Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 10.djvu/61

 9 ts.x. JULY 19, 1902.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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to hold coins offered in honour of St. Beuno for the benefit of cattle and sheep.

JOHN HOBSON MATTHEWS. Town Hall, Cardiff.

WESTMINSTER CITY MOTTO (9 th S. ix. 485 ; x. 11). I wish just to put .on record the following statement. Some little time ago I was consulted as to a suitable motto for the new city of Westminster, and was told that it had been decided that it must be an Anglo-Saxon one. It seemed to me that an appropriate one exists in 1. 658 of the national epic ' Beowulf ' (merely omitting nu). It runs thus : " Hafa ond geheald husa selest," i. e., " Have (or possess) and hold (or maintain) the best of (all) houses " ; with reference to the Houses of Parliament. I believe now that I have been hoaxed. Indeed, I ought to have known that the last thing an English city would care to adopt would be a motto in that language which the majority of Englishmen so heartily contemn. Perhaps in the next century it may command the respect it deserves. WALTER W. SKEAT.

" MERESTEADS" OR " MESESTEADS " (9 th S. ix. 248, 437 ; x. 9). The evidence certainly seems to show that the original term was meestead or meastead, a compound of mease and stead. The shortening to misted is normal ; after which the changes to meadstead and mearstead are due to the erroneous workings of popular etymology. The form mease or mese (see 4 Cent. Dict.,'s.v. 'Mease') is allied to mess-iiage, no doubt, but is more familiar to us in the form manse. All these \vords are from the late Latin mansa, as the ' Century Dictionary ' and Webster say, and are due to the Latin manere. The sense of mesestead is therefore "manse-place, or holding on which a dwell- ing-place exists." The Old French forms are numerous, and are thus given in Godefroy : " Mes, mez, meis, mex, meix, maix, miex, mietz, mas, s. m. et f., maison de campagne, ferme, propriete rurale, jardin ; habitation, de- meure," &c. Here follow thirty examples of its use, and some ten examples in place- names. In fact, it is extremely common, being merely the familiar mais-on without the suffix ; and maison represents the Latin mansionem. CELER.

Q. V. asks from what part of England Governor Bradford came. The answer is, from Austerfield, near Bawtry, and not far from here. The Church Covenant of the Baptist congregation meeting at Epworth is dated 4 January, 1599, and bears the signa- tures of John Morton, William Brewster, and William Bradford. Of these men Bradford

was afterwards Governor of the colony at New Plymouth, and .Brewster ruling elder. Misted is not the only word that connects that colony with these parts. I never read a New England novel without coming across a score of " Americanisms " that are still in common use here. C. C. B.

Epworth.

LOVEL : DE HAUTVILLE (9 th S. x. 9). Over the door of Staunton Court, South Worcester- shire, is a shield, Lion rampant between cross- lets fitche, attributed to De Hautville. The same appears in Staunton Church quartered with the arms of St. Loe Horton Whit- tington De Staunton. At Meysey Hampton, Gloucestershire, the arms are quartered with those of Jenner Vaux Horton Whittington St. Loe. Somewhat the same is found at Chew Magna Church in Somerset, where is a wooden monument to Sir John de Hautevelle, who lived in the time of Henry III, and the crosslets were given him for going to the Holy Land. He is supposed to have been a giant, and to have thrown a great stone from the hill of Stan ton Drew. I have some- where notes re Hautville and Lovel, and should like to meet or hear from T. W. C. Was the lion argent or sable? ditto the crosslets fitche 1 J. G. HAWKINS.

Staunton Court, near Gloucester.

TEDULA, A BIRD (9 th S. ix. 389, 433, 516). MR. C. S. WARD will find in Lindsay's ' Latin Language,' p. 353, an account of the d suffix in Latin, or which the form ednla seems to have been used to express the names of certain birds and animals ; -edo was used to express certain ailments, \ikefrigedo, riibedo, &c. It seems not unlikely that a form like monedula (conceived to come from monere) controlled the form of the words in edula. Acredula can hardly be thrush, for in the 'Philomela' we find it distinguished from drosca. H. A. STRONG.

University College, Liverpool.

ALMANAC MEDALS (9 th S. viii. 344, 467). 1 clip the following from the Daily Mail of 4 July :

" While excavating at some old cottages at High Wycombe, Bucks, yesterday, a workman discovered a calendar coin dated 1797. It is of copper, and about the size of a four-shilling piece. On one side are clearly engraved the dates of the Sundays of the whole year, with special reference to Septua- gesima, Advent, Lent, Easter, Holy Thursday, Whit Sunday, and Trinity Sunday. On the other side there is the every-day calendar for the year."

In a letter to the same newspaper three days later the llev. James Sprunt describes one of these "copper calendars," dated 1766, which is in his possession. A few years ago