Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 6.djvu/60

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 B. vi FEB., 1920.

' IN FLANDEBS' FIELDS ' (12 S. v. 317). The poem ' In Flanders' Fields,' by the late Lieut. -Col. John McCrae, appeared in The Book Monthly for July, 1919. The poem entitles a volume of verse by Lieut. -Col. McCrae, published by Hodder & Stoughton, 1919. ARCHIBALD SPABKE.

After the battle of Ypres, Lieut. -Col. John McCrae contributed this poem to Punch. It is also quoted in an obituary notice of this officer which appeared in The .Times of Feb. 4, 1918.

H. G. HARBISON.

GAVELACBE : PLACE-NAME (12 S. v. 295, 332). In " The Muses Threnodie ; or, Mournful Mournings on the Death of Mr. Gall. . . .by Mr. H. Adamson " ; Edinburgh, 1638, this line, relating to the town of Perth, occurs : Prom whence our Castle-gavil as yet is named.

A footnote in a "new Edition," published street.... is erroneously called the Castle- gavel, instead of the Castle-street." Nuttall's Standard Dictionary gives "a provincial word for ground, 1 ' as one meaning of the word 'gavel" W. B. H.
 * at Perth in 1774 (vol. i., 89) says: "The

BIBDS POISONING CAPTIVE YOUNG (12 S. v. 210, 273). A story somewhat of this sort is given in a Japanese encyclopaedia thus :

" A man found a Swallow nest with all the brood in it dead without any assignable cause. On strict examination, however, he discovered every fledge- ling had its mouth crammed with the beard of wheat and pine needles. In fact their real mother had been dead and they were stifled to death by their step-mother bird. Such is said to be a not unf refiuent occurence." Terashima, ' Wakan Sansai .Dzue,' 1713, torn. xlii.

A Chinese work, ' Suh-poh-wuh-chi ' (eleventh century) states that the sparrow seizes the swallow's nest by thrusting the mugwort therein, which is very obnoxious to the latter bird. The Japanese say perilla instead of mugwort.

KUMAGUSU MlNAKATA. Tanabe, Kii, Japan.

HOMELAND, ST. ALBANS (12 S. v. 294). See 10 S. vi. 432 ; vii. 58. Quite recently I received from the Rev. G. H. Johnson a copy of his pamphlet ' The Church of Waltham Holy Cross,' in which Prof. Skeat's deriva- tion of Romeland, from A.S. rum, empty, vacant, applied here to land where wagons coming to the town or abbey could have their horses unharnessed,' is noted on p. 29. I had previously pointed out <<=> the curator,

Miss Hawthorn, that the statement in the earlier guidebook that the name arose, as in the case of romescot (see 'N.E.D.'), or Peter's Pence, from the rent formerly being paid to the Pope, was open to question. She now writes me that the older inhabitants of Waltham. are wont to pronounce the name " roomland," thus confirming the Anglo- Saxon derivation.

Besides the one at St. Albans there is, it appears, also a Homeland at Norwich, and another in the city parish of St. Mary-at-Hill, at a spot where Abbot Walter de Gant of Waltham built himself a town house (Zoc. cit., p. 54).

Since writing the above I have come across the following further particulars in Harben's ' Dictionary of London ' (1918), s.v. ' Rome- lands ' :

"There seem to have been several of these open spaces in different parts of the City in early days, as, for instance in Tower Ward, in Billingsgate Ward, in Dowgate Ward, in Queenhithe Ward.

Wheatley says that in part of the larger monastic establishments, as at St. Albans, Bury St. Edmunds <fcc. there were large open spaces railed oft', u?ed at any rate at Waltham as a market place, and he suggests that they may have been generally so used in early times.

It is interesting to note that in a decree of Chan- cery 37 H. viii., confirming to the citizens the possession of the Romeland at Billingsgate, it is expressly suited that markets had been held time out of mind on both the Homelands at Billingsgate and at Queenhithe.

Dr. Sharpe says that it was a name given to an open space near a dock where ships could discharge (Gal. i Bk F. p. 175, note)."

Probably the name was given first to the land of the abbey, and then extended to ground lying on the bank of the Thames.

N. W. HILL.

[MR. 0. KING SMITH and MR. JOHN B. WAINE- WRIOHT also thanked for replies.]

MEDIEVAL IMMUBEMENT (12 S. v. 320). - There is a discussion of this in Grant Allen's ' Evolution of the Idea of God.'

A. MOBLEY DA VIES.

THE LOG HOUSE (12 S. v. 320). In 1541 Robert Bowes and Sir Ralph Ellerker drew up an official ' View of the Castles, Towers, Barmekyns, and Fortresses of the Frontier of the East and Middle Marches ' (Cotton MS. Calig. B, vii. fo. 636 (n.p.) printed by Cadwallader Bates in ' The Border Holds of Northumberland,' p. 28, et seq.). Concern- ing Tynedale they report :

''And yet suerly the bedesmen of them have very stronge houses whereof for the most parte the utter sydes or walles be made of greatte sware oke trees strongly h.unde & Joyned together with great tenons of the same so thycke mortressed that y* ' wyl be very harde withoute greatt force & laboure