Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 1.djvu/35

 9 th S. I. JAN. 8, '98.]

ISTOTES AND QUERIES.

the fact being forgotten that the Jewish Sabbath, which by divine commandment is the seventh day, is the Christian Saturday. It is surprising, however, to find Dr. Jessopp perpetrating a blunder like the following in his article on 'Ancient Parish Life' in the January number of the Nineteenth Century, when he says (p. 57) :

"On this day, or that day, or the other day, there was a feast of the Church to be kept, and on each of those days Hans and Hodge were bound to pay suit and service and do homage to the Lord our God. There was a conflict between the Divine and the human Lord. To begin with, the seventh day is a holy day. On that day, at any rate, the serf or the villein, the cottager or the ploughman, shall do no manner of work !

The italics are the author's. The Christian holy day is the first day, the only sect of Christians who hallow the seventh day being the Seventh-day Baptists. F. ADAMS.

We must request correspondents desiring infor- mation on family matters of only private interest to affix their names and addresses to their queries, in order that the answers may be addressed to them direct.

" CRANSHACH." This word appears in Jamieson, meaning a crooked, distorted per- son. Jamieson also writes the word as " cranshak," and quotes a verse in which it occurs from Ross's ' Helenore,' p. 149, in which the first two lines are :

There 's wratacks, and cripples and cranshaks,

And all the wandoghts that I ken.

The poem is printed in Chambers's * Songs ' (1829), ii. 605, in which the word appears as " cranshanks." Is this a misprint %

THE EDITOR OF THE 'ENGLISH DIALECT DICTIONARY.' The Clarendon Press, Oxford.

" PARLIAMENTARY LANGUAGE." Is the his- tory of this term known ? The earliest illus- trative quotation given in the 'Century Dictionary' is from George Eliot's 'Felix Holt ' (chap, xxx.) :

' The nomination day was a great epoch of suc- cessful trickery, or, to speak in a more parlia- mentary manner, of war-stratagem on the part of skilful agents."

But long previously Byron had written in ' Don Juan ' (canto xvi. verse Ixxiii.) :

He was "free to confess" (whence comes this

phrase ? Is 't English ? No 'tis only parliamentary).

Dickens also made obvious allusion to it in his "Pickwickian sense," noted in the first chapter of 'The Pickwick Papers'; while

Balzac was so impressed by it that he used it twice in 'La Cousine Bette,' written in 1846-7, the first time in a conversation between Hortense Hulot and her father, the Baron : " Elle t'aime trop, pour avoir employe" une ex- pression ' Peu parlementaire,' reprit Hortense,

en riant."

And the next in the account of the fateful party to the Brazilian at the house of Josepha :

" ' Ce n'est pas parliamentaire, ce qu'il a dit ; mais c'est magnifique !' fit observer Massol,"

a curiously inverted anticipation, by the way, of the famous " C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre," of the Crimean War.

Isaac D'Israeli, in his 'Secret History of Charles I. and his First Parliaments' (in- cluded in 'The Curiosities of Literature'), quotes Sir Edward Coke as saying in debate, in 1628 :

" We sit now in parliament, and therefore must take his majesty's word no otherwise than in a parliamentary way ; that is, of a matter agreed on by both houses his majesty sitting on his throne in his robes, with his crown on his head, and sceptre in his hand, and in full parliament ; and his royal assent being entered upon record, in per-

peiuam rei memoriam Not that I distrust the

king, but that I cannot take his trust but in a parliamentary way."

But that is obviously a different thing from "parliamentary language" as now under- stood, the definition of which has been of long growth. ALFRED BOBBINS.

A MISSING BIBLE. By his will, made and proved 1788, Thomas Mathews, of Pithenlew, Truro, bequeathed to his favourite grandson, William Mathews, on the death of his widow, a book which the testator described as "the old Ked Bible." She died in Cornwall circa 1800, and her grandson in London at about the same date. The Bible is believed to have contained manuscript entries of genealogical interest to members of the family ; but it has been lost for many years. Has any one seen the Red Bible 1

JOHN HOBSON MATTHEWS.

Town Hall, Cardiff.

THOMAS WHITE. Information is requested respecting the person here mentioned, whose monument is in Milton Church, near Lyming- ton, Hants. His effigy is life size, in white marble, cut off at the knees, with a waved sword, like a Malay crease, in his hand, ana an actual metal sword, with a waved blade and an ornamental hilt, standing beside the monument. The inscription is as follows :

"In memory of Thomas White, Esq., son of Ignatius White, Esq., of Fiddleford in Dorsetshire. He served three kings and Queen Ann as a com-