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NOTES AND QUERIES. p* s. x. NOV. 22, 1002.

Ho ! ' chap, xxx., adopts the former mode of spelling, but uses it in the same sense : " If everybody's caranting about to once, each after his own men, nobody 'il find nothing in such a scrimmage as that." .This places it in the Devonshire dialect.

EVERARD HOME COLEMAN. 71, Brecknock Road.

Has this word any connexion with the word " Courant," the name (so pronounced) of the oldest Chester newspaper ?

T. CANN HUGHES.

Lancaster.

"BEER": "BuR" (9 th S. x. 328). If the Devonshire people pronounce the A.-S. bur as " bower," as they certainly seem to do in the word bowerly, this is not only not par- ticularly like beer, but a long way off from it. It is even less likely that the word is Cornish.

In Kemble's ' Charters,' vol. vi. 181, we find "on Suthbeara suGweardne." If this refers to a Soutkbeer, it would seem as if beam is for bearo or beam, the ace. sing, of the masc. sb. bearu, a grove or wood. It is not unlikely that woods were even more plentiful than cottages in early Devon. But this is only a guess.

I am sure we should all be delighted to receive any reference to any reasonable book on place-names ; but I fear that there is none to be had. I nave carefully read the " new edition," dated 1872, of 'Traces of History in the Names of Places,' by Flavell Edmunds. It concludes with eight pages of laudatory extracts from reviews, and it tells us that the Rut- in Rutland is English, "from rot, red." A writer who imagines that rot is our old spelling of red does not inspire confidence. WALTER W. SKEAT.

OLD PEWTER-MARKS (9 th S. x. 328). Miss MABEL GOOD will find an interesting article, entitled 'Some Notes on Pewter and the Pewterer's Craft,' by L. Ingleby Wood, in the number of the Connoisseur for last March. There is a pewter basin for the font in Wel- lington Church, Sussex. Two pewter plates were recently found in excavations near Guy's Hospital, and exhibited to the Society of Antiquaries by Mr. Charles Hercules Read on 15 March, 1900. The Rev. G. H. Engleheart, M.A., read a paper before the same Society on 25 November, 1897, on a series of pewter vessels found at Appleshaw, Hants, and now in the British Museum. I have an old pewter tankard, with a mark which may be described as follows : a crown between three stars and the initials W. R. Per- haps MR. HOPE can say who the pewterer

was. It belonged to my grandfather, Robert Hughes, of Chester, and has his initials.

T. CANN HUGHES, M.A., F.S.A. Lancaster.

The best papers on these were in the Exchange and Mart a few years ago.

E. E. COPE. 13c, Hyde Park Mansions, W.

OLDEST WOODEN CHURCH AND UNIVERSITY (9 th S. x. 245). The old church at Borgund is under the shadow of a hill known as Vind- hellen. It is not used for divine service, but preserved by the Antiquarian Society of Christiania. Although ascribed to the early part of the twelfth century, in my own judgment comparatively little of the original wood remains. Fortun Church claims to belong to about the same date. I formed one of a very pleasant party at Bergen who drove out to Fjosanger to see it a few summers ago. Originally erected at Fortun, it had the mis-" fortun' " to be purchased some years since by Mr. Gade, the American consul at Bergen He removed it and re-erected it in his own grounds. It is built entirely of pine, and is reputed to date from 1150. But as an actual example of early wood- work it possesses scant interest. Little, if anything, of the actual edifice remains. The triple tiers of roof and the covered arcading surrounding the building lay no claim what- ever to antiquity. Only the two doors and some panelling seem to be mediaeval work. Both the former are got out of single planks remarkably fine ones about three feet in width. This is wider than any planks can be obtained nowadays, even from Hamar (seventy-eight miles north of Christiania), where the noblest pines in Europe grow. The major part of the quaint edifice does not seem to be anything like so old as myself. Much is quite new, daubed over with a sticky, treacle-like varnish. Stephens's brown stain is also greatly in evidence. HARRY HEMS.

Fair Park, Exeter.

The St. James's Gazette, according to URLLAD, names El Azhar, founded in 975, as the oldest university in the world. Is this a recognized fact ? The ' Encyclopaedia Britannica,' ninth edition, and ' Chainbers's Encyclopedia,' new edition, 1895, state that the University of Salerno was founded in the ninth century. CUTHBERT E. A. CLAYTON.

Richmond, Surrey.

CECIL RHODES'S ANCESTORS (9 th S. ix. 325, 436, 517 ; x. 294). A very full account of Mr. Rhodes's family is given in St. Pancras Notes and Queries, part i. pp. 1, 4, 9, of which the