Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 11.djvu/343

 9*8. XI APRIL 25, 1903.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

335

Argent, three hurcheons (hedgehogs) sable ; a piece of " canting " heraldry from the French h frisson. HERBERT MAXWELL.

William Harrison, of Barlow Grange, co. Notts, son of William Harrison, of Carley, co. Bucks, had the following arms granted to him 1 November, 1609, by Richard St. George, Norry : Or, a fess gules, fretty of the first ; on chief three escutcheons of the second. Crest, a hedgehog passant or, in his mouth an apple, slipped and leaved ppr. The fami- lies of Hercy and Harris bore this animal for their crest. JOHN RADCLIFFE.

The undermentioned bear the hedgehog as a crest :

" Harris, Salop, a hedgehog az.

" Harris, Salop, a hedgehog or.

"Harris, Eng., a hedgehog ppr., charged with a key az. Ubique patriam reminisci.

"Earl and Baron of Malmesbury and Viscount Fitz-Harris (Harris), a hedgehog or, charged on side with three arrows, one in pale, two in saltier, ar., and across them barwise a key az. Je raain- tiendrai.

"Fitz-Harris, a hedgehog passant ppr."

Fairbairn's 'Crests,' 1860.

Numerous other families are given by Fair- bairn and by Washbourne (1882) as bearing the hedgehog, but Tasker is not mentioned. I have a book-plate (c. 1840 ?) of Joseph Tasker, Middleton Hall, Essex, and London, which bears a hedgehog ppr. ADRIAN WHEELER.

THE COPE (9 th S. x. 285, 374, 495 ; xi. 93, 172). One of the few remaining clergy of the early days of the Oxford revival, whose memory goes back fifty years and more, tells me that he recollects several cases of the cope being used as the Eucharistic vestment in 1850 or thereabouts. Amongst others who celebrated in it were Stephen Hawker, the poet- vicar of Morwenstow, and the late Lord De-La- Warr when vicar of Withyham, Sussex :

"There were others, though I cannot at this distance of time recall their names. Canon Cham- berlain, vicar of S. Thomas ye Martyr, Oxford, was the first to resume the chasuble, but he wore it over a surplice and with a black stole and coloured fringes. He allowed me to celebrate at his church on Corpus Christi Day, 1865, vested in the full Eucharistic vestments."

These vestments, by the way, were the private property of a well-known Oxford antiquary. Another clergyman, since deceased, but who was ordained in 1843, remembered the two cases just quoted, as well as that of a cele- brant in Norfolk (Worstead) and one in Lincoln. " Several of the early Puseyites used the cope to mark the greater solemnity of the Holy Communion, but having no sympathy with them myself, I kept no record of their

doings." I have no doubt there are clergy still living who could supply the names of other celebrants in the cope, though I do not think that at any time it was more than a makeshift till the proper vestment for the Eucharist could be restored.

FREDERICK T. HIBGAME.

"BLETHERAMSKITE" (9 th S. x. 507). The foundation of this word is undoubtedly bladder or blather, bledder or blether, as a reference to the dialect glossaries will show, the -amskite being but a fanciful amplification. Perhaps skite is an extended pronunciation of skit=whim or fancy. In West Yorkshire blather, a windbag, is synonymous for foot- ball or bladder ; and a musical instrument, the strings of which are stretched across a bladder which serves as a sounding-board, is called a blather-baise. Halliwell also says bladder is sometimes pronounced blather, and the Rev. J. C. Atkinson, in his 'Cleveland Glossary,' says blather is evidently the same with bladder, only with a more special appli- cation. Blethering is given in the 'E.D.D.' as "noisy weeping," "a blithering long- tongued fellow " and a " blethering cow soon forgets her calf" being cited. ^ A blithering idiot is a garrulous person, a nuisance through talking too much on anything that comes uppermost. The " windbag" sense is preva- lent in the Cleveland district, blather, verb or noun, meaning to talk nonsense, gabblement. According to Smyth's ' Sailor's Word-Book,' which also explains blather as idle nonsense, a blether-head is a blockhead. With such evidence as this the ' H.E D.' seems hardly justified in saying that the "etymological form and history of blathery are uncertain ;

perhaps a derivative of bladder It has

with less likelihood been referred to blether, to speak nonsense."

J. HOLDEN MACMlCHAEL.

It is related in * Personal Sketches of his Own Times,' by Sir Jonah Barrington (G. Koutledge & Sons, 1869). that when Lord Redesdale became Lord High Chancellor of Ireland, at one of the first dinners he gave to the judges and king's counsel his lordship remarked, when skating became the subject of conversation, that in his boyhood days all danger was avoided, for before they began to skate they always put blown bladders under their arms, and so if the ice happened to break they were buoyant and saved. "Ay, my lord ! " replied John Toler, Lord Norbury ; " that 's what we call blatheramskate in Ire- land." But Mr. Townsend Young, LL D., the editor of the work from which I have quoted, says in a foot-note at p. 186 : " Nou-