Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 10.djvu/37

 8.x. JULY 12,1008.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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before his coronation. I should like to know what action was taken on that writ, and whether any knighthoods resulted. LOBUC.

" FETLOCKED." Mr. Lowell, in the " Camelot " edition of his ' English Poets,' is made to say (p. 86) that Shakespeare had the advantage of using a language " to a certain extent established, but not yet fetlocked by diction- ary and grammar mongers." Is this use of the word "fetlocked" established, and, if so, what does it mean 1 C. C. B.

[Fetlocked appears in the ' H.E.D.' with the defini- tion " Hobbled or fastened by the fetlock ; hence, hampered.shackled." The illustrative quotations are from Pattison in ' Prior's Poems ' (1725) and this from Lowell.]

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. I ask the reason why this author received his second Christian name. I do not find it in the ' D.N.B.' T. WILSON.

Harpenden.

FOUNTAIN PEN. In the diary and corre- spondence of Miss Burney (Madame d'Arblay) occurs the following, under date 18 August, 1789 : " I spent the time very serenely, in my favourite wood, which abounds in seats of all sorts ; and then I took a fountain pen and wrote my rough journal for copying to my dear Sorelle." I should be much obliged by a description of such a pen in use the century before last. LIESE M. SHERRING.

Willesden, N.W.

STATISTICAL DATA. I should like to know of any book or publication containing such data as the height of St. Paul's dome, that of the Monument, length of Westminster Abbey, weight of London Bridge, &c. I want to make certain comparisons, on the Holt- Schooling method, between the output of a large factory and startling figures connected with well-known buildings, &c. SIGMA.

HEBREW INCANTATIONS. I have often had it in mind to write a query upon a point over which many a literary spirit in 'N. & Q.' might unburden his heart. Why is it that writers of romance invariably make their magicians deliver their incantations in the lingua sacra or turn to "some Hebrew volume " in the presence of some seeker after things hidden from human ken ? I note in Douglas Jerrold's story ' The Tragedy of the Till ' that the author makes Father Lotus who does not appear to be of Semitic seed ; the name is far from that" nurse a white cat and turn over a little Hebrew volume." Jerrold had too large a heart to mean any disrespect towards Jews. There must be some-

thing deeper than this this association of the abracadabra of magic with Hebrew. The Kabbala, of which the great work is the Tohar, is mystical, but not magical.

M. L. R. BRESLAR.

ARMS ON FIREBACK, In an old farmhouse in Sussex, E. Grinstead Division, at the back of what is now the kitchen fire, is an iron fire- back with this device on it : an anchor with two coils of rope above its arms single barb to the flukes surrounded by four fleur-de- lys ; above the anchor the date 1588, and below this the initials I. F. C. In the same house is another fireback bearing on it three swords : the centre sword with hilt upper- most, point down, the other two swords right and left of it, hilts downwards, and each within a lozenge-shaped shield. Can any one tell me to whom those arms, if such they are, belonged ? COLONEL.

ARMS OF ETON AND WINCHESTER *

COLLEGES. (9 th S. ix. 241, 330.)

THE following notes, which are mainly the outcome of recent inquiries, may possibly be of use to MR. UDAL,

1. The earliest krro'wn common seal of Win- chester College bore the founder's personal arms. A description of it, from an impression attached to a document of 10 Rich. II. (1386), is given by Mr. Kirby in Archceologia, Ivii. 290-1.

2. Apparently the arms of Winchester College nave never been officially recorded at Heralds' College. The three lilies attri- buted to Winchester College in Guillim's ' Display ' are also attributed to it in a manu- script book at Heralds' College, known as Vincent 187 (fol. 67). But this book is not an official record, and its authorship is un- known. It belonged to Augustine Vincent, Windsor Herald, who died in 1625/6, and it passed, with 'other books, to Heralds' College under the will of Ralph Sheldon, the anti- quary, who died in 1684. Sheldon had obtained these books from John Vincent, the herald's son. Cf. ' D.N.B.,' lii. 23 ; lyiii. 357.

3. The 'Display' was first published in 1610. The date of Vincent 187, fol. 67, is less certain. It is probably not later than the opening years of the seventeenth cen- tury ; but until more is known about its date it seems idle to consider what relation this book may bear to Guillim's statement about Winchester College.

4. The three lilies were also attributed to