Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 12.djvu/359

 XIL OCT. si, im] NOTES AND QUERIES.

351

meant precisely the same thing, and were composite symbols. Sch never by any chance meant s (as in sin} followed by ch (as in chin). Let any one honestly attempt to sound s followed by ch, and then ask himself how he likes it in an initial position, and if he thinks it is English. WALTER W. SKEAT.

ST. MARY AXE : ST. MICHAEL LE QUERNE (9 th S. x. 425 ; xi. 110, 231 ; xii. 170, 253). While COL. PRIDEAUX kindly alludes in com- plimentary terms to my acquaintance with the history of London house-signs, he takes away somewhat with his left hand what he gives with the right when, in the same breath, he says I am led " to ascribe to their influence a wider area than that which pro- perly pertains to it." But may I remind COL. PRIDEAUX that I have gone no further than to emphasize the probability of three of the London churches having received a colloquial suffixal designation not an official designation, as he implies, although the collo- quial form may have been used officially from the accidental circumstance of their having been contiguous to a house with a locally well-known sign, and this merely to distinguish them from other churches dedicated to saints with the same name? Owing to a long and close study of the signs of London, I think I am hardly in danger of overrating their influence with regard to the distribution of topographical nomencla- ture. COL. PRIDEAUX says that I have not explained why the designation of St. Mary's Church was not latinized "ad securim : ' in- stead of "apud Axe." One would hardly have thought an explanation necessary. In the first place, so to describe it would have been a unique exception to what was a general rule, namely, to describe the situation of churches in plain English and according either to their local associations or to some archi- tectural peculiarity. St. Mary's in Cheapside, for instance, was colloquially St. Mary-le-Bow, but officially, I believe, St. Mary-de-Arcubus; St. Martin's-in-the-Vintry, and many others. And the church in question was not known coram populo as " St. Mary apud Axe," but as " St. Mary Axe." Of course the designation " St. Mary apud Axe " might frequently occur in ecclesiastical documents, but the "Axe," 1 maintain, was no part of the church's dedica tion formula.

No one could be more ready than mysel: to curl up, like a snail in his shell, at th touch of the argumentum ad judicium. Bu until the document be forthcoming, upon which COL. PRIDEAUX cannot at present lay his hand, containing an allusion in a Latin

orm to St. Margaret Pattens, I reserve my ight to the opinion that the sub-title of that hurch was derived from the sign of the first )atten-maker to set up, under its shadow, in direct evidence that there ever was a sign of he Patten there, as COL. PRIDEAUX says, yet t is extremely probable that there was, con- idering how it was a well-known sign, as I have pointed out, both in the singular and he plural, in other parts of London (p. 171,
 * hat particular trade. While there is no

Ol. 1). J. HOLDEN MACMlCHAEL.

THE BORROWING DAYS (9 th S. xii. 23). Let

me add another version of the story account-

ng for the meteorological peculiarities of the

md of March and the beginning of April to

hat which has been already told :

" For the last few days of March it was very wet and stormy. They say it is always so in Spain, and joncerning this there is an old Spanish story. A shepherd once said to March that if he would >ehave well he would make him a present of a amb. March promised to deserve it, and conducted limself admirably. When he was going out he asked the shepherd for the promised lamb ; but the sheep and the lambs were so very beautiful that restraint remained to March, answered that he would not give it to him. ' You will not give it to me ? ' said March. ' Then you do not recollect that n the three days which remain to me, and three which my comrade April will lend me, your sheep will have to bring forth their young ' ; and for six days the rain and cold was so terrible that all the sheep and all the lambs died." ' Wanderings in Spain,' p. 170.
 * he shepherd, considering that only three days of

The folk-tales do not accord with our English saying, " March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb." ST. SWITHIN.

GEOLOGY OF KURLAND (9 th S. xii. 208). Though I have not any personal knowledge of the district between Windau and Goldingen, it would seem that if the limestone mentioned lies above the Devonian sandstone, it may be one of the lower limestones or limestone shales of the carboniferous formations, and if below, then one of the upper limestone beds of the Upper Silurian formation.

RONALD DIXON.

46, Marlborough Avenue, Hull.

TEA AS A MEAL (8 th S. ix. 387 ; x. 244). MR. EDWARD H. MARSHALL gave at the latter reference, in reply to a query of mine, a quotation from 'The Vicar of Wakefield ' indicating the use in 1766 of tea as descrip- tive of a meal, as apart from the beverage drunk at it. But I find at 5 th S. v. 145 an extract from Dr. Alexander Carlyle's ' Auto- biography ' (p. 434), in which, describing the fashionable mode of living at Harrogate in 1763, it is said : *' The ladies gave afternoon's