Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 1.djvu/503

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

NOTES AND QUERIES.

495

and in late A.-S. some scribes wrote see instead of sc to show this. Hence the A.-S. scot, later sceot, is precisely shot. See scot in Bosworth and Toller. As it thus appears that the A.-S. scot became shot, it is worth while to inquire how we came by the word scot, in the phrase " scot and lot."

The answer is that scot is the Norman form, borrowed from the French escot, which is merely the same word in a French disguise. But it makes all the difference to the pro- nunciation. WALTER W. SKEAT.

See Blashill's * Sutton - in - Holdernesse.' Seebohm's ' Village Community ' is not to be relied on. JOHN HEBB.

A BARREL OF GUNPOWDER AS A CANDLE- STICK (9 th S. i. 423). Reading MR. PEACOCK'S communication to you respecting the above reminded me how, many years since, the town of Tunbridge escaped a terrible danger. The following account was given to me by a relation of mine then living there. A barge- load of gunpowder was passing down the Medway to the coast. When it arrived at Tunbridge the man in charge moored the barge, and went to an inn for his dinner, without leaving a caretaker on the barge. A youth, being told what the barrels contained, thought he should like to have some of the powder ; but not knowing, in his hurry, where to obtain a tool, he deliberately put a poker in the fire, so that when it was red-hot ne could pierce the head of a barrel. The poker was heated, and about to be applied to a barrel, when the bargeman appeared, just in time to stop the youth's mad pro- ject, and thus saved Tunbridge from what would have been a very sad disaster.

C. LEESON PRINCE.

SIR THOMAS DALE (9^ S. i. 408). His parentage has not been discovered. For the biographical sketch of his life that appears in the 'Genesis of the United States,' Mr. Alexander Brown made every attempt to ascertain some particulars of his origin, but without success. He was knighted in 1606 as Sir Thomas Dale " of Surrey." That he died without issue is evident from the fact of his widow Elizabeth, whose will was proved in 1640, leaving the bulk of her estate to the children of her brother Sir William Throgmorton, Bart. Mr. Brown has reason to believe that Sir Thomas was related to a " William Dale, grocer," who was Warden of the Grocers' Company in 1614 and a member of the East India Company. This William Dale was a son of Robert Dale, of Wingle, in Prestbury, co. Chester, and brother of Roger

Dale, of the Inner Temple. He married in May, 1583, Elizabeth Elliot, of St. Mary Mag- dalen, London, daughter of Thomas Elliot, of Surrey, Esq. He had in 1613 a seat at Brigstock, in Northants. The registers of Prestbury show that the name was somewhat frequent in that parish in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. W. D. PINK.

" WHO STOLE THE DONKEY ? " (9 th S. i. 267,

395.) Since I wrote my former communi- cation on this subject, I have been fortunate enough to see the Sporting Magazine for October, 1819, which contains the song called 'The White Hat.' It is said to be "Ap- pointed to be sung at all Water Dinners." It is a by no means humorous effusion, though it was certainly intended to be so. Were I to send a copy of the whole I am pretty sure you would not so misapply the columns of ' N. & Q.' as to reprint it. It may be well, however, to give tnree verses as a sample :

Hampden and Pirn were not half so good As Doctor Watson and Thistlewood ; And Lawyer Pearson as learnedly spoke As ever did Mr. Solicitor Coke. Then hey for Radical Reform To raise in England a glorious storm ; Till every man his dinner has got, For twopence a loaf and a penny the pot. And there 's Henry Hunt, the cock of us all, Will do the job much better than Noll ; Whose beaver was never so broad or flat As our King Harry the Ninth's white hat. Then hey for Radical Reform, &c.

Now march, my boys, in your Radical rags ; Handle your sticks and flourish your flags, Till we lay the throne and the altar flat With a whisk of Harry the Ninth's white hat. Then hey for Radical Reform. P. 48.

It appears from this that the white hat was a reformer's badge more than a decade before the agitation for the Bill became, in the eyes of our rulers, a question of the first importance, and that Henry Hunt, the Radical speaker Orator Hunt, as he was called made himself conspicuous by wearing one. Is it to him that we owe the white hat as a political symbol ? These lines seem to point in that direction. I was not before aware that Hunt ever bore the nickname of Henry the Ninth. EDWARD PEACOCK. '

I remember Sir " Billy " Ingleby well, with his jolly red face, his white hat, arid blue stuff cloak with large cape lined with red ; but it is not about him I wish to write, but about white hats" as "political symbols." This seems to have dated from very early times ; for when the men of Ghent began to rebel against the Earl of Flanders, Johan Lyon said :