Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 8.djvu/460

 378 NOTES AND QUERIES. [i2s.vm.MA Y 7,i92i. SONG WANTED : 'En YAK 1 O'LYNN ' (12 S. viii. 331). I append the words of the song j MB. ELLIOT wants, which I take from one of the penny song sheets I pasted in a book in the 'sixties. Bryan O'Lynn had no coat to put on, He borrowed a goatskin to make him a one. He planted the horns right under his chin, They'll answer for pistols said Bryan O'Lynn. ! Bryan O'Lynn had no breaches to wear So he got him a sheepskin to make him a pair. With the woolly side out and the skinny side in j They're pleasant and cool said Bryan O'Lynn. | Bryan O'Lynn had no watch for to wear, He bought him a turnip and scooped it out fair. Then he slipped a live cricket clane under the ' skin, They'll think its a ticking said Bryan O'Lynn. j Bryan O'Lynn went to bring his wife home, | He had but one horse that was all skin and bone. I'll put her behind me as nate as a pin And her mother before me said Bryan O'Lynn. Bryan O'Lynn and his wife and her mother Were all crossing over the bridge together, The bridge it broke down, they all tumbled in, ! We'll find ground at the bottom said Bryan j O'Lynn. WlLLOUGHBY MAYCOCK. The full text of the Irish ballad on Bryan ! O'Lynn will be found, amongst other places, I at p. 215, vol. iii., of 'The Poetical Works of Edward V. Kenealy,' Lond. ('Englishman' i Office), 1879 ; where it is accompanied by ; rhyming translations into Greek and Latin. What MR. W. G. ELLIOT takes to be the! title of the ballad is really the first line of the second verse, the ballad itself be- ; ginning : " Bryan O'Lynn was an Irishman j born." Kenealy does not seem to j mention the original author's name. EDWARD SULLIVAN. Reform Club. AGE OF LIONS ( 12 S. viii. 338, v. sub ( Lions in the Tower '). The keeper of the lions in the Dublin Zoo told me that a lion " has only a dog's life." Hagenbeck, in his ' Beasts "HE WILL NEVER SET THE SlEVE ON FlRE '' (12 S. viii. 331). I am a Devonshire man, but I never heard the expression " He will never set the sieve on fire." I have often heard, however, " He will never set the temse (old name for sieve) on fire." A hard worker would sometimes do his sifting so strenuously that the temse burst into flame. As a boy I was told that " He will never set the Thames on fire " was only a corruption of the Devonshire saying. W. COURTHOPE FORMAN. The word sieve here is used instead of "temse," and according to Wright's Dialect Dictionary is fairly common in most north- ern counties. The temse or sieve was pro- vided with a rim, which projected from the bottom of it and was worked over the mouth of the barrel, into which the flour or meal was sifted. An active person who worked hard not infrequently set the rim of the sieve on fire by force of friction against the rim of the flour-barrel. (See also ' N. & Q.,' 3 S. viii. 239.) The same class of utensil was in use among brewers to separate the hops from the beer. (Ibidem, p. 306.) ARCHIBALD SPARKE. This is equivalent to the judgment "He won't set the temse on fire," for in manv English shires a sieve, especially one used for sifting flour, is called a " temse." Some people hold that the prediction that any- body will not set the Thames aflame comes from this, but I do not assent to the suppo- sition, if only because I believe the sneer is not peculiar to our own land and folk. In these days a conflagration of the Thames would be more easily produced than the firing of a sieve by any manner of hard labour. ST. SWITHIN. on and Men,' London, 1909, p. Ill, says : " It is my experience that lions, if they are well j taken care of, will frequently live for more than thirty years." The seventy years' confinement of the lion named Pompey would appear to be as uncertain as the age of the Countess of Desmond. H. B. SWANZY. The Vicarage, Newry, Co. Down. HAREWAY, ENGLEFIELD, BERKS (12 S., viii. 331). The articles referred to were 1 written by me. E. E. COPE. Finchampstead Place, Berks. A Manual of Modern Scots. By William Giant and James Main Dixon. (Cambridge Univer- sity Press. 1 net.) NOT long ago scientific people, studying food production and digestion, came to entertain a I belief that chemistry could produce artificial j foods containing all the essential properties of natural foods. Doubts have now come over this belief ; we hear talk of " vitamines " of pro- perties, that is to say, which are indispensable to the Constitution of a true food, are mysteriously connected with its natural origin, and, for the moment at any rate, beyond the power of chemis- try to supply. As chemical food is to natural food, so, we are inclined to think, is speech learnt by means of " phonetics " to speech learnt by