Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 3.djvu/441

 9* s. in. JUNE 3, } 99.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

435

1 is journey. The song referred to by ME 1 OPE was called 'Daniel O'Rourke.' Mj f other remembers it being sung in London i lore than fifty years ago. The version he ives me (from memory) is as follows :

I greased my brogues and cut my stick

I 1 the latter end of May, sir, /' nd up to Dublin I did go

r j o sail upon the say, sir.

r j o England I resolved to go

1 o cut the hay and corn,

And with the cockney girls to dance

I rom night until the morn.

With my Kil-ma-Crough [?] no heart more true,

For Daniel O'Rourke is the bouchal.

The song must have had considerable vogue in England ; and the sensational victory of a horse called Daniel O'Rourke in the Derby of 1852 may have added to its popularity. This horse undoubtedly called after the song started as an outsider, but, probably owing to the state of the weather, came in first. It was a wet day, and the horse (a short, thick-set one) outstayed his swifter rivals. My father remembers being, on the day of the race, in a public -house off the Haymarket, where the proprietrix had won 1,800^. through backing Daniel O'Rourke. This may have impressed the fact on his memory. J. H. MURRAY.

160, Lothian Road, Edinburgh.

ENSTONE (9 th S. iii. 128, 332). I was inter- ested to^see at the last reference that there is a tradition that the village of Winstone, near Cirencester, derived its name from a stone erected by a king of Wessex to commemorate a victory, because it apparently confirms a theory I put forward last year in writing upon the Lancashire name Winstanley, namely, that " Winstan " should be equated with "Wigstan," and literally meant "war- stone" or "battle-stone," and probably denoted a monument. HY. HARRISON.

^ BOCCACCIO (9 th S. iii. 247, 369;. To the list given at the last reference should be added Lydgate's ' Falls of Princes,' a rhymed version of Boccaccio's 'De Casibus Virorum Illus- trium '; and Tennyson's ' Lover's Tale,' taken from a story in the ' Decameron.' The parti- culars of this latter borrowing will be found in the recent memoir of Tennyson (vol. ii. pp. 50, 51). GEORGE MARSHALL.

Sefton Park, Liverpool.

GEORGE SELWYN'S CURIOUS TASTE (9 th S. iii. 245). For interesting information re- specting this wit's love of horrors I beg to refer MR. ROBBINS to ' The Wits and Beaux of Society,' by Grace and Philip Wharton (London, Routledge, 1867), It is only justice

to Selwyn to say that many stones of his attending executions were supposed to be the inventions of those other wits Sir C. H. Williams and Lord Chesterfield. However, it is certain that he did delight in execu- tions, and he even, according to Wraxall, went so far as to attend some in female costume. But better men than Selwyn have had, it is said, the same extraordinary taste, and Macaulay accuses Penn of a similar affection. The best - known anecdote of Selwyn's peculiarity relates to the execution of Damiens, who was torn with red-hot pincers, and finally quartered by four horses, for the attempt to assassinate Louis XV. On the day fixed George mingled with the crowd, and managed to press forward to the place of torture. The executioner observing him cried out, " Faites place pour monsieur ; c'est un Anglais et un amateur," or as another version goes, he was asked if he himself was not a bourreau. "Non, monsieur," he is said to have answered, " je n'ai pas cet honneur ; je ne suis qu'un amateur."

HENRY GERALD HOPE. Clapham, S.W.

"HiLL ME UP!" (9 th S. iii. 285.) This is merely local Midland pronunciation of the old Saxon helan, to hide, to cover, still the commonest word here in the classic West to express covering up or putting out of sight. We usually see it written "heal," but pro- nounce it as our forefathers did hale : " The seed was never properly healed " is frequently said of a failing crop. " The healer is as bad as the stealer" is an every-day proverb, of course allowing for vernacular rendering. A horse-cloth is a "healer." Hellier or Hellyar is an exceedingly common family

ame in the West, just as Slater is in the ^orth ; both have dropped the old prefix le. [f religious teachers would always remember "deas might be corrected.
 * hat " hell " is in fact this same word, popular

Your correspondent is mistaken in assum- ng that " to nill " implies the raising of a mound or ridge. The ridge may be incidental, as in " hilling," " heling," or " healing " a child n bed, but the strict meaning is still limited ,o the covering up, and hence hiding or con- cealing. The word was written hyllyng in

Prompt. Parv., 3 &c. See ' West Som. Word Book ' ; also 'H.E.D.,' s.v. 'Hele.'

F. T. ELWORTHY.

Foxdown, Wellington, Somerset.

MR. RATCLIFFE'S words and phrases from he Derbyshire dialect have so often the same ise and meaning in Lancashire that natives f this county among the readers of ' N. <fe Q,'