Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 1.djvu/73

 NOTES AND QUERIES.

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rder, if it please you, that for my soul I am paid >art of that which you owe to me ; and that for the lonour of Jesus Christ, to whom I shall pray to- norrow at my death, that you wp.ll provide some- what to found an Obit and bestow the usual alms. Wednesday at two after midnight. Your very iffectionate and right good Sister, MABI R.' "

Hume, in his 'History of England' (ch. xlii.), quoting as authority Jebb and Camden, ob- serves that Mary had preserved a consecrated wafer from the hands of Pope Pius V., and in this way endeavoured to supply the want of a priest and confessor.* The Dean of Peter- borough, who was present in the hall at Fotheringay at the decapitation, was Dr. Kichard Fletcher, afterwards Bishop of Bristol, 1589-1603. JOHN PICKFORD, M.A.

Newbourne Rectory, Woodbridge.

LIGHTS. Many of those old customs which had been kept up for ages in our more ancient boroughs were swept away by what is known as the Municipal Reform Act. I fear that of several of these no record has been preserved. It appears that at Hull, when the borough chamberlains were chosen, those who were properly nominated were called "lights." What may have been the origin or meaning of " lights " used in this sense I do not know. It is a subject worth inquiring into. Perhaps some one may be able to explain. There was during the stormy days of the great Reform agitation a disturbed meeting at an election of chamberlains for Hull where these "lights" became prominent :

" The Mayor announced that the lights put out for the office of Chamberlain were Messrs. Henry Cooper, Marmaduke Thomas Prickett, Watts Hall, and William Thomas, from whom the burgesses had to choose two."

Afterwards the mayor stated that " he should proceed with the election and take the votes for those gentlemen who were in the usual and legal way put out as lights." And further 011 it is recorded that " the votes for the lights were registered in the usual way." I gather that this form of election was contested. A Mr. Thistleton and a Mr. Acland were also candidates. Their nomination, as it appears was irregular, but many votes were recordec in their favour. See the Boston, Lincoln Louth, and Spalding Herald, 9 Oct., 1832 p. 2, col. 4. EDWARD PEACOCK.

LARKS IN AUGUST. A writer on 'Th Gentle Art of Cycling,' in the January Macmillan, states, at p. 206, that as he rodi from a Surrey village on " a delightful Augus morning," the conditions of travelling were

has alluded to this circumstance.
 * If I mistake not, Schiller, in his ' Marie Stuart

dmirable, while " the larks were vying with ne another to fill the upper air with song." 'his experience is in keeping with an edi- orial statement appended to the account f the skylark in Blackie & Son's edition

_f Goldsmith's 'Animated Nature.' "They

usually sing," it is said, " until the month of eptember." The difference between this and he duration of the singing period in Scotland s quite noteworthy. Our August song-bird s the plaintive yellowhammer, who seems to

wail in that month the departing glories of ummer. Here "the lark at heaven's gate ings " from early spring to the end of June.

in the beginning of July the buoyancy of the

uprising and the ardour and variety of the ,ong are considerably modified, while towards ,he end of the month the birds are practically ilent. Occasionally, however, one will rise

suddenly, with some effort and comparatively imited singing power, as late as September,

and even, in mild, sunny weather, before the gleaners on the October stubbles. But, with

us, to hear the full song, in all its aspiring

splendour, much beyond June, is a surprise

rather than a common experience.

THOMAS BAYNE. Helensburgh, N.B.

"CAPRICIOUS" IN THE 'H. E. D.' Mistakes in Dr. Murray's great work are probably very rare ; but one occurs in the illustrations of bhe word " capricious." A passage cited

The Inventive Wits are termed in the Tuscan Tongue Capricious [Ital. capriciuso] for the resem- blance they bear to a Goat, who takes no pleasure in the open and easy Plains, but loves to Caper along the hill-tops, and upon the Points of Preci- pices, not caring for the beaten Road, or the Company of the Herd,"-

is assigned to R. Carew's translation of John Huarte's ' Examen de Ingenios,' published in London in 1594. It is really from the later translation by Bellamy, published in 1698. Carew's version runs as follows :

"Wits full of inuention, are by the Tuscanes called goatish, for the likenesse which they haue with the goates in their demeanure and proceeding.

Such a rendering shows that the word was not familiar to English ears in 1594, and the 'H. E. D.' has therefore antedated its use. Two interesting passages in seventeenth- century drama show that it was regarded as a new-fangled affectation about the year 1598. The first is from Ben Jonson's ' The Case is Alter'd,' acted probably in 1598, though not published till 1609. Valentine, in Act II. scene iv., describes some captious critics of stage plays as "Faith, a few capricious gallants." Juniper, who outdoes Mrs. Mala- prop in burlesque phraseology, answers,