Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 3.djvu/459

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NOTES AND QUERIES.

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as a proof of the excellence of an ide subject, would only strike a super- il amateur, and never impose upon a
 * ful heraldist. F.R.H.S.

I have a china plate manufactured by (Jopeland & (Garnett?), late Sppde. Pro- 1 ably this is the name which is mistaken for -'Bode by ORIEL. The usual specimens are, 1 believe, of a brick-red colour, but the one i my possession has blue flowers, &c.

^WM. JACKSON PIGOTT. ndrum, co. Down.

"HEELS O'ER GOWDIE" (9 th S. iii. 386). The iitors of Burns, annotating the line in which 'eyster,' st. 7), .simply say "heels over head," >rompted to the explanation, no doubt, by general drift of the passage. Jamieson, n the 'Scottish Dictionary,' s.v. ' Gowelie,' writes thus :
 * fiis phrase occurs ('Epistle to Colonel De

"According to all the information I can obtain, either in the north nor in the south of Scotland is here any use made of Gowdie by itself, or any de- nite sense attached to the term As in one of the

)hrases it is equivalent to hecl-o'er-head, it must

indoubtedly have referred to some elevated part. ....Armor, god denotes the bosom of a garment. ....But I prefer C.B. [Cambro-Britannic] yu'dd-itf/,

r ulgarly, says Davies, f/icdd/r, collum, cervix, writes it gudhr, gudthwj, ' the neck, the

rag,' " &c.

Jamieson also says that "gain hee [high] gowdie" is a phrase used in Galloway and Dumfries to signify that a child is going fairly out, or walking alone ; and he suggests 1 that this may mean " walking with the head elevated, and so walking without fear."

Over and above all these things, one may be allowed here to refer to the fact that the i poem in which Burns uses the phrase in ques- 1 tion was written when he was manifestly dying, and to note its strength and flexibility of movement, its assertive vigour, its sense of the irony in life's drama, and the inevit- able humour with which the poet encom- passes the Scottish de'il. THOMAS BAYNE. Helensburgh, N.B.

MR. A. L. MAYHEW asks if any "Scotch- man " can answer his question. Why Scotch- man, or Scotsman ? Would not any ordinary ndividual possessing the necessarj 7 " know- edge serve his purpose? However, my incestors were of the Shaw clan, so I sup- pose 1 can lay claim to Scottish blood in my reins. The exact original meaning of " heels ~er gowdie" is "head over heels," or head ver gown. I have a copy of Burns's poems Before me as I write, and the glossary gives
 * he following definition of " gowdie " : " Gow-

die (heels o'er), topsy-turvy ; presto !" It is James Black wood's edition, printed by Dunn & Wright, Glasgow, n.d.

CHAS. F. FORSHAW, LL.D. Hanover Gardens, Bradford.

THE SIEGE OF TROY AND THE SIEGE OF BELGRADE (9 th S. iii. 126). It is strange that in none, even of the recent editions of Bos- well's ' Life 'neither in the "Globe Edition " (ed. Mowbray Morris), nor in that of Mr. Augustine Birrell, nor yet in the monumental "Library Edition "of Dr. Birkbeck Hill-is there any reference made, under the story of General Oglethorpe's post - prandial demon- stration of the siege of Belgrade, either to the famous lines from the 'Heroides' (i. 31-34) quoted by MR. E. YARDLEY, or to the earlier passage (by which these were certainly sug- gested) in tibullus (I. x. 29-32) :

Sic [i. e. myrto cpronatus] placeam vobis : alius sit

fortis in armis,

Sternat et adversos, Marte favente, ducea, Ut mihi potanti poasit sua dicere facto,' Miles, et in mensa pingere castra mc.ro.

A crying instance this, surely, of the per- sistent tyranny of the Dryasdust tradition in matters editorial ! As the editors agree in ignoring Ovid, we cannot wonder that they should ignore Thackeray also. Consistently and with one consent they say nothing of the following pleasant incident (based, we may be sure, on Boswell's ' Siege of Belgrade ' story) in 'The History of Henry Esmond, Esq.' The resplendent Mr. Boyle, coming from Court to call on Addison at his humble lodg- ing in the Haymarket, finds the poet seated with Esmond at a table on which, with the aid of a little wine and some bits of tobacco- pipe, the soldier is making out a plan of the battle of Blenheim :

" ' How goes on the magnum opus, Mr. Addison ? '

says the Court gentleman 'We were but now

over it,' says Addison ' Here is the plan on the

table : hac ibat Simois, here ran the little river Nebel : hie est Sigeia tellus, here are Tallard's quarters, at the bowl of this pipe, at the attack of which Captain Esmond was present. I have the honour to introduce him to Mr. Boyle ; and Mr. Esmond was b*ut now depicting aliquo prcelia mixta mero, when you came in.' " ' Esmond,' Book II. chap. xi.

Can any one, by the way, indicate the provenance of this last phrase "Aliquo prcelia mixta mero " 1 It does not occur in the context of "Hac ibat Simois," &c. (the locus classicus cited by MR. YARDLEY), which Thackeray puts into Addison's mouth a line or two above ; neither is it found else- where in Ovid, nor, so far as I can discover, in any other old Latin poet. Yet from his manner of using it here, and again later on