Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/431

 9* s. ii. NOV. 26,

NOTES AND QUERIES.

423

lessor as "Fifehyda et other Fifehyda" i.e., two Fivehides, now compounded into one, Fitzhead (Eyton, ' Domesday Studies,' Somerset, i. 145).

Minehead can scarcely mean the " summer residence on the rock," as all who know the place may see at a glance. In Domesday it is written " in Hundredo Manehef vse " and " Maneheva," which seem to point rather to heved than to hafod. The final syllable seems to denote the rock rather than the first. Magen-he6fod or heved, i.e. Main-head (land), is more true as a descriptive name.

F. T. ELWORTHY.

There are two names in -head sufficiently curious to be added to those which I have already noticed (ante, p. 285). One of them is Fifehead, which occurs three times in Dorset, and five times in Somerset. It denotes a .manor which contained five hides of land. The other is Woolhead in Lancashire, where -a wolf's head was erected on a post as a boundary mark or tribal emblem. So Wolley in Yorkshire was anciently Wolfelay, the "wolfleigh." ISAAC TAYLOR.

" AERIAL TOUR." The well-known stanzas in Beattie's 'Minstrel' on the 'Melodies of Morn' close thus, according to Campbell's ' Specimens,' vii. 429, and the Aldine edition of Beattie's ' Poems ':

Through rustling corn the hare astonish'd springs ; -Slow tolls the village clock the drowsy hour ; The partridge bursts away on whirring wings; Deep mourns the turtle in sequester' doower, And shrill lark carols clear from her aerial tour.

Prof. Saintsbury, who disposes rather sum- marily of Beattie in Mr. Ward's ' English Poets,' reads "aerial tower." It would be interesting to know which of the forms -the poet himself actually used. If it was " tour," then he may have meant " tower," as others have done ; but it is more probable that he was thinking of the circling, wheeling flight of the bird than of the mere pitch to which it had attained. Editors of Milton differ similarly in their presentation of the passage in 'Paradise Lost,' xi. 185, where tour " seems to be the preferable form :

The bird of Jove, stoopt from his aery tour, Two birds of gayest plume before him drove.

" High - tow'ring " would appear to be the reading of 'Paradise Regained,' ii. 280, though " touring" might do. In reference to Beattie, it is noticeable that his editors allow him to describe the female bird as the song- ster ; it would be as easy to change " her " to "his" as to alter the spelling of "tour." Shaksreare, Milton, D'Avenant ("The lark now leaves his watery nest "), and Thomson

all attribute the flight and the song to the male bird, which, presumably, is in accord- ance with natural law. THOMAS BAYNE. ! Helensburgh, N.B.

HENRY SCOGAN AND CHAUCER. Prof. Lounsbury, of Yale, a vigilant student of Chaucer, wishes the correction made in i ' N. & Q.' of an unlucky slip in the article on Scogan in the ' Dictionary of National Bio- graphy.' It is there stated that Chaucer's well-known and much admired balade 'Fie fro the pres' is undoubtedly by Henry Scogan. Every one knows, of course, that it is by Chaucer. F. J. F.

AURORA BOREALIS. (See 7 th S. y. 46, 117, 312.) In ' The Faerie Queene,' bk. iv. canto i., there is the following fine stanza (13) de- scriptive of "incomparable Britomart," as Scott calls her in ' Marmion ':

With that her glistering helmet she unlaced ; Which doft, her golden locks that were upbound Still in a knot, unto her heels down traced, And like a silken veil in compass round About her back and all her body wound : Like as the shining sky in summer's night, What time the days with scorching heat abound, Is crested all with lines of fiery light, That it prodigious seems in common people's sight.

Jortin, in a note quoted in Todd's 'Spenser, 1861, says, " Spenser here gives a description of what we call Aurora Borealis."

E. L. G.'s description, at the second refer- ence, of the aurora that he saw near London during the siege of Paris is suggestive of Milton's fine lines in ' Paradise Lost,' bk. ii. 533-8 ; also of ' The Lay of the Last Min- strel,' ii. 8. There seems to me something singularly weird and unearthly about the last couplet of this stanza :

He knew by the streamers that shot so bright

That spirits were riding the northern light.

JONATHAN BOUCHIER. Ropley, Hampshire.

ALURED OR AVERAY CORNBURGH. The Athenaeum of 29 October, in a notice of the first volume of the ' Calendar of Inquisitions post Mortem,' writes :

"A name which excites comment is that of ' Alfred ' Cornburgh, whose Inquisition post mortem occurs in this volume. Was ' Alfred ' a name then in use, or has the editor taken on himself so to render 'Aluredus'? We ask because this man. who was a squire of the body to Henry VI. and Edward IV., and who founded a chantry at Rom- ford, occurs also in the recently published Calendar of Edward IV. Patent Rolls, where the editor indexes him as ' Alfred,' and treats ' Averay Corne- burght ' as a different person. The form ' Averay ' is there taken from a document in English, and is, we believe, the name the man really bore. The point is of interest because antiquaries have always