Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 12.djvu/329

 s .xi] .-JOT. 24, loos.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

321

LONDON, ^ATURDAY, OCTOBER SA t 190S.

CONTENTS.-No. 304.

NOTES :-" The cutty black sow," 321 Shakespeariana, 323 Battle of the Nile T Lloyd, Republican, 324 Charles Potter The Picket, 325 Jela"leddin Marquess, 326 John Towneley National Flag, 327.

QUERIES : Heidelberg Gallery Publication by Subscrip- tion 'Battle of Prague 'Saying of Cobden Drywood, 327-Sbakespeare and Lord Burleigh The Oak, the Ash, and the Ivy Kliza Grimwood Jews in England Col. Roger McElligott Flint Buildings Startin Bohemian Bards -Dr. W. Munk, 328 K. L. Godkin Sweyn Arms Wanted British Hens' Protest Concordances " O. C. 1651 ""The truest wealth" M'Raghnall Tamboureilo, 329 " Woodvine " German Prophecy Mangosteen Markings, 330.

EEPLIES :-Pamla : Pamela O-Words in the ' N.E.D.,' 330 Count de Bruhl Holbein Portraits Carson, 331 Charles Reade in Boltou Row, 332 Hobgoblin's Claws- Memory Sandgate Castle "Peace, Retrenchment, and Reform "' Tales from Dreamland,' 333 Hamburg Car- dinals "Pass" Hawthorn, 334 Oranges Mr. Bland, Edinburgh Actor Richard Nash Jenkins's Hen Sworn Clerks in Chancery, 335 Lope de Vega Children's Festi- val Statue from Soho Square Mohammed's Coffin in Mid- Air Logans of Restalrig, 336" Red up "Breaking G-lass at Jewish Weddings Latin Riddle of Leo XIII. Ministerial Whitebait Dinner, 337 Coon Song, 338.

NOTES ON BOOKS: The Oxford Dictionary Book- Prices Current 'Charles and Mary Lamb's Books for Children Besant's 'Essays and Historiettes' 'History of the Family of Adams of Cavan' "The Fireside Dickens " Stevenson's ' Virginibus Puerisque ' Perkins's ' Cathedral Church of St. Albans ' ' Saga Book of the Viking Club ' Britain's Burse 'Educational Works.

Notices to Correpoudents.

gaits.

"THE CUTTY BLACK SOW." WE had a custom in the southern part of Carmarthenshire in my early boyhood of heaping up the stuff known as trash, left along the hedges after the latter had been cleaned and trimmed. The process of trim- ming and repairing was called trashd'r perthi. The heaps of trash, usually placed on the upper corners of the steep hillside fields, were set on fire at the beginning of winter. When the flames of these bonfires had died down, we used to jump over, or rather through, the live embers, scattering showers of sparks. Then the game was to race head- long through the darkness down to the stile or gate at the lower end of the field, yelling and screaming as we did so, and each endeavouring not to be the last to make his escape. I was very young, and cannot now recall the words we shouted ; but I remember most vividly the awful feeling caused by being " last" at the gate in the pitchy dark- ness. When listening to Prof. Rhys dealing, in the course of his epoch-making lectures on Celtic mythology, with the Welsh customs of Hallowe'en, I found the whole scene come back to me, forgotten doggerel and all, ** the

cutty black sow on every stile seize

the hindmost."

I subsequently made some investigations of my own, the firstfruits of which appeared in a short note in the A cademy (22 Feb., 1896) under the heading ' Shrew and Beshrew.' I there referred to some old verses I had copied out of Baines's 'Lancashire' on 'Auntient Customs in Games used by Boys and Girles, merrily sett out in Verse by Randle Holme (the second).' I am under the impression that Randle Holme was not the author of the little work entitled 'The Letting of Humour's Blood in the Headvaine ; with a new Morisco daunced by Seven Satyrs upon the bottome of Diogenes' table,' 8vo, Lond., 1611, which seems to be the original source. There are some interesting variations, however, in the two versions, such as "Christmas" for "Mid- summer," and " dame " for " dun " in the following lines :

At Shove-groate, Venter-poynt or Cross and Pile, At Beshrow him that 's Last at Yonder Stile, At Leaping o'er a Mid-sommer-bon-fier Or at the Drawing Dun out of the Myer.

I am quoting this at far second-hand, from the Literary Gazette of 26 November, 1836, p. 764, where it is given as an extract from the 'Book of Table Talk.' It dun is .the correct reading at any rate it is the usual one then it is not improbable that we have here a game derived from a Celtic source ; and I would point out that mieri is Welsh for a bramble-brake, that mwyar is Welsh for blackberries, and that the 'E.D.D.' gives "mwire" as a Worcestershire pronunciation of "mire." Ever since cattle-lifting and raiding over the Border gave way to a more peaceful intercourse the great roads leading from Wales towards London have been leisurely trodden by droves innumerable of black cattle and Welsh ponies a stream which has deposited a Welsh sediment among the English population all along the route, noticeable to this day even in London itself. What struck me especially, however, on reading the verses was the line

Beshrew him that 's last at yonder stile, for the sentiment is absolutely identical with that of our " cutty black sow " game. The ' H.E.D.,' on the authority of Prof. Rhys, says that there is no connexion between Welsh cwta and English ' ; cut "; but, curiously enough, in our part of Wales the poplar was called y pren cwt, and that, not because it was pollarded which it was not with us- but because the leaves were believed to be a salve for cuts or wounds. In the same way, although the above authorities deny any connexion between Welsh hivch and English