Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 1.djvu/59

 9*S.I.JAK 15/98.J

NOTES AND QUERIES.

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ere dislocated her shoulder ; a surgeon ives close by, and it was set within ten minutes. The girl afterwards described the operation, and stated, with the greatest de- light, as if it really was something she might be proud of, that she " shouted all over Long- ford," i.e., to be heard so far. While writing of the place, I know not if it will interest any one to add that it must in no wise be called anything but Long Ford ; not that there is now a ford, long or short, but that there was once a long one, and in winter a very dirty one, before the little ditch we call the river Sowe was bridged and the road over it raised. C. F. S. WARREN, M.A. Soutlifields, Long Ford, Coventry.

The word "wawling," and its variants "wewling" and "wowling," are fairly com- mon in modern folk - speech. Up here in Northumberland we have it " wowling " ; in Bucks and Oxon I have heard both "wawling" and "wewling" applied to the plaintive or wailing cry of little children. When the 'English Dialect Dictionary' ex- tends to TF, Prof. Wright will, no doubt, show the range and nuances of the term, as he has alreacfy done with "bell" and "bell- ing." Shakespeare makes use of "wawl" once at least. See * Lear,' IV. vi., in which the aged king tells Gloster :

Thou know'st the first time that we smell the air We wawl, and cry.

KICHARD WELFORD.

Newcastle-on-Tyne.

"GRIMTHORPED" (8 th S. xii. 205, 353). I see this word used with much apparent glee, but nowhere have I seen an explanation of its meaning. If I did not know the jealous hatred to Lord Grimthorpe of professional architects, because they choose to call him an "amateur," I should think it was com- plimentary. But if Lord Grimthorpe is to be called an amateur architect, then we should call Lord Macaulay an amateur author. Men of letters are apparently not so narrow- minded, or else literature is too universal for them, and any person may write without having his name turned into a word of reproach. Every day I see architects doing far worse than Lord Grimthorpe has done (supposing, for argument, it is bad) and getting paid for it. For example, some one has just blocked up both the transept arches of Bath Abbey with an enormous new organ, supported on iron girders and railway rails, the stonework being cut away here and there when the rails were too long. I counted "twenty trenched gashes." Some one else has just destroyed the old tower of Carfax

Church, Oxford, by plastering, pointing, and other builders' devices ; and I presume an architect, not an amateur, has added (they were not there before) the most hideous buttresses, so that the tower looks now for all the world like one of those modern vulgarities that our professional architects are so fond of everywhere. And this is within a short distance of Magdalen Tower and the tower of New College. I may say that I have not the slightest idea who the architects are, nor do I want to know.

Now as to St. Alban's Abbey. I take a friend there, say, who has no prejudices, nor do I prepare him with any of mine. He says. When I was last here the whole of that soutn nave wall was falling. I presume Lord

Grimthorpe has rebuilt it." " No, he has not," I reply ; I myself saw it pushed up into an upright position ; it is the original wall still, with newfoundations." "Well, tnen, I recollect one of the nave columns was braced all round as it was bursting." " That has been partly replaced ; but the whole abbey was in that condition, and if it had not found some one with money and will, it would now (for all the money the people who abuse Lord Grim- thorpe would have given) be in ruins." After an nour of this my friend begins to think Lord Grimthorpe has done a great deal for the abbey, in fact, been its saviour, and when he comes across " grimthorped," it to him symbolizes a person who nas done much excellent work in propping up a dilapidated building, though he may at the same time have done some things that are objected to.

I have just read (13 November) two articles in a professional paper ; the) first praises the professional architect for doing just what it abuses the " amateur " for in the second.

RALPH THOMAS.

In the Archaeological Institute Journal, vol. liv. p. 270, there appears this definition of the word :

"The term, to grimthorpe, that is, to spend lavishly after a destructive fashion upon an ancient building, has recently come into use, &c.

The writer then gives a monumental example of the word :

"The headstrong spoiler of St. Albans has certainly after this fashion attained unto fame. The end of the eighteenth century had its Wyatt, and the end of the nineteenth has its Grimthorpe ; both doubtless well intentioned after their lights, but both of them devastators of the most extreme type."

The late MR. WALFORD, in his note upon "grimthorped," alluded to the terms "to burke" and "to boycott." He might have added the term "to bowdlerize" as