Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 1.djvu/62

 NOTES AND QUERIES.

i. JAN. is,

HOWTH CASTLE (8 th S. xii. 249, 354, 416). This extract from an article entitled 'The Barthomley Massacre,' in the Manchester City News for 11 Dec., 1897, is an instance such as is required. The station referred to is Madeley, Salop :

" The clipped yew trees, the quaint church, the almshouses, the allotment gardens with their hand- some fountain, which the traveller may see near to the railway station, and the charities remind me of that clause in the will of Sir John Offley, the son of the Lord Mayor of London : ' Item I will and devise one Jewell done all in Gold and Enamelled wherein there is a Caul that covered my face and

shoulders when I first came into the world to

my own right Heirs Males for ever and so from Heir to Heir so long as it shall please God in good- ness to continue any Heir Male of my name to be never concealed or sold by any of them.' The heirs male have failed, but the line exists in the Earl of Crewe, and so long as that jewelled caul is cherished as a precious heirloom the luck shall never leave the Crewes, and they and the charities shall flourish."

Another case is mentioned by M. Aime Vingtrinier, in his pamphlet 'L'Oratoire | de Joachim de Mayol, | Prieur et Seigneur de Vindelle,' where he describes the oratory bearing the date of 1659, originally highly decorated, but the paint latterly in some respects faded as now brought back after some divagations to the family of Mayol. The author, with some peculiarity of grammatical construction, speaks of the present possessor :

"M. le comte O. de Mayol de Lupe qui

1'entoure des soins et oe la veneration que merite le palladium de sa famille et de son foyer." On the general side of the case one may mention the Lares of the Roman house- hold, and the statue of Pallas which was con- sidered the guarantee for the safety of Troy. ARTHUR MAYALL.

VOYAGE TO CANADA (8 th S. xii. 402). In Dr. Ellis's 'Chronicles of the Siege,' found in his 'Evacuation of Boston,' 1 vol. 8vo., Boston, Mass., 1876, a facsimile of the an- nouncement of the tragedy of 'Zara' (by General Burgoyne 1\ with data, &c., is given, and a further reference made to its perform- ance within the walls of Faneuil Hall, some- times called now the " Cradle of Liberty," as appearing in 'Memoir of Right Hon. Hugh Elliot,' by the Countess of Minto, in the form of a letter from one Thomas Stanley, second son of Lord Derby, an eye-witness. Several long lists of British officers serving in America during this period appear in the recent volumes of the New England Quarterly Historic-Genealoaic Register. It is not unlikely that many of the original muster rolls, left behind by the Crown representatives, exist in some of the departments of the Massa-

chusetts State House at Boston perhaps in charge of the State Library, of which Mr. Tillinghast is the librarian. C.

" TROD "= FOOTPATH (8 th S. xii. 444). This word has by no means gone out of use in Lincolnshire, though it may not be able as yet to claim its place in book-English. Trod is the common form here ; footpath is rarely used unless the speaker wishes to talk as newspaper-men write. There was in former days a footpath from Burton Stather to Brigg, across what is now known as the Frodingham iron-field, called the Milner's Trod. I have often talked with old people who have journeyed thereon, who were not a little indignant that the gentlemen over whose territories it ran had by some means or other hindered it from being used.

EDWARD PEACOCK.

Dunstan House, Kirton-in-Lindsey.

This word is in common use in North Lin- colnshire. It is, as MR. ADDY says, " a good old word." See Spenser's ' Shepheard's Calender," July':

In humble dales is footing fast, kle.

the trode is not so tic

C. C. B.

Add Welsh troed, "the foot"; it is quite equivalent to the English " tread " and the variant "trot"; cf. French trottoir for the footpath. A. H.

This word is hardly obsolete. It is fre- quently used in this district (North -West Lincolnshire), especially by country people.

H. ANDREWS.

THE GENDER OF " MOON " (8 th S. xii. 307). The Rev. Timothy Harley, in his work en- titled ' Moon-Lore,' p. 16, says :

" In English, French, Italian, Latin, and Greek, the moon is feminine ; but in all the Teutonic tongues the moon is masculine. Which of the twain is its true gender ? We go back to the Sanskrit for an answer. Prof. Max Miiller rightly says (' On the Religions of India ') : 'It is no longer denied that for throwing light on some of the darkest problems that have to be solved by the student of language, nothing is so useful as a critical study of Sanskrit.' Here the word for the moon is mds, which is mas- culine. Mark how even what Hamlet calls 'words, words, words,' lend their weight and value to the adjustment of this great argument. The very moon is masculine, and. like Wordsworth's child, is 'father of the man/"

Dr. Jamieson, in his * Dictionary of the Scottish Language,' says:

" The moon, it has been said, was viewed as of the masculine gender in respect of the earth, whose husband he was supposed to be ; but as a female in relation to the sun, as being his spouse."

Sir Gardner Wilkinson, in his 'Manners