Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 3.djvu/301

 9* s. in. APRIL is,

NOTES AND QUERIES.

295

, bject was to note a modern and popula < esire to recognize larger districts than shires ' 'his is not the first time that the importance ( f this has been remarked. Guthrie, in the ] ist century, in his ' Geographical Grammar, t fter giving the English divisions, says :

"I have been the more solicitous to preserve t tese divisions, as they account for different loca c istoms, and many very essential modes of in hsritance, which to this day prevail in England."

With regard to Scotland, I maintain that t le usual division into Highlands and Low lands confuses race and history. I think ] am acquainted with most of the statements made by SIR HERBERT MAXWELL. I am also acquainted with Skene, and, in addition Skene's Irish authorities. There is a goo deal to be said still about abers and invert and also about the Goll-Gaedhil. I prefer the division into four: the north-west, in- habited mainly by the descendants of the Dalriadic immigrants (I did not say the ancient Dalriada extended much beyond Arergaedil); the north-east, inhabited by Picts at the first ; the south-west, Strathclyde and Galloway, the former originally belongin to British Celts ; and the south-east, whic was, and is, Anglian or Anglo-Saxon. The only thing I have now to say about Galloway is that it is twenty-one miles from the Irish coast, and that it has always been closely connected with County Down. C. S.

EARLY ENGLISH POEM (9 th S. iii. 228). The moment I read the line quoted I said to myself Lydgate. And this is right. See Lydgate's ' Minor Poems,' ed. Halliwell (Percy Society), pp. 156-164. The whole number of stanzas is twenty-seven.

WALTER W. SKEAT.

"TURTHEL Cow" (9 th S. i. 387). No answer las caught my eye in ' N. &, Q.' ; but in regard to mortuary customs Blackstone's (Mimi'k.s ('Comra.,' ii. 425) aro instructive. From what he says it is clear that mortuaries were analogous to what is now called con- cience-mone;/. Both were to make amends 'or a tax previously evaded. " It was usual," ays Blackstone, " to bring the mortuary to hurch along with the corpse." Now the nortuary being the best chattel save one, if > cow, would naturally be led or driven. '"liiis what now seems quaint and grotesque -that "a cow with its calf was led before ihe body on the day of burial" must have been common. So in 'H.E.D.' J. Osburne, in ~>0 1, bequeathed two sheep of a year age for oyforedroye, and another testator wills that
 * o the question concerning the word turthel
 * . two-shilling sheep should be driven before

him in the day of his burial as a foredrove. The custom must have been common, or the words could not have become so.

But is not the masterless steed now led along in military funerals a survival to this day of mediaeval mortuaries? To my mind it 'is ; but I would gladly see the views of others. But when did the horse thus led cease to be given to the Church 1 ? Did this consecration to pious uses end with the close of Catholic supremacy 1

JAMES D. BUTLER.

Madison, Wis., U.S.

A CHILD'S CAUL (9 th S. iii. 26, 77, 175). I can say from positive knowledge that to be born with a caul is a privilege not confined to male infants, and have less sure, but still, I think, good ground for asserting that belief in such limitation of that freak of nature is (or was) not general among old-fashioned nurses. My mother has often told me her daughter that I was born with a caul, which her nurse appropriated as a perquisite for the benefit of a seafaring son. I have also heard that when I was taken to America by sailing vessel, at nine months old, the ship's company, including the captain, were lavish in kind attentions towards the small passenger, of whom it was related that she was a " Sunday's babe," born with a caul. But I never heard that either nurse or sailors took my sex into account at all in connexion with the circum- stance. Thirty years later a daughter of my o\vn was born with a caul, which I still pos- sess. The nurse in attendance was an elderly woman with a large professional experience among the Berkshire villages near Farringdpn. She was careful to preserve the caul, to which she attached the traditional virtue, and was as gratified by hearing of the coincidence that patient and her baby were both born on a Sunday, and each "came to town with a cap on her head," as Barbara's mother arid Mrs. bubbles were by their comparison of red- etter dates ; but she gave no hint of any sur- prise that a girl should be found wearing the propitious distinction, for which the phrase bove quoted is the only synonym that I have

leard.

A. A. E. C.

ROUNDS OR RUNGS (9 th S. ii. 386, 430, 492, 530 ; ii. 75, 116, 158, 231). I had not intended to vrite again on this subject, but I am pre- >ared to answer COL. PRIDEAUX'S question.

I think it clear that, in Shakespeare's time, he correct French word was esckellon, as given >y Cotgrave. Of course, round was substi- uted for rung by some one who preferred

rench to English, or who knew it better.

et it has not even the poor merit of being