Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 1.djvu/497

 9 th S. I. JUNE 18, '98.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

489

precedes the Queen. Does the rule in such cases follow the lines of that which is observed in Ireland, viz., the Lord Chancellor of Ireland ranks in the roll of precedence next after the Archbishop of Armagh, if a peer; "if not, the Archbishop of Dublin takes precedence of him, but he ranks before the great officers of State, judges, and peers " (O'Flanagan's 'Lives of Chancellors of Ire- land')? S. F. HULTON.

10, King's Bench Walk, Temple.

'BuoNDELMONTi's BRIDE.' Ishould be much obliged if any of your readers could explain the meaning of a picture which was exhibited some years ago in the Koyal Academy, entitled ' Buondelmonti's Bride.' It represents a girl carried through the streets of a town in a chair, which is supported by young men with wreaths of flowers on their heads. They are followed by a crowd, and in front walks an old man, apparently in deep grief. On the lap of the girl is the head of a man. K.

FELLOWS." In 'Historical Essays upon Paris,' translated from the French of M. de Saintfoix (London, 1767), vol. i. p. 121, we read as follows :

"In former times, criminals were executed in France upon high grounds, that the punishment inflicted might be seen at a great distance. Tacitus (' De Moribus Germ.,' c. xii.) says that the Germans used to hang traitors and deserters upon trees, and that they stifled cowards, lazy people, and nice fellows, under a hurdle in a bog. The spirit of the law, in the difference of these punishments, was to publish the desert of the crime, and to bury its infamy in eternal oblivion."

Can any correspondent give the exact mean- ing and the origin of the expression "nice fellows" as above, and produce other examples of its use in the same sense *?

W. I. B, V.

A DOMESTIC IMPLEMENT.

(9 th S. i. 367.)

A GOFERING (? goffering, from gaufre) iron is such as that which C. C. B. describes, having polished inner surfaces shaped to a pattern, which was by no means always the same. It was used for impressing a pattern upon ladies' and children's under- linen, after it had been " edited " with a flat- iron. The linen was placed between the parts of the implement made hot for the purpose, which parts were then pulled to- gether exactly in the manner whicn obtains in Italian and French cake -shops where gaufres are sold, and of which in London,

the region of Soho is not ignorant. I possess a set of baby-linen retaining the goffering patterns as tney were made on account of the King of Rome, to whom the linen be- longed. K. CLARA STEPHENS. 10, The Terrace, Hammersmith, W.

May I record that the gofering iron in use in my old county of Bucks, in the early forties, was a straight piece of metal with a species of bar, part of the projecting portion being round and hollowed, to permit of the insertion of a hot iron, in shape like a poker, on which the women used to iron the frills of their petticoats, as also those that were tacked on to their sleeves, or round the necks of their other garments 1 Twenty-five years ago there were others sold here in Cambridge in the shape of curling tongs, with three instead of two claws, if they may be called so ; these have been superseded by what are now called curlers. The implement as de- scribed by C. C. B. can hardly have been one of the standard gofers from his description, as he mentions nothing of the cross-bar which held the poker. After due inquiry, I cannot learn anything that may throw a light on the use of the article in question.

W. H. BROWN. Chesterton, Cambs.

The oblong, substantial gaufre^ which I should rather liken to a moulded pancake, is made in Burgundy: and I think I have a pair of irons in the house now, brought over by my mother. The gaufre is eaten hot, and powdered with castor sugar ; when cold it is apt to be tough and leathery. But there are other forms of it than this ; see ' Encyc. Diet.,' .v. 'Wafer': "A thin cake or leaf of paste, generally disc - shaped." See also 'Waffle' and ' Waffle-iron.' THOMAS J. JEAKES.

Is not the instrument a gauffering iron ? The smaller sized were used to crimp frills, aps, &c., and the larger for embossing leather tor the covers of richly bound books, &c.

EVERARD HOME COLEMAN. 71, Brecknock Road.

The description which C. C. B. gives of the mplement he mentions recalls to mind another which I have seen here in London on one or AVO occasions. This was a long iron-handled nstrument terminating in two flat iron plates, one of which, the top, fitted in or on I cannot say for certain which the bottom plate. The inner surfaces of these plates, svere, I believe, engraved with an ornamental device, and the instrument itself was used in making those sweet-toothed delicacies known as "wafers." I remember years ago there