Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 3.djvu/479

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iii. JUNE 17, mj NOTES AND QUERIES.

473

Latinized into Caius, is this not evidence that the English a, sound and not the Italian a sound was given to the a in Caius at the time when Kaye was thus Latinized ?

BOSCOMBROSA.

CHARADE (9 th S. iii. 187, 237, 296, 331). I withdraw the solution offered at the last reference, haying now no doubt that the

rrrect solution is billsticker. A bird, of urse, " follows its bill " in place of a nose.

F. ADAMS.

CAEN WOOD, HIGHGATE (8 th S. xi. 384, 456, ). John Slanning (lord of the manors Bickleigh, Modbury, and Walkhampton, evon) was, I presume, buried at Hamp- ead, as the curate of Hampstead witnessed is will, by which he left thirty shillings Hampstead Church, and Mr. Southcott, the Middle Temple, a Devonshire man, perintended his burial. He bequeathed to Dorothy Mallet his lease of Cane Wood, at an annual rent of eight pounds to the Queen. For more refer to the will, prob. 28 Oct., 1558 (P.C.C. 63 Nodes), and the Inq. p.m. 1 Eliz., p. 2, No. 39.

In Drake's 'History of the Hundred of Blackheath,' p. iv, is a paragraph relating to an important historical meeting held at Slanning's house. There were present the brothers George, Sir Gawen, and their nephew Sir Peter Carew, whose names in Exeter Cathedral are as familiar to your correspondent MR. HEMS as those of Cham- pernown (which appears) and Slanning are to your correspondent COL. PRIDEAUX, all being Devonshire men. MR. HEMS will find a copy of the work in the Public Library, Exeter. WYVERN GULES.

JEW'S HARP (8 th S. xii. 322, 410, 495 ; 9 th S. iii. 34). MR. WHITWELL will find that Seoane's ' Castilian-English Dictionary ' de- fines Trompa as "Proboscis, the snout or trunk of an elephant," but not as a Jew's harp. However, in the English -Castilian part of the same work he will read " Jew's- harp, s. Trompa." If he turns to Delpino's dictionary of the same languages he will find "Jews-Trump, tr6mpa,"and also "Tr&nipa de paris, a Jew's harp." It is just possible that the entry in the custom-house book to which MR. WHITWELL refers concerned some importation from Spain, and that trounks stands for trumps = tr6mpas, which would be the Castilian designation for the article. The words, being much alike, may easily have deceived the ear of an official. The instru- ment in question is called in the Heuskara spoken at Durango, the old capital of Biscaya, musu-gitarra, literally the nose-guitar, which

at least serves to connect Jews-trumps with the snout or trunk of a man. Don J. M. de Bernaola, of Durango, told me that the Biscayans give that place the nickname trompa-erri= jew's-harp town ! How do the French-English dictionaries of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries render guimbarde ?

PALAMEDES. [Guimbarde is not in Cotgrave.]

ARCHERY BUTTS (9 th S. iii. 288, 371). No data by means of which we can exactly estimate the usual distance between the butts seem to exist. It appears to have depended sometimes on the skill of the marks- man, and partly on orders issued under Acts of Parliament, and ordinances issued during different reigns. Strutt (' Sports and Pastimes ') states :

" The marks usually shot at by the archers for pastime were 'butts, prickes, and roavers.' The butt, we are told, was a level mark, and required a strong arrow, with a very broad feather ; the pricke was a ' mark of compass,' but certain in its distance ; and to this mark strong swift arrows, of one flight, with a middling-sized feather, were best suited : the roaver was a mark of uncertain length ; it was therefore proper for the archer to have A'arious kinds of arrows, of different weights, to be used according to the different changements made in the distance of the ground. The Cornish men are spoken of as good archers, and shot their arrows to a great length ; they are also, says Carew, well skilled in near shooting, and in well-aimed shoot- ing : the butts made them perfect in the one, and the roaving in the other, for the prickes, the first corrupters of archery, through too much precise- ness, were formerly scarcely known, and little practised."

In another passage Strutt states : " Carew, speaking of the Cornish archers two centuries back,* says, 'For long shooting their shaft was a cloth yard in length, and their prickes twenty-four score paces, equal to four hundred and eighty yards ; and for strength they would pierce any ordinary armour.'"

From another statement given by Strutt we learn that

"by an Act established an. 33 Hen. VIII. no person who had reached the age of twenty-four years might shoot at any mark at less than two hundred and twenty yards distance."

And he gives a reference to Archceologia, vi. 58, as his authority for this statement. Roger Aschain, who lived in the reign of Elizabeth, in his ' Toxophilus,' in describing the requi- sites to constitute a good archer, enumerates among them

" a clear sight steadily directed to the mark, and proper judgment, to determine the distance of the ground,"

and Strutt's first edition of the ' Sports and Pastimes ' was issued in 1801.
 * Carew's 'Survey of Cornwall' is dated 1602,