Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 11.djvu/495

 9" S. XL JUNE 20, 1903.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

487

at the reference given are confined to any one district. Mun is the usual form of must in South Notts, and the saying "What raun be mun be " has been familiar to me all my life. So also with the candle riddle, " Nanny Netticoat in a white petticoat," and the word "middling." The flower-name " milkmaids " refers to the cuckoo-flower or lady-smock (Cardamine pratensis). (J. C. B.

I enclose a variant of the riddle for a candle :

Little Nelly Netticoat With a white petticoat ; She has a red nose, And the longer she lives The shorter she grows.

NORTH MIDLAND.

RIMING EPITAPH. On the front page of the Globe of 3 April one reads :

" A good example of an ingenious form of rhym- ing epitaph is found in Curmwallen [?] Churchyard, Cornwall :

Shall we all die ?

We shall die all. All die shall we ?

Die all we shall.

The permutations fit well the subject of the great mutation."

This inscription, of which one would like to have the date, is not a mere anagram, but an acrostic also. E. S. DODGSON.

"CONJUGATE."

" Miss L. is a[n American] beauty of whom her mother said, in bringing her to England, ' She will most certainly conjugate there,' which [was] told to Lady Emily de Burgh, who answered, ' What is cer- tain is that she will not decline? "Hon. Susan H. Oldfield's 'Harriet, Countess of Granville,' 1901, p. 158.

L. L. K.

m "JEER." Prof. Skeat has probably con- vinced most of his readers that jeer comes from Old French giere=chiere, as he explains it in the Transactions of the Philological Society. But may it not be suggested that the face denoted by the word is not that of the person derided, but that of the mocker who "makes faces" at him or her 1 ? This interpretation explains more satisfactorily the use of the preposition at in "jeer at" for the other side of the process would seem to require " to jeer out." E. S. DODGSON. [See ante, p. 24.]

THE * WIRELESS ' NEWSPAPER. I venture to think it worth while to record in ' N. & Q.' the following, which is from the Daily News, 18 April :

"The first and probably the only newspaper wholly dependent upon wireless despatches was recently started at Avalon, on Santa Catalina Island, twenty-five miles from the Californian coast.

The newspaper is called the Wireless, and prints every morning news of the world received by wire- less messages. There is no cable to the island. The news is sent daily by the correspondent of the paper at Los Angeles, California."

T. W. N.

HOTEL SIGN. -The following, now (3 April) outside a curiosity shop in Falmouth, is said to have come from near Bodmin. It would be interesting to get it located and to know how recently it was actually doing service : TEMPURENCE

HOTEL

Ellen Jone sells here Lemonade & ginger beer Cowheels & tripe every fridey Sekond hand does to mak ee tidy Crox and kettles pans & all And godley bokes to save your sole Man traps gins & pattens likewise And on Saturday nights hot mutton pies

C. S. WARD.

Qutritt,

WE must request correspondents desiring infor- mation on family matters of only private interest to affix their names and addresses to their queries, in orderthat the answers may be addressed to them direct.

MONSIEUR BEAUCAIRE. Was there such a person ; or is the part so well acted by Mr. Lewis Waller at the Comedy Theatre entirely imaginary ? I am told the play is taken from a book of that name. Perhaps some of your correspondents can enlighten me. W. B.

Rise Park, Hull.

[A full answer to your inquiry will be found in the Athenceum for 1 November, 1902, in the dramatic " Week."]

'THE CORSICANS.' Did Sir Walter Scott, with strict anonymity, publish " The Corsi- cans : a Drama in Four Acts, translated from the German of Kotzebue. Dublin, T. Burn- side, for the Trade, 1799 '? Is there sufficient internal evidence to show, as I thought forty- five years ago there was, that " Gortz [sic] of Berlingen [sic]. Dublin, printed by J. Stock- dale for Bernard Dornin, (20th March) 1799," and * The Corsicans ' are by the same hand ? I refer to the first or Dublin edition of these plays only. What side-lights have, during the last one hundred years, gone to show that there is truth in this surmise 1 What are the past references to ' Gortz ' and l The Corsicans ' (Dublin edition) in ' N. & Q.' or elsewhere 1 I have these two plays side by side, in a volume, before me, with the name Robert Crowe (a contemporary of Scott) written across scene i. of each play a sign that he witnessed the performance of them