Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 11.djvu/245

 9*8. XL MARCH 21, 1903.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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said when he painted his (hind quarters) sky- blue scarlet, to go to a fancy dress ball."

FRANK REDE FOWKE. 24, Netherton Grove, S.W.

" Neat but not gaudy, as the devil said when he painted his tail sky-blue." W. Carew Hazlitt's ' English Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases,' 1869 ; second edition, 1882.

" The nation, indeed, possesses one or two interest- ing individuals, whose affectation is, as we have seen, strikingly manifested in their lake villas ; but every rule has its exceptions ; and, even on these gifted personages, the affectation sits so very awkwardly, so like a velvet bonnet on a ploughman's carroty hair, that it is evidently a late acquisition. Thus, one proprietor of land on Windermere, who has built unto himself a castellated mansion with round towers, and a Swiss cottage for a stable, has yet, with that admiration of the ' neat but not gaudy,' which is commonly reported to have influenced the devil when he painted his tail pea-green, painted the rocks at the back of his house pink, that they may look clean. This is a little outcrop of English feeling in the midst of the assumed romance." 'The Poetry of Architecture,' by Kata Phusin [i.e., John Ruskin]: No. 3, 'The Villa.' In the Architec- tural Magazine, conducted by J. C. Loudon, v. 483, November, 1838.

It would appear from this that the author of this quotation is still to seek, Ruskin apparently only quoting it.

" I think this will be as good a pattern for orders as I can think on. A little thin flowery border, round, neat, not gaudy, and the Drury Lane Apollo, with the harp at the top. Or shall I have no Apollo ? simply nothing? Or perhaps the comic muse ? " Lamb's letter to Wordsworth, June, 1806. ADRIAN WHEELER.

"DUTCH COURAGE" (9 th S. xi. 47, 97). May not this expression have arisen out of the

Bractice, stated to have existed, of making utch criminals sentenced to death drunk before hanging or beheading? The custom is often referred to, as in Webster's ' West- ward Ho,' iii. 3 (1607), " looking as pitifully as Dutchmen first made drunk, then carried to beheading." Taylor, the Water Poet, says it was the custom, " whereby they might be hanged senseless " (' Travels from London to Hamburgh,' 1617). And see also Shirley's 1 Constant Maid,' II. i. After all, the custom was only an exaggeration of our own "St. Giles's cup." H. C. HART.

"PLACE" (9 th S. x. 448; xi. 157). This term has as little connexion with palace as with royalty, and is plain English, meaning a plot of ground or site. At Salisbury each of the plots as set out when the town was first laid out in 1221 is called kt a place," and each " place " paid a chief rent of, I think, fourpence or sixpence to the bishop, and still pays it to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. In a lease from Dunkswell Abbey in 1483 is

a grant of a mill, " as also the piece of land called the Mill-Place." In many manors in Devon the principal barton, or rather the site on which the manor court was held, is called Court Place. No doubt manor courts, like hundred courts, were originally held in the open at certain well-known places. The legality of the court turned on its being held on the traditional site. The Stannaries Court was opened on Crockern Tor, and then adjourned for shelter, just as a vestry is opened in the vestry and then adjourned to the schoolroom. OSWALD J. KEICHEL.

Ala Ronde, Lympstone.

DAIRY WINDOWS (9 th S. xi. 50, 154). I am able to add still another example of the old- world dairy or cheese-chamber window. In the oldest part of this ancient Hall a bit dating from the thirteenth century there still remains an old wooden label fastened beneath the window of the old cheese room, and inscribed "Cheese Chamber." During some recent repairs I was most careful to see that this old label should not be touched.

DE MORO.

Hill Hall, Essex.

Windows with " dairy " painted on a board were common enough while the window-tax was in force. I remember one which survived the tax over a window in a house at Lipson, near Plymouth, then a country place. The house has now been pulled down for many years. LOBUC.

In the rectory of Stockton, Warwickshire, is a window with a board attached, inscribed " Cheese Room," which was formerly exempt from window-tax. H. T.

WITNESSING BY SIGNS (9 th S. xi. 109, 175). The use of a mark in place of ordinary signa- ture does not always indicate ignorance of the art of writing. Looking through some family papers, I recently came upon one in which a cross did duty for the signature of a relative who wrote a good hand till an illness in his old age caused blindness and obliged him to sign by a cross his numerous deeds and documents. Blindness may in many other instances account for the use of signs. I. CHALKLEY GOULD.

CASTLE HUSHEN, CASTLETOWN, ISLE OF MAN (9 th S. xi. 168). By " the Lady Molineux (that should be) " one writing of the year 1651 would prima facie appear to mean Mary, daughter of Sir Alexander Barlow, of Barlow, in Lancashire, who had married Caryll Moly- neux about 1650, and became Lady Molyneux some four years later, when her husband sue-