Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 7.djvu/311

 12 S. VII. SEPT. 25, 1920. NOTES AND QUERIES.

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for meddlers and spectacles for sparrows. I do not think she ever used the wor< "layovers," though a friend who was he senior did, and I do not feel sure tha I learned of the existence of crutches io lame ducks viva voce. From what I hav read, I think it likely that "layover" i a corruption of "leather," and that it sig aiifies a strap available for corrective pur poses or by extension the stripes resultant

ST. S WITHIN.

In the seventies my father's first answer to my childish inquiries as to what he was making always was "a whim wham for a goose's bridle and a crutch for a lame cluck.'

G. G. L.

THE MIRACULOUS HOST OF WILSNACK '(12 S. vii. 190). Wilsnack is a small town o: about 2,000 inhabitants sixty miles N.W of Potsdam, and near the railway junction of Wittenberge in Brandenburg, which is not to be confused with the more famous Witten- berg in Prussian Saxony. As it is not mentioned in Baedeker's 'Northern Ger- many,' nor in ' Bradshaw's Continental Guide ' for August, 1913, it is obviously a place of no particular interest at the present day. In the fifteenth century it was other- wise. The ' Encyclopaedia Brittanica ' <(xiv. 5 a) says of John Huas :

"In 1405 he, with other two masters was com- -missioned to examine into certain reputed miracles at Wilsnack, near Wittenberg [sic], which had caused that church to be made a resort of pilgrims from all parts of Europe. The result of their 'report was that all pilgrimage thither from the province of Bohemia was prohibited by the archbishop on pain of excommunication, while Huss, with the full sanction of his siiperior, gave ?to the world his first published writing, entitled ' De Omni Sanguine Christi Glorificato,' in* which Ibe declaimed in no measured terms against forged aniracles and ecclesiastical greed, urging Christians at the same time to desist from looking for sensible signs _of Christ's presence, but rather to seek Him in His enduring word."

JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT.

THE HEDGES OF ENGLAND (12 S. vii. 190, 216, 236). What Macaulay, in the third chapter of his History, says about hedges rnay be worth quoting :

^ " In the year 1685, the value of the produce of the soil far exceeded the value of all the other fruits of human industry. Yet agriculture was an what would now be considered as a very rude .and imperfect state. The arable land and pasture land were not supposed by the best political arithmeticians of that age to amount
 * to much more than half the area of the kingdom.

The remainder was believed to consist of moor,

forest, and fen. These computations are strongly confirmed by the road books and maps of the seventeenth century. From these books and maps it is clear that many routes which now pass through an endless succession of orchards, corn- fields, hayfields, and beanfields, then ran through nothing but heath, swamp, and warren. In the drawings of English landscapes made in that age for the Grand Duke Cosmo, scarce a hedgerow is to be seen, and numerous tracts, now rich with cultivation, appear as bare as Salisbury Plain. At Enfield, hardly out of sight of the smoke of the capital, was a region of five and twenty miles in circumference, which contained only three houses and scarcely any enclosed fields. Deer, as free as in an American forest, wandered there by thousands."

Swansea. DAVID SALMON,

BISHOPS BURNET AND BEDELL (12 S.

vii. 129. 218). There appears positive evi- dence that Alexander Clogy, who wrote a Life of Bishop Bedell, was not at any time his chaplain. In the reprint of his ' Specu- lum Episcoporum ' from the Harleian MS., the editor (W. Walker Wilkins) says :

"After his marriage with the Bishop's step- daughter [he is described on the title-page as his son-in-law], Mr. Clogy appears to have taken up his abode permanently in the palace of Kilmore ; but not, as he takes special care to inform us, in the capacity of domestic chaplain. The Bishop was particularly jealous of any ministerial in- terference on the part of another with his house- hold, performing every spiritual function himself.'*

The editor goes on to say that Burnet was indebted to Clogy for the principal materials of his well-known ' Life ' ; and that n his opinion the ' Speculum ' is preferable n many respects to Burnet 's more pompous narrative. C. J. TOTTENHAM.

Diocesan Library, Liverpool.

PRINCIPAL LONDON COFFEE-HOUSES TAVERNS AND INNS IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY (12 S. vii. 185, and ante). The ' Bull Head Tavern near Allgate,' ' kept by Francis Carter in March, 1710/11, does not eem to be recorded in MR. DE CASTRO'S ist. See India Office Records, ' Court /linutes,' vol. xliv. p. 373.

L. M. ANSTEY.

THE VAGARIES OF INDEXERS (12 S.

i. 231). I'here is an amusing article, The Index as She is Compiled,' in The bookworm, iii. 95 (1890), founded on a ublished work of Prof. St. George Mivart, rhere an anecdote related of a parrot was idexed fifteen times under twelve letters f the alphabet, and causes the occurrence o be styled " unsurpassable in the whole ange of index-making." It is right to say