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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. HI. A, s, m

of such defensive weapons ; but I think the apparent inconsistency between the ideas expressed by " arms " and " peace " disappears with the explanation given above.

E. MEETON DEY.

St. Louis.

" CUTTING HIS STICK " (9 th S. ii. 326, 417). With regard to this subject, I venture to suggest that the origin of the expression has really foundation in an old Irish song, of which I remember only the following lines, composed 110 doubt before the advent of the wonderful railway era :

I greased my brogues and cut my stick At the latter end of May, sirs ; And up to Dublin 1 did come For to cut the hay, sirs.

Patrick, I may observe, greased his brogues to make them less hard for his long walk to Dublin ; and the same gentleman, before starting on his journey, went to a neighbour- ing thicket and cut a stick, to help him on his lonely way ; or shall I use other words ? In his wisdom he selected a stout shillelah for the protection of himself from friends and foes alike :

Bless the country, say I, that gave Patrick his birth, Bless the land of the oak and its neighbouring earth. May the sons of the Thames, the Tweed, and the

Shannon Drub the French who dare plant on our confines a

cannon ;

United and happy, at Loyalty's shrine, May the rose and the thistle long flourish and

twine Round a sprig of shillelah and shamrock so green.

Italics are mine. HENEY GEEALD HOPE. Ciapham, S.W.

THE SUENAME BELTCHAE (9 th S. iii. 7). I have noted the name Belshaw, which may have been the fair original of several ugly forms. ST. SWITHIN.

With Belcher cf. Bellezeter, a bell-founder, whence Billiter Lane, E.G. ; see Stow. I knew a Mr. Belcher, sixty years ago, who was of reputed German extraction ; and we must not overlook Jim Belcher, a pugilist who popularized a fancy coloured kerchief.

A. H.

BOOK OF VERSES (9 th S. iii. 108). F. M. D. will find the parodies by A. C. Hilton in ' In Cap and Gown,' by Charles Whibley, pub- lished by Kegan Paul in 1889. J. C.

Miss FRANCES MOOEE (9 th S. iii. 125). Add to W. C. B.'s references 4 th S. xi. 221, where HEEMENTEUDE says of 'The Life of Joanna' that it is "curious and interesting, though anonymous." I do not think, however, that she

meant to attach any special meaning to the " though " we ought to read, " It is anony- mous." If W. C. B. will refer to the second volume of 'Modern English Biography,' by F. Boase, he will find that Madame Panache is known to the latest authority.

KALPH THOMAS.

LATIN AMBIGUITIES (9 th S. i. 269 ; ii. 14).

I have always seen the Latin alliteration

beginning " Ssepe " written thus, " Ssepe cepe

sub sepe crescit," not cepi instead of " crescit."

EMILY S. RIGHTON.

A line genuinely ambiguous, at least that has seemed so to many examinees, is Virgil's Est mollis flamma medullas.

' JEneid,' iv. 66.

EDWAED H. MAESHALL, M.A. Hastings.

THE OEIGIN OF " TAW " (9 th S. ii. 385 ; iii. 97). Is the correct name "taw" or "tor"? In the old poem 'The Biter Bit' (who its author was I cannot say) we read :

An Eton stripling training for the law, A dunce at syntax, but a dab at taw, One happy Christmas laid upon the shelf His cap and gown and stores of learned pelf.

JOHN PICKFOED, M.A. Newbourne Rectory, Woodbridge.

' THE CHANT OF ACHILLES ' (9 th S. iii. 188). It appeared in the New Sporting Magazine, I think between the end of the thirties and beginning of the forties. STAIE.

DE. JOHNSON AND TEA-DEINKING (9 th S. ii. 265, 413 ; iii. 215). The use of tea being restricted by its costliness (generally from 3^. to 61. a pound) to a limited number of persons, it became a very fashionable drink in the times of the later Stuarts,* and some of this feeling remained in the Doctor's time. Tea was then virtually a monopoly of the East India Company, and the tax upon it varied from 50 per cent, upwards. Hence the loss of our great American colony; hence too, from the exigencies of its price, the minute size of the Johnson teacups still to be seen at Lich- field. Neither was Johnson remarkable for his capacity in tea-drinking. Bishop Gilbert Burnet drank twenty -five cups in a morning, and the poet Cowper was also addicted to frequent libations of tea, and in one of his letters to Hill puts on record an adroit serving-man

"raising the teapot to the ceiling with his right hand, while in his left the teacup, descending almost

an article on ' Tea-drinking ' in Temple Bar of April, 1898.
 * Pepys first partook of it 25 Sept., 1660 : see also