Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 12.djvu/198

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NOTES AND QUERIES. P* & xn. SEPT. 5, im

mahogany table at dessert. There are two rowlocks on each side. On the stern "Jolly Boat" is painted. Inside are places (lined with red leather) for two decanters, and there are also holes for two stoppers. Can any reader tell me where the other two are? No one to whom I have shown it had ever seen a double coaster before.

M. ELLEN POOLE. Alsager, Cheshire.

"ALIAS" IN THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVEN- TEENTH CENTURIES. Can any of your readers inform me of the meaning and origin of "alias" in connexion with surnames about the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries? I am interested in the case of a family which preserved the use of an alias for more than a century. BEACON.

[But one instance of use in the sixteenth century isnotedinthe'N.E.D.'J

JOHN THOMAS TOWSON. Can any Liver- pool reader supply information concerning this gentleman ? He was about 1870 a prominent member of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire. Is he living ; and, if dead, when did he die, and where was he buried? T. CANN HUGHES, M.A., F.S.A.

Lancaster.

BENI-!SRAEL. Would any of your readers be so kind as to tell me how it is that the tribe of Jews in Bombay known as Beni- Israel numbers but 5,000 members, although the settlement has been in existence for 1,000 years? M. E. R.

COINCIDENCES.

(8 th S. viii. 124, 177, 270, 334; 9 th S.xii. 137.) ADVENTURES are to the adventurous, and coincidences, I suppose, are to the "coinci- dential," amongst whom I may reckon myself, as I have met with many in the course of my life. One occurred on the evening of Sunday, 9 August, just after I had read MR. PAGE'S communication. I was conversing with a literary friend an old Trinity man when our talk turned on

Prof- one of the renowned classical

school of Kennedy and Shilleto, whose contributions in years gone by were among the most valuable features of ' N. & Q.' My friend remarked that the Professor had told him that he ate less, drank less, and read more than any man in Cambridge, and that he had become a vegetarian, because he (iishked making his stomach a "sepulchre

for dead bullocks." As soon as my friend had gone, I took up the Athenwum for the previous day, and began to read the opening articlea review of Prof. Stanley Lane- Poole's ' Medieval India under Mohammedan Rule.' There I found a reference to the author's "vivid description " of the Emperor Akbar, who, amongst other things, "took meat but twice a week, and even then with repugnance, for he disliked making his body a 'tomb for beasts.'" Whether the learned Professor, who has read nearly everything that the printing-press has ever produced, borrowed his expression from some account of Akbar which he had unconsciously assimilated, I cannot say, but it is curious that within the space of ten minutes I should have encountered the same expressive meta- phor, employed first by a Cambridge pro- fessor, and secondly by a Mogul emperor- personages who on the surface would seem to have absolutely nothing in common with each other. W. F. PRIDEAUX.

I am tempted to contribute a couple of instances in my own experience, the strange- ness of which will perhaps be deemed a suf- ficient warrant. In the year 1876 I returned home one evening and heard a number of friends engaged in an animated discussion. I could hear their voices, but could riot distin- guish the words ; indeed, I did not wait to do so. On my opening the door and entering the room one of the party said : ** We are debating a point of history." I said, without more object than the most casual and frivolous remark can have, " I know what it is : you are discussing as to how James 1. was descended from Henry VII." To my most intense surprise they said, "Oh, you over- heard us." I found it all but impossible to persuade them that, by a pure arid thought- less guess, I had actually hit upon the subject of their debate.

In the autumn of 1881 I paid a first visit to Norwich, the original home of my paternal ancestors. One of my chief objects in going there was to see a certain brass, which, accord- ing to Blomefield's * Norfolk,' was preserved in the church of St. Peter, Mancroft, and bore an inscription ending with the distich :

Whos dvst lyeth here my own remaine

Tho now is parted yet once shall meete againe.

I accordingly went to St. Peter's, and it is easy to imagine my dismay when I found the interior in the hands of the restorer, the walls entirely covered with sacking, and the floor with sand and mortar. To find any particular monument was so obviously impossible that I did not attempt it, but went straight to the