Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 10.djvu/164

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. x. AUG. 23, 1902.

(1605), where we find the phrase, " He cannot form a man so dexteriously." It seems rather odd that till Naunton used the word in 1635, the only two writers who had included it in their vocabulary were Shakespeare and Bacon. GEORGE STRONACH.

[This joint use of the word "dexteriously" has, we fancy, been recently noted in our columns.]

" KEEP YOUR HAIR ON " (9 th S. ix. 184, 335 ; x. 33). A propos of MR. MARCH ANT'S allusion to the word "shirty" 'as a slang expression for loss of temper, 1 overheard in the streets, on the very day of your last issue, a similar slang word. Two " vulgar boys," but by no means " little vulgar boys," were talking, and one of them said, " He fairly got my rag out," his rag being presumably his shirt. Probably the expression "to have (or get) one's shirt out " has arisen, says Dr. Lentz- ner in his ' Diet, of Australian Slang,' from the shirt working out between the breeches and waistcoat during a struggle. In Surrey "shirty" means short-tempered, irritable. As regards " rag " meaning " shirt," a soldier's slang for the monthly inspection of kit when all the necessaries, shirts, socks, and under- clothing, are displayed is " rag-fair." With regard to "swot" in the sense in which it is used among students, the word is a very ancient form of "sweat," and is employed as an army term for mathematics, probably in allusion to the hard work of an examination. It is said to have originated in the broad Scotch pronunciation by Dr. Wallace, one of the professors at the Royal Military Col- lege, Sandhurst, and to have afterwards been fashionable at the universities. It is not necessary, however, to go to Scotland for this pronunciation of the word, for "swat" is still in use in Staffordshire, and in C. H. Poole's ' Staffordshire Glossary ' Chaucer's ' Rime of Sir Thopas ' is quoted :

His fair stede in his pricking

So swatte.

Again, in Percy's ' Reliques,' i. 25 : They swopede together whille that they swotte.

The sweating sickness was called the " swatt '

(see Arckceologia, xxxviii. 107).

J. HOLDEN MACMlCHAEL.

In ' Epistolse Ho-Elianse ' (eleventh edition, p. 476) it is stated that, aforetime in France, "II a perdu ses cheveux " meant "he has losi his honour."

" For in the first Race of Kings there was a Law called La loy de la Cheveleure, whereby it was lawful for the Nobless only to wear long Hair, anc if any of them had committed some foul and ignoble Act, they used to be condemned to have their long Hair to be cut off as a Mark of Ignominy."

The modern meaning of the phrase "keep your hair on" is, however, probably that attached to it by your correspondents.

ST. SWITHIN.

This expression has been common in Shrop- shire for at least twenty-five years, and probably much longer. "Don't get your shirt out" was a frequent injunction when I was at school. Like MR. MARCHANT'S friend, we employed the verb to swot. Boys who worked hard for examinations were dubbed " swots," a term of contemptuous reproach. CHARLES HIATT.

[We supposed "getting the shirt out" meant taking off the coat for the purpose of fighting and so displaying the shirt.]

ARMS OF DUTCH EAST INDIA COMPANY (9 th S. ix. 9, 118, 272, 312, 411). I gave the Dutch title of this company correctly at the second reference. In MR. S. M. MILNE'S version "Oest" should be Oost, and "In- disches," Indische. J. P. LEWIS.

Ceylon.

NAPOLEON'S FIRST MARRIAGE (9 th S. ix. 347, 371 ; x. 72). MR. PAGE will find a very interesting account in Mr. F. A. Ober's 'Josephine, Empress of the French,' pub- lished by Unwin, September, 1901.

HERBERT SOUTHAM.

Shrewsbury.

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE BICYCLE (9 th S. viii. 304, 490, 530 ; ix. 36, 117, 171, 231, 397, 490). In the early sixties a native of this village named Facer, a bricklayer by trade, made for himself a sort of carriage, in which he sat and propelled himself along by means of some mechanism which he worked with his hands. In recent years I have seen in the City of London a cripple using a tricycle which he urged forward in a similar manner. The present generation of children, to whom a rushing motor car is a familiar sight, can have no conception of the rapture which Facer and his velocipede enkindled in our breasts as we eagerly watched for his advent on his return from work. JOHN T. PAGE.

West Haddon, Northamptonshire.

THE IRON DUKE AND THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON (9 th S. ix. 466; x. 11, 73). The following information anent the origin of the nickname Iron Duke is derived from my .copy of ' The Words of Wellington,' p. 179, published in 1869 by Sampson Low & Co. in their charming "Bayard Series of Choice Companionable Books ":

" Great misapprehension prevails, at home and abroad, concerning the origin of this sobriquet. The fact is it arose out of the building of an iron steam-