Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/541

 9 ' h s - IL DEC - 31 > >98 -] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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Ailred of Rievaux (' Decem Scriptores,' 367) quam tnstrarn vulgus vocat." It is signi hcant that this twelfth-century sense of th term persists in the 'Scottish Alliterativ Poems so well edited by Mr. Amours for th, bcottish Text Society, where it is found ir the Awntyrs of Arthure,' a poem probablv ot about the middle of the fourteenth century. In each instance it has relation t< hunting, and has not become generic as i place of assignation. In Barbour's 'Bruce, however, written in 1375 the interval was short the word has become detached entirely from its hunting connexion and has taken on its present general meaning, a fact which students of Scottish literature will not be in the least surprised to note as equally characteristic of the instances in the metrical ' Legends of the Saints.' Chaucer, it must be remembered, was still using the word as hunters' property ('Troilus,' ii. 1534), although in Scotland Wyntoun, about half a century later than Barbour, took from it the same general service as Barbour did. On the point of etymology Mr. Amours, in his note (p. 333) to the ' Alliterative Poems,' shows a well-supported distrust of the supposed etymological alliance of " trust " arid " tryst" on the Scandinavian side. GEO. NEILSON. Glasgow.

EATING OF SEALS (9 th S. i. 305 ; ii. 313, 397). In the octavo edition of ' The Works of Mr. William Shakespear,' Jacob Tonson, 1709, edited by N. Howe, Esq., ' The History of Sir John Oldcastle ' is included. This was the first octavo edition, and the next after the fourth folio. No mention is made of the play in the preface, but the editor there says of the character of Falstaff in 'The Merry Wives of Windsor':

" This part of Falstaff is said to have been written originally under the name of Oldcastle ; some of that family then remaining, the Queen was pleas'd to command him to alter it ; upon which he made use of Falstaff."

The play ' Sir John Oldcastle, ' though it commences with the words Act I. scene i., contains no further division, and the passage where the sumner is forced by Harpool to eat the parchment and wax occurs at the fourteenth page, out of a total of sixty -seven pages. W. B. H.

PASSAGE IN KINGIAKE (9 th S. ii. 388). I venture to mention that I have understood that the passage quoted from ' The Invasion of the Crimea,' vol. iv. p. 350, by your corre- spondent W. S., referred to Viscount Fitz- gibbon, of the 8th Hussars. As he lay terribly wounded after the charge at

Balaklava, in his anguish he implored succour from some retiring men of the ever famous Light Brigade. But although They that had fought so well Came thro' the jaws of death, Back from the mouth of hell, All that was left of them, Left of six hundred,

yet, sad to say, not one of those appealed to had it in his heart to halt, dismount, and place on his charger the mangled body of the dying lieutenant of the Eoyal Irish Hussars, who was only twenty - five years of age. Viscount Fitzgibbon, by the way, was grand- son of the haughty and imperious Lord Chancellor of Ireland, John, Earl of Clare, who died in 1802, aged fifty-three, and was buried amidst the execrations of the people. What became of the remains of the ill-fated Fitzgibbon the last heir to the earldom of Clare was, it has been stated, never ascer- tained. With regard to the burial of the Earl of Clare, perhaps Antony's remark, in his great oration on the death of Caesar, may not be out of place in 'N. & Q.':

O judgment ! thou art fled to brutish beasts. ' Julius Csesar,' III. ii.

HENRY GERALD HOPE. Clapham, S.W.

HAILEYBURY (9 th S. ii. 427). Macaulay was a member of the commission which was ap- pointed in 1854 " to take into consideration )he subject of the examination of candidates ! or the Civil Service of the East India iompany." The greater part of the report was believed to nave been written by the land of Macaulay himself" ('Memorials of Old Haileybury College,' Monier - Williams). There is a review of Malthus's pamphlet defending the college against its antagonists n the Edinburgh Review, vol. liv., but I cannot find anywhere the particular charges vhich M. P. B. wishes to trace.

ED. PHILIP BELBEN. Branksome Chine, Bournemouth.

THE CALLING OF THE SEA (7 th S. ix. 149, 13; xi. 151, 372 ; 9 th S. ii. 11). In a volume f tales and episodes by Fiona Macleod, lepicting the Scottish Celts of the western sles, there is one sketch called 'The Ninth iVave.' In it a Gaelic song or rune of the Faring of the Tide ' has these lines :

nd may there be no calling in the Flow, this

Struth-mara, nd may there be no burden in the Ebb ! Ochone !

When asked their meaning, Ivor, the singer, aid :

" ' When the great tide that wells out of the hollow [ the sea and sweeps towards all the coasts of the