Page:Notes and Queries - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/17

 2nd g. NO i., J AN. 5. '56]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

Why not keep, my tender fair,

In the warm place' where now you are ?

" BABY.

O, dear mammy ! all the loves, All the graces, pigs and doves ; All my husbands, all my cats, Gr. y's; y's woodys' baltts. (Doom'd ere I begun to be, [To the care of careful me) And the owl too, and miss gin Beg I'd stay no longer in.

" MAMMV.

Nay, if Pallas sends her owl, Get thee out, impatient soul ! By the bed see Musick stand, Ready to take thee by the hand ; All the sister arts have sent On this errand, master Kent, Who must lose (if we're not hasty) His present cake and future pasty. Jumper too will have it so What a fuss is here w'ye? Go, Get you out then Oh I see That mimic face will cop}' me ; And what most wou'd vex a mother, Thou wilt make just such another."

I waive the question of authorship, and of the circumstances under which the verses were ex- temporised ; and shall only add, that George Col- man, Bonnell Thornton, Robert Lloyd, William Falconer, and other writers of note, were contri- butors to the miscellany whence they are tran- scribed. BOSTON CORNEV.

The Terrace, Barnes.

RUNNING FOOTMEN.

The following description of this now extinct class of retainers is extracted from a volume of MS. Notes on Old Plays, in the handwriting of the Rev. George Awhby, Rector of Borrow in Suffolk, and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, which I lately purchased. The notes seem to have been written shortly after the .publication of Reed's edition of Dodsley's Old Plays in 1780. His ac- count of running footmen, their use, pedestrian powers, and costume, seem to me so characteristic of a bygone state of society, as to deserve a corner in " N. & Q." :

"The running footmen drank white wine and eggs. One told me, fifty years ago, that they carried some white wine in the large silver ball of their tall cane or pole, which unscrews ; that they could easily keep a-head of the coach and six in uphilfand down countries (X.B. bad roads), but that in the plain they were glad to sign to the coachman with the pole to pull in, as they could not hold out. I have often wondered how he came to tell us little schoolboys at Croydon thus much. Since the roads have been made good, the carriages and cattle lightened, we have little of them ; yet I remember he told us of vast performances, threescore miles a day, and seven miles an hour. They would probably now go further in a day than a gentleman and his own horses, but perhaps take a

little more time. The last exploit of one of them that I recollect was, the late Duke of Marlborough drove his phaethon and four for a wager from London to Windsor, against one* and just beat him, but the poor fellow died soon. No carriage could have done Powell's York journey. They wore no breeches, but a short silk petti- coat, kept down by a deep gold fringe."

In these long poles of the running footmen we have, I presume, the origin of the long silver- headed canes carried by the footmen of many families at the present day.

I have been told that the late Duke of Queen- bury was the last nobleman who kept running footmen ; that he was in the habit, before engag- ing them, of trying their paces, by seeing how they could run up and down Piccadilly, he watch- ing and timing them from his balcony. They put on his livery before the trial. On one occasion, a candidate presented himself, dressed, and ran. At the conclusion of his performance he stood before the balcony. " You'll do very well for me," said the duke ; " Your livery will do very well for me," replied the man, and gave the duke a last proof of his ability as a runner by then run- ning away with it. WILLIAM J. THOMS.

Minor

Neology. Some unknown friend has sent me a Kentucky newspaper, the Oeorgetou'n Herald, probably on account of a defence which it contains of some reputed Americanisms of which the writer shows two or three, out of half-a-dozen, to be es- sentially English. This essay, which occupies a couple of columns, and appears as borrowed from another publication, is written in good taste and very pure English, but in other parts of the newspaper there are some neologisms which have amused me. For instance, information by the electric telegraph is happily headed "News by Lightning." In a kind of feud now existing be- tween American-born and foreign-born citizens, the former are said to profess Nativism ; a vaga- bond coming into a certain neighbourhood is de- scribed as being now "in our midst;" and an editor who appreciates the value of his contri- butors is called " appreciative." This may be very well, but I am rather startled at seeing a popular candidate for Congress accused of " De- magoguery;" nor can I agree that a corpulent person, describing himself as very ill of such a disease as the dropsy, would be speaking "very correct and classical English," if he pronounced himself " very slim" C.

The Ladies' Law of Leap-year. It may per- haps be interesting to all young ladies who are not already aware of the important fact, that leap-year empowers them to do something more than " pop the question." I am informed, by a