Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 10.djvu/59

 9. s .x.juLYi9,i902.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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Donnina the right of transferring her hus- band's body to England ; and as her son John, coming to England, was naturalized in 1407, and settled on the ancestral estate of Sible Hedingham, it seems most likely that his father's bones were finally laid to rest in the church of that place.

The great Hawkwood himself was the second son of Gilbert de Hawkwood, a tan- ner of gentle blood ; and the tradition that he began life as a tailor in London probably originated in Italy, and from a corruption of his name, which Matteo Villani spells Gianni della Guglia (John of the Needle). The Italian chronicles usually call him Acuto or Aquto ; in Froissart he appears as Hac- coude; while he himself spei't his name in- differently Haucud, Haucwod, Haukcwod, and Haukutd. A. K. BAYLEY.

The following, from the sale (16 July) cata- logue of Messrs. Puttick & Simpson, is of con- siderable interest in this connexion :

"Lot 309. Shelley Family MSS. Collection of Memoranda, comprising a settlement of the estate of P. B. Shelley, a Pedigree of the Shelley Family, and other matters connected with the Poet, 1791- 1816, compiled by T. H. Hope, solicitor to the Shelley Family, 2 vols. hf. bd. (binding slightly de- fective) Seec. XIX."

KONALD DlXON.

46, Marlborough Avenue, Hull.

GUEST FAMILY (9 th S. ix. 508). The name suggests from its spelling a Celtic rather than a Teutonic origin. The words gwesti and gest are used respectively in old Welsh and Anglo-Saxon with the same meaning, namely "stranger." As a personal name Gest is found in both Celtic and Teutonic sources. Presumably, therefore, its origin is anterior to either. The name occurs in the 'Laxdaela Saga' (vide Mrs. Press's transla- tion, chap. Ixvi.). It appears also in the lists of kings contained in the ' Pictish Chronicle ' and the Irish Nennius (vide Skene's 'Celtic Scotland' and 'Four Ancient Books of Wales')- In these lists it is found in com- position in the names Gest, Gwrtich, and Wurgest, which Mr. Skene says are Cornish forms. He points out that Cymric gest takes the Irish form gusa, Cymric Ungust and Urgest having their Irish and Scottish equivalents in Aengus and Feargus, according to the phonetic rule by which Cymric gw becomes before a consonant u in Pictish, and before a vowel/, both in Pictish and Gaelic. Thus Cymric Gwrgust= Pictish Urgest= Gaelic Feargus. In Anglo-Saxon and English Cymric gw becomes w, losing the guttural, and corresponding to the Latin v(e.

georn, Weortgeorn, Vortigern), and on this analogy, taking Guest as a Welsh name, it would suggest the form West as a commoner English one. On the other hand, assuming a Teutonic original for the surname, it is difficult to account by any phonetic law for the spelling that is, for the insertion of the u.

It is significant also that the Irish edition of the ' Pictish Chronicle ' says, in regard to the names of the thirty Brudes, or kings of the Picts, that these were not only the names of men, but also divisions of land, so that the name may date back to tribal times, of which vestiges are possibly to be found surviving in geographical names such as Bar-gest and Moel-y-gest, near Portmadoc, and Hergest Hall in Herefordshire, once the home of a famous book of Welsh MSS.

On the whole, then, the evidence favours a Celtic origin for the name, and that an ancient one, probably as old as the tribal stage of Celtic society, and possibly dating from a period before trie Celtic and Teutonic speeches had separated. A CLANSMAN. .

Guest is, I think, an English, not a Welsh family name. As a place-name it occurs in Guestling (Sussex) and Guestwick (Durham). John Guest, ancestor of Lord Wimborne and founder of the Dowlais ironworks, migrated there from Shropshire, circa 1747 (see Burke's 'Peerage,' s.v. Wimborne). In Hutchins's ' Dorset,' vol. iii., third edition (s.v. Canford), the pedigree of John Guest, who was born in 1722, is traced back to John Guest, of Lind- ley, co. Salop, who was born in 1522. During the interval between the birth of the two John Guests the family remained in Shrop- shire, where the surname Guest is not un- common. There are several Guests in Kelly's ' Shropshire Directory. 1 J. A. J. HOUSDEN.

Canonbury, N.

STRAWBERRY LEAVES (9 th S. viii. 463, 513; ix. 153). May I refer your correspondents upon the significance of the use of strawberry leaves in thexjoronets of peers to the glossary of terms in Woodward's work on 'Heraldry' (ed. 1896), vol. ii. p. 444 ? He there states : " Strawberry leaves (F. feuilles de ache), the conventional term for the foliation of coronets and crowns." This would seem to confirm the reference on p. 513 (supra) that no par- ticular significance attaches to their being called strawberry leaves.

J. S. UDAL, F.S A.

Antigua, W.I.

TRINITY MONDAY (6 th S. xii. 167, 234, 523 ; 7 th S. i. 38). It may be of interest to add a few more instances of the use of this title for