Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 11.djvu/240

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. XL MARCH 21,

by successive cooks, it disappeared entirely. Since reading * N. & Q.' I have found an old book, undated, lettered on the back " Glass, Cookery." The frontispiece has a lady in the costume of the time of George III., giving directions to her cook, and the following verse underneath :

The fair who 's Wise and oft consults our book, And thence directions gives her prudent Cook, With Choicest Viands has her table crown'd, And Health with Frugal Ellegance is found.

On the title-page is :

The Art of Cookery

Made Plain and Easy.

At the foot is :

" London, Printed for a Company of Booksellers and sold by L. Wangford in Fleet Street, and all other Booksellers in Great Britain and Ireland. Be careful to observe (Mrs. Glass being dead) that the genuine edition of her Art of Cookery is thus signed by W. Wangford."

MATILDA POLLARD. Belle Vue, Bengeo.

'N. & Q.,' 2 nd S. v. 322, furnishes a copy of Mrs. Glasse's advertisement of the articles sold at her shop in Tavistock Street, Covent Garden, taken from the fourth edition of her book 'The Art of Cookery made Plain and Easy,' London, 1751. It does not appear that her business as a " Warehouse Keeper " was very prosperous, for in May, 1754, she was declared bankrupt, for which see p. 444.

EVERARD HOME COLEMAN. 71, Brecknock Road.

"BAGM AN "= COMMERCIAL TRAVELLER (9 th S. xi. 149) Surely the spelling "bug-man," quoted by MR. A. WARREN, must have been a misprint. " Bagmen " appear to have been so styled from their originally carrying samples in bags. To travel as a commercial traveller, a ' bag-man," was styled "bumping the bags." 1 well remember many years ago hearing an old member of the fraternity, now long dead, say [ began * bumping the bags,' as they call it, in 1820." LOBUC.

The 'E.D.D.' says that in Cheshire he is known as " bags "-an old name from his formerly carrying samples with him on horse- back, in a pair of saddle-bags.

J. HOLDEN MACMlCHAEL.

A long article by the late CUTHBERT BEDE on

the explanation of this term given in Hotten's

blang Dictionary' appears in 'N. & Q '

'i R V1 \ 473 i E^HABD HOME COLEMAN /I, Brecknock Road.

u A MARRIED WOMAN ). The above certainly obtains

era man.

in Anglo-Saxon poetry e.g., in 'Beowulf 1. 944 runs, '* Whatever woman [hwylc mdgfta] brought forth this son." So in 1. 1284 mdgfta ift is the strength of woman as opposed to in. H. P. L.

In this neighbourhood " maiden " is, I think, more frequently heard than the shortened form, and it is, as " maid " is in most places I know, used of any female servant (domestic), whether married or single. C. C. B.

Epworth.

"LOON-SLATT" (9 th S. xi. 127, 174). When James I. was about to visit England in 1603 he, for the convenience of his suite, who presumably were not overburdened with English coin, issued a proclamation in which the interchangeable value of the money of the two countries was fixed. Thus the Scottish mark was to be of the value of thirteen pence halfpenny ('Annals of the Coinage of Great Britain,' vol. ii. p. 192).

HENRY SMYTH.

Harborne.

KEATS: "SLOTH" (9 th S. xi. 187). I fear Keats has made a sad mistake. He seems to refer to the animal known as a sloth-hound, and he has called him a sloth, for short, which is as bad as calling a cart-horse a cart. He may have confused the sloth-hound with the vegetarian sloth ; but it seems rather sad.

The sloth-hound is better known by the name of sleuth-hound; and I should like to point out a fact which I have nowhere seen noticed, viz., that the name sloth-hound is etymologically correct, and that sleuth-hound, common as it is, is only a dialectal variant. ^

And first, the etymology of sloth-hound is obvious, viz., from the Old Norse sloth, a track, a trail. It means the animal who follows the sloth or track. That sloth is the correct form for " track " appears from the following. Sloth, a path, a track, occurs ten times in the 'Ormulum': 11. 11&4, 3238, 4989, 5296, 5618, 6664, 8540, 8875, 10708, 14588 ; and four times in the 'Cursor Mundi': 11. 1254, 1285, 4791, 18786. Hence the compound sloth- brache, a sloth-hound, in 'Wallace,' v. 96; written sloith-hund in the same, v. 135, with the word sloith, in the sense of track, two lines below.

In the North we find the variant sluth, whence the derivative sluthe-hunde in the ' Catholicon Anglicum,' p. 345. And in Bar- bour's * Bruce' the forms are : sleuth, a track, vii. 21, 44; sleuth-hund, vi. 484, 669; sluth- hwnd, vi. 36. It is probably from the famous story in Barbour that this Northern form