the 50-feet Beach Terrace of geologists, while to the immediate south of the city are still well shown two of the higher sea Beach Terraces.

ALEX. THOMS.

7 Playfeir Terrace, St. Andrews, Fife.

A favourite promenade in Irvine was styled the " High Score." It extended from the north port or gate to the old harbour and shore. In 1646-7, when, during the plague, Glasgow University classes were temporarily removed to Irvine, the " High Score " was the favourite walk of the red- gowned students. A part of the same walk was called the " Low Score." The name is now known only to the very oldest in- habitants. Prof. Skeat gives the name as of Scandinavian origin, meaning " a gang- way down to the sea-shore." Another local name of like origin is " Halfway " haaf meaning the open sea.

R. M. HOGG.

Irvine.

' [CoL. FYMVIORE also thanked for reply.]

GEORGE BORROW (12 S. iv. 242, 311). To the authorities already indicated may profitably be added ' In the Footsteps of Borrow and Fit z Gerald,' by Morley Adams. The book was issued by Jarrold & Sons, but is (vexatiously enough) undated. I think I purchased it (1915) when recently published. The Borrow itinerary begins at p. 174 at Lowestoft with a view of Sorrow's Lodge, Oulton, near the site of the now demolished house in which ' The Bible in Spain,' ' Lavengro,' and * The Romany Rye ' were written. Excellent photographs of Borrow's House, Willow Lane, Norwich, and of his birthplace, Dumpling Green, East Dereham, as also of himself in youth and old age, further enhance the value of the volume.

J. B. McGovERN.

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

MISSEL THRUSH AND MISTLETOE SEEDS (12 S. v. 98, 132). The earliest extant form of the Latin proverb is that found in Ser- vius's commentary on Vergil, ' ^neid,' vi. 205 (the " Golden Bough " episode). After mentioning Pliny's account ('Nat. Hist.,' xvi. 247) of the sowing of the mistletoe by thrushes, the commentator adds " unde Plautus ' Ipsa eibi avis mortem creat ' (Plautus, ' Fragmenta,' 1. 168, in vol. ii. of Lindsay's Oxford text). Isidorus, Bishop of Seville, whose ' Origines ' was so popular