Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 6.djvu/241

 12 S. VI. MAY 8, 1920.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

197

I take the following from The Bath Chronicle during the latter years of the war :

"Among the soldiers who arrived in the last convoy was one rejoicing in the name of Gobobed, while other names were those of Wellbeloved, Mudd, and Braverman."

There was a well-known engraver of the name of Strongitharm in Mount Street, W., not so very many years ago.

S. D. K. T.

YALE AND HOBBS (12 S. vi. 130, 176).

Perhaps MB. EVANS may not know of the

following item which I have copied from

' The Annals of Our Time ' (p. 335), by

Joseph Irving, 1880 :

" The arbitrators appointed in the case award ito M>. Hobbs, an American locksmith, the two .hundred .guineas offered by Messrs. Bramah to any one who would pick the famous lock exhibited Jn their window in Piccadilly." Sept. 2, 1851.

THOS. WHITE.

Junior Reform Club, Liverpool.

I think the Yale lock was not invented 'before about 1866, and MB. EVANS is prob- ably thinking of the picking of a Bramah 'lock by Mr. A. C. Hobbs in July- Aug., 1851. A few' days before accomplishing this Mr. Hobbs had stioceeded in picking a Chubbs' .lock. Very full particulars of both opera- tions, with illustration.?, will be found in The Illustrated London News for July 26, Aug. 2 and 9, and Sept. 6, 1851.

T. W. TYBBELL. Vicarage Road, Sidmouth.

. SLANG TEBMS : OBIGIN OF (12 S. v. 294).

'There is no Spanish imagination in the

matter. The ' Letters from England,' by

Don Manuel Alvarez Espriella (not Estriella)

are by Robert Southey.

The 'N.E.D.,' vol. vii., p. 844, col. 2,

under "Please the pigs " (s.v. 'Pig '), after

defining the phrase as =" please the fates;

. if circumstances permit ; if all's well," says :

" Here some have suggested a corruption of

pyx or pixies, but without any historical

.evidence." The Gent. Mag. of 1755 (xxv.

115) is quoted: " An't please the pigs, in

which piqs is most assuredly a corruption of

pyx." This fanciful derivation seems to

.have arrided Southey, for the 'N.E.D.'

refers to a letter of his, written June 15, 1800,

from Lisbon, in which the same " corruption"

is affirmed. EDWABD BENSLY.

The reference by CANON E. R. NEVILL of

Dunedin, N.Z., to the book entitled ' Letters

from England,' and published as by Don

Alvarez de Espriella, raises in my mind the

question of the authority' on which the

authorship is attributed to R. Southey, as I perceive is the case in the catalogue of a local library published in 1877.

This note may expose my own ignorance, but I should be glad of the information.

W. S. B. H.

MASTEB GUNNEB (12 S. v. 153, 212, 277 ; vi. 22, 158). After the abundant evidence that has been produced of the ordinary em- ployment of these words, there may perhaps be room for an instance of their figurative use, a use for which the ' N.E.D.' supplies no reference. It is found in George Herbert : If thou be Master-gunner, spend not all That thou canst speak, at once ; but husband it, And give men turns of speech.

' The Temple,' ' The Church Porch,' stanza 51.

EDWARD BENSLY.

May I inquire if Murdock's ' Master Gunners of England ' deals at all with those in charge of minor forts, &c., for instance, Sandgate Castle, in which I am interested ? There was a master gunner at Folkestone who claimed to be the Earl of Huntingdon,

early in the last century.

Pv.

J. FYNMOBE.

GBAFTON, OXON (12 S. v. 320; vi. 51, 151). In the neighbouring parish of Cheri- ton, Kent, there is an elegant and pathetic memorial to Miss Laura Louisa Waine- wright, who died at Sandgate on the eve of her marriage to a French count, Sept. 30, 1828, aged 19.

There is also a record that,

" in a Vault in this Churchyard are interred the remains of Arnold Wainewright Esqr of Graft/on Manor in the County of Oxford, and of Devonshire place, London, who died the ninth day of December 1854 in the 87th year of his age. Whose admirable qualities of heart and mind and whose rich fund of intellectual acquirements from whose literary pur- suits that formed the great enjoyment of his life were best known to that afflicted widow who mourns his loss and erects this monument to his memory."

There are in Sandgate two houses known as Graf ton, east and west, built about 1822. Probably in one of these Miss Wainewright died. R. J. FYNMOBE.

Sandgate.

WILLIAM THOMAS ROGEBS, SCULPTOB AND CHUBCH BUILDEB (12 S. vi. 90). Mr. Rogers was never a Fellow of the Royal Society, at least he does not appear in the list of Fellows from 1663 to 1900 given in 'The Records of the Royal Society of London,' 2nd -edition, 1901, by M. Foster and A. W. Rucker ; neither does he appear in the obituary