Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 1.djvu/280

 272

NOTES AND QUERIES. &* s. i. APRIL 2,

form of carnivorous, as applied in a medicinal sense to a caustic destructive of flesh. With this application it would probably have been used in connexion with leather-dressing. Or the official may have been one who presided over the feast of Carniscapium immediately prior to Lent. See under ' Shrove Tuesday ' in Brand's 'Observations on Popular Anti- quities/ 1813, i. 57. ARTHUR MAYALL.

See ' Origines Patricise,' by K. T. Hampson, 1846, pp. 250-1 ; and 'English Surnames,' by C. W. Bardsley, 1875, p. 375.

JOHN KADCLIFFE.

ANCESTORS (8 th S. xii. 65, 133, 211, 332, 475 ; 9 th S. i. 170). Shakespeare, it may be pre- sumed, uses this word in its etymological sense at the beginning of the ' Merry Wives of Windsor,' for, of course, we are intended to reverse the sentences: "All his successors, gone before him, hath done 't ; and all his ancestors, that come after him, may." Let me call attention to another word which is now usually used in a sense different from its etymological meaning i. e., child. Some little time ago a lady smilingly remarked to me, " I shall soon have no children," meaning that they would all have grown up and ceased to be children. The word child, in fact, is now usually taken to signify a very young person, boy or girl ; but its original meaning is simply son or daughter. With regard to ancestor, we are told in the ' H. E. D.' that, after the French came to restrict the use of ancestre to " progenitor," antecesseur was re- fashioned from the Latin for the general sense, and our word antecessor was adopted from it. W. T. LYNN.

Blackheath.

SCULPTORS (9 th S. i. 207). Laurence Mac- donald was born in the year 1798, and died "recently "at Rome. See the Athenceum for 9 March, 1878.

Sir John Steell, R.S.A., died at Edinburgh on 15 Sept., 1891, aged eighty-seven, as per report in the Athenceum of 19 Sept., 1891.

EVERARD HOME COLEMAN. 71, Brecknock Road.

Laurence Macdonald was born at Bonny- view, near the Auld House of Gask, Strath- earn, county of Perth, in 1798. Died at Rome, February, 1878. A. G. REID.

Auchterarder.

DANTE AND C. HINDLEY (5 th S. viii. 420). Charles Hindley of Hindley so he styled himself whose translation of the 'Inferno' was published in 1842, was for about fifty years, and nearly to the time of his death, in the service of the Globe Insurance Company,

and it is not uninteresting to note how many persons more or less mixed up with scientific and literary work had been associated with him from 1803, when he entered the office as a clerk. Its first chairman was Sir F. M. Eden, author of the 'History of the Poor.' Its first actuary was the Rev. J. Hellins, rector of Potter's Pury, author of some impor- tant mathematical works. Then came Ed ward Hulley, author of a work on annuities ; John Poole, author of * Paul Pry ' and other come- dies; Sir W. Tite, architect and antiquary, managing director of the company; and J. C. Denham, well known in artistic and literary circles, its secretary, who was succeeded by William Newmarch, and who, with Thomas Tooke, wrote the fifth and sixth volumes of the 'History of Prices,' 1857. I give these notes of my own knowledge, as I was actuary of the company 1845-63, and of course knew Charles Hindley. FREDK. HENDRIKS.

'ROCKINGHAM [ (9 th S. i. 187). The following paragraph relating to the Count de Jarnao appeared in the Athenaeum of 27 March, 1875 :

" Probably very few of our readers are aware that the Count de Jarnac, the French Ambassador, who died on Monday last, was a novel-writer, yet such is the fact. He was the author of ' Rocking- ham,' ' Electra,' and ' Love and Ambition,' all of which were published anonymously. They are, we believe, now all out of print."

EVERARD HOME COLEMAN.

71, Brecknock Road.

' THE CHALDEE MS.' (9 th S. i. 166). This note should be supplemented by a reference to ' N. & Q.,' 3 rd S. v. 314 ; vii. 469. At the former reference will be found Hogg's own claim, together with much interesting matter.

WC. B.

PLANT-NAMES (9 th S. i. 29). A local amateur herbalist tells me that in this neighbourhood the name " black-doctor " is given to the water-betony. C. C. B.

Ep worth.

TODMORDEN (9 th S. i. 21, 78, 114, 217). At the last reference we are told that tor, a hill, had something to do with this name, strongly deprecate, for the hundredth time, the assumption that one letter, say an r, can turn into another, as d, without any provo- cation, or reason, or necessity. I wholly disbelieve in the principle of "corruption," when it is taken to mean that anything can change at any time into anything else. No one ever called a tor a tod, or a door a dod. Why should he 1 WALTER W. SKEAT.

REV. RICHARD JOHNSON, B.A. (9 th S. i. 207). Full information about this gentleman will