Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 11.djvu/183

 9" s. xi. FEB. 25, iocs.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

175

sidered my opinion that the hangman is meant. Such a meaning is possible, but it is safer to regard " loon-slatt " as a cant term for the Scottish coin. F. ADAMS.

115, Albany Road, Camberwell.

" Slatt " is said in some old slang dic- tionaries to mean a half-crown. If this be correct, "loon's-slat" would be a coin such as would be mistaken by a loon for a half- crown. The old Scots coin, a merk, was worth thirteen pence halfpenny.

JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT.

" OUTSTRIP " (9 th S. xi. 48). The expression quoted by DR. MURRAY appears from the context to have been used by Henry James Byron, the dramatist, who was a friend of W. C. Hazlitt, and I should gather from the passage that it occurred in conversation, perhaps with Hazlitt himself, and was not quoted from any of his writings.

H. J. B. CLEMENTS. Killadoon, Celbridge.

" TYPULATOR " (9 th S. x. 428, 516 ; xi. 72). In Ruggle's Latin comedy ' Ignoramus,' which was twice acted at Cambridge before James I. in the second decade of the seven- teenth century, we find this word mentioned :

Vinct. sir, I perceive you are mine own countryman, I have Latin to make, for God's sake help me. What 's Latin for an Alehouse-Keeper ?

Ignoramus. Tiplator cervisise, boy.

Actus V. scena x., Editio sexta. West- monasterii, MDCCXXXI.

JOHN T. CURRY.

WITNESSING BY SIGNS (9 th S. xi. 109). I have lately examined an attested copy of a will relating to a charity connected with this parish, dated 1710, bearing two similar signs to those mentioned by MR. FRANCIS R. RUSHTON. There are four signatures in all, the testator and three witnesses. One of the latter is the incumbent, and he and the testator were able to write. The two remaining witnesses sign by marks, one being a line with three strokes drawn through it, and the other a circle within a circle. JOHN T. PAGE.

West Haddon, Northamptonshire.

Signs of this kind were commonly used in former days in place of the cross which has

I now become almost universal. I have many documents so signed among my family papers. I think the signs went out of use, and were replaced by the cross, about the middle of the eighteenth century. I apprehend that

i they were of the same character as merchants' marks and swan-marks. Whether they were hereditary I will not venture to say ; but there is evidence that they were often indi-

vidual, not varied as the fancy of the hour dictated. EDWARD PEACOCK.

Kirton-in-Lindsey.

THE MITRE (9 th S. viii. 324, 493, 531 ; ix. 174, 334, 397, 496 ; x. 190, 290, 370, 435). With reference to the use of the mitre in the Anglican Church, it is, I think, worth noting that neither at the Coronation of Edward VII. nor at the enthronement of the new Arch- bishop of Canterbury did any bishop or archbishop wear a mitre. This would seem to point out that though individual bishops here and there may wear this headdress, the Anglican Church does not recognize it as part of the essential ornaments of her bishops. Neither of the archbishops wears a mitre, nor has any Archbishop of Canterbury or York worn one within living memory so far as I have been able to discover.

FREDERICK T. HIBGAME. [We cannot insert any more on this subject.]

ANNIE OF THARAU (9 th S. xi. 7, 91). The song ' Aennchen von Tharau ' was rendered into literary German by Herder in his ' Volks- lieder,' 1778, from the Low German original, 'Anke van Tharau,' by Simon Dach (1605- 1659). Dach wrote it in 1637 for his friend, a clergy man named Portatius, on the occasion of the latter's marriage to Anna Neander, the daughter of a pastor of Tharau, in what is now the province of East Prussia.

According to Arthur Kopp, the metre of the song, and perhaps part of the thought and of the words, were evidently borrowed by Dach from a Low German song (since lost), "Allemahl allemahl geyt etsoto," which was sung among the people at wedding festivals. The application to Annie of Tharau was, of course, original with Simon Dach. There is nothing in the simple circumstances of the writing of 'Anke van Tharau' to warrant the fanciful stories of the love of the poet himself for the fair Annie that arose later, and found literary expression in a comedy by Willibald Alexis and in a lyric opera by H. Hoffman and R. Fels.

Facts concerning the song and a reprint of Dach's Low German original may be found in F. M. Bbhme's * Volkstiimliche Lieder der Deutschen im 18 und 19 Jahrhundert,' Leipsic, 1895, pp. 288-90, and in the German literary journal Euphorion, vol. vii. pp. 319- 324 (by A. Kopp).

CHARLES ALLYN WILLIAMS.

Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.

Annie of Tharau was a real person. She was the daughter of Andreas Neander, pastor in the little town of Tharau, in East Prussia,