Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 9.djvu/467

 12 s. ix. NOV. 12, i92i.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 381 LONDON, NOVEMBER 12, 1921. CONTENTS. No. 187. NOTES: An Impression of Waterloo. 381 English Army Slang as used in the Great War, 383 Principal London Coffee-houses of the Eighteenth Century, 385 " Kultur " An Unpublished Letter of Sir William Hamilton, 386 " The King's English " : " Gesture " Cheese as Ammunition Oldest British Vessel Swiss Visitors to Great Britain, 387 QUERIES : Signora Sartoris W. Winstanley Madingley. Cambs. " Standards " Rubbing down Coins' N.E.D.' Dinner, 1899 "Abeillage"- Irish, Scotch and Welsh Heraldry Early Standards,388 Grave to be turfed and " bryered " Hutcainson Turke Thomas Lycett Alexander Lafarelle John Thomas, Orientalist Capt. G. Jones's ' Battle of Waterloo ' Simson Family The United Service Club " A Button " Col. Chester's Extracts from Parish Registers. REPLIES : Tavern Signs : " The Five Alls," 390 Devon- shire House Gates Inscriptions at St. Omer, 391 Old Hunting Pictures The Right to bear Arms- Thistlethwayte Families, 392 " Lay " and " Lie " Astley's and Sanger's Circuses Admiral Vernon Dr. G. McCall Theal, 393 American Humorists : Capt. G. H. Derby Cardinal Vaughan and Wales Epigram on the Walcheren Expedition Meyer Menson The* Sea-serpent, 394 Mules on Mountains " Shall " and " Will " in A. V. Rudge Family Culcheth Hall, 395 Unidentified Arms The Murray-Roberts Affair in Northumberland Street Char-a-banc, 396 Hatchments Sir Richard Brown, Bart. Translation of Motto required De Goncourt on Collecting Early History of Cricket Alexander Simson of Dundee, 397 The Crooked Billet Richard Creur de Lion Book-borrowers "Making bricks without straw," 398. NOTES ON BOOKS :' The Chronicle of Muntaner '' The Site of the Globe Playhouse ' ' English Prose ' Catalogue of War Literature issued by H.M. Government ' A Manual of the Dutch Language ' The Bookman's Journal. Notices to Correspondents. ENGLISH ARMY SLANG. It is proposed to insert lists of new words every other week, and, in each intervening week, com- ments on and corrections of words and definitions already given. AN IMPRESSION OF WATERLOO. THE writer of this interesting letter, Alex- ander Pringle, younger of Whytbank, was the eldest of those sportive boys, Companions of my mountain joys, Just at the age, 'twixt boy and youth, When thought is speech, and speech is truth. referred to by Scott in ' Marmion ' (Intro- duction to canto ii.), and was one of the poet's companions on his visit to the battle- field of Waterloo. He was Scott's junior by twenty years, having been born in 1791. He succeeded his father in 1827, became M.P. for Selkirkshire, and was a Lord of the Treasury under Sir Robert Peel, but resigned on the conscientious ground of opposition to the Maynooth Grant. He was then appointed Keeper of the Register of Sasines in Scotland, and held that office until his death in 1857. Apart from this neighbourly association with Sir Walter Scott and Abbotsford, Alexander Pringle and his mother form a far-reaching link with the past. He was the eldest of the five sons of Alexander Pringle of Whytbank (1747-1827), by Mary, (1766-1849) daughter of Johnson's friend Sir Alexander Dick of Prestonfield (1703- 1785). His grandfather, another Alexander Pringle, was born in 1701 and succeeded to Whytbank in April, 1702. He himself, as has been said, died in 1857, but his younger brother, Robert Keith Pringle, B.C.S., who as a child was put into mourning for the death of Nelson, in 1805, survived until 1897, and left a son, now of Whytbank, who served overseas in the recent war, more than 110 years after his father's, 170 years after his grandfather's, and more than 210 years after his two paternal great- grandfathers' respective births. Edinr., 27th June 1815. My dear Mother, I wrote to you as you de- sired by the post on Friday, but as I was too late for that day I fear my letter would travel the country after you. I mentioned then the arrival of Thomas and Jane. Jane has now gone down to Portobello, and John Smith told me to-day that they find themselves very comfortably accom- modated. Thomas is to sail for Aberdeen by a Smack to-morrow night. He has not got his money yet from Birrell, as the latter was from home, but I paid him the amount, and shall get it myself from Birrell. The money which Thomas had in Sir Wm. Forbes' hands was rather more than 200, and that sum he imme- diately drew and paid to me. Tell my father that I send out 100 of it instead of using his draft and shall therefore destroy it. The other 100 I shall keep till he directs me what to do with it. The great news of these few days absorbs everybody's attention. It is undoubtedly the greatest victory ever gained by Britain, and excepting perhaps that of Borodino the greatest battle that ever was fought, but it has also been the bloodiest indeed I consider it both in its extent and its effects as several battles con- centrated in one : but now that our feelings of exultation have become familiar, the tardy accounts of killed and wounded begin to throw a gloom over the brilliancy of the event. The imperfect list which you have already seen hardly goes beyond the Staff Officers. The loss of others is of course in proportion, and as the Scotch Regiments have suffered most severely, there are many mourners in Edinr. There is a