Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 1.djvu/185

 26, '98.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

177

Oak-ley, Oak-ridge also contain the word oak, Dut the long oa shows that they are names o: ess antiquity than Ackland and Acton. ] leed hardly add that (see the 'H. E. D. icorn goes with acre, and, from a purely 3tymological point of view, has t no connexion ^ith oak. WALTER' W. SKEAT.

CROMWELL (8 th S. xii. 408, 491 ; 9 th S. i. 135) Miss M. ELLEN POOLE, at the last reference says :

"The Protector had a son Oliver, born 1622, but he was ' killed in 1648, fighting under the Parlia- mentary banners ' (see Burke' s ' Landed Gentry ') Is not 1648 an error 1 Cromwell, in writing to " my loving brother " (i.e., brother-in-law), Col. Valentine Walton, on 5 July, 1644, three days after the battle of Marston Moor, says :

" Sir, God hath taken away your eldest son by a cannon-shot. It brake his leg. We were neces- sitated to have it cut off, whereof he died.

" Sir, you know my own trials this way: but the Lord supported me with this, That the Lord took him into the happiness we all pant for and live for."

To which Carlyle appends this note :

'I conclude the poor Boy Oliver has already fallen in these Wars, none of us knows where, though his Father well knew ! "

See Carlyle's 'Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches,' five-volume edition, 1871, vol. i. p. 166. JONATHAN BOUCHIER.

Ropley, Hampshire.

" 'BACCY " FOR "TOBACCO," (9 th S. i. 64). An earlier use of " bacco-box " than the instances mentioned by MR. F. ADAMS is in Charles Dibdm's song ' The Token,' where it is to be found in the seventh line of each stanza. This song was first performed in the enter- tainment 'Castles in the Air,' produced in 1793. I often smoke " Botes Bacca," a popular brand in Liverpool.

EDW. BlMBAULT DlBDIN. Ormes View, Liscard, Cheshire.

SCOTTISH PROBATIONER (9 th S. i. 67). Your correspondent will find in ' N. & Q.,' 1 st S. vi. 530, a table of 'The Stipends of 833 Scotch Clergy in 1750,' from the printed Acts of the General Assembly of that year, which may be of use to him.

EVERARD HOME COLEMAN. 71, Brecknock Road.

WARWICKSHIRE SAYING (8 th S. xii. 508). The Warwickshire proverbialist was of one mind with the lady of whom Ovid wrote (' Fasti,' iv. 311):

Conscia mens recti famse mendacia risit. But there are not many who would agree with the provincial, to judge by the number

of actions for libel which disfigure modern life, and especially by the verdicts of juries in frivolous cases where the success of lying for lucre has disgusted me with the whole law of libel. Contrast with "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but cruel words can never harm me," the following proverb of Alfred (Morris's ' Old English Miscellany,' E.E.T.S.,p. 128):-

Ofte tunge breke> bon, l>eyh heo seolf nabbe non.

Paraphrased in later English by Skelton (' Against Venemous Tongues,' &c.) : Malicious tunges, though they have no bones, Are sharper then swordes, sturdier then stones.

F. ADAMS.

Is not this simply an expansion of the common proverb, "Hard words break no bones " ? which we may contrast with the other, " Soft words butter no parsnips."

C. LAWRENCE FORD, B.A.

Bath.

" Sticks and stones will break my bones, but scolding will not hurt me," was an olu saw in York thirty years ago.

JAMES DALLAS.

BROWNING'S 'RING AND THE BOOK,' x. 1375- 1380 (8 th S. xii. 307, 416 ; 9 th S. i. 32). No ! C. C. B. Browning was incapable of writing

anything so inane as " I could believe this

would confound me." You have found this in the passage only from repeating the re- tracted error of my first note (thanks to MR. MOUNT) the elision of the comma after

sorrow" in 1. 1376. If this comma be retained (and it appears in all editions) your comment must be rejected.

R. M. SPENCE.

A poet is his best interpreter. Is not the passage in Browning's ' Pope ' best explained by reference to the precisely similar phrase the epilogue to ' Ferishtah's Fancies ': Gloom would else confound me " ? In this passage the elision of the which, so familiar to all Browning readers, is clear and unmistak- able. Read the passage from ' The Pope ' in the same way, " This dread machinery of sin and sorrow, which would else confound me," and the meaning seems perfectly plain.

T. S. OMOND.

TREES AND THE EXTERNAL SOUL (8 th S. xii. 303 ; 9 th S. i. 37). I am glad that SIR HERBERT MAXWELL has called attention to the mistle-
 * oe in connexion with its growth on different

dnds of trees. It is, of course, a well-known act that it is seldom found on the oak. My reference to the Errol oak is to be found in \lr. J. G. Frazer's 'Golden Bough' (vol. ii.