Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 4.djvu/135

 iv. SEPT. IB, 223 NOTES AND QUERIES. "English," and that "S." means "Scot- tish.") " The short - tailed field - mouse (Mus agrestis, Lin. Syst.), which with us has the name of the vole-mouse, is very often found in marshy grounds that are covered with moss and short heath (Barry's 'Ork- ney,' p. 314)." Jamieson does not give the date of Barry's book; but Lowndes gives 1805 and 1808 as the dates of the first and second editions respectively. The word, then, was originally vole-mouse, and camo from the Orkney Islands. I find, accordingly, that in Edmondston's ' Glossary of Shetland and Orkney Words' vole-mouse is duly entered, and is said to be known both in Orkney and Shetland. Edmondston was probably familiar with the word, and points out that vole corresponds to the Swedish iiall, Icel. vollr, a field! or plain. It is really, however, neither Swedish nor Icelandic, but Norwegian ; the Norwegian word is voll. And it may further be remarked that the corresponding English word is wold. When it is once realized that vole-mouse is nothing but a Norwegian equivalent of the English name field-mouse, the absurdity of reducing it to vole becomes apparent. When our naturalists talk so glibly of the water- vole, the field-vole, the bank-vole, and the rest, it would be well for them to call to mind that they are talking nonsense. A waler-vole is a " water-field," & field-vole is a " field-field," and a bank-vole is a "bank-field." It is just as if we should call a coach-horse a coach. Surely it makes a difference " I have failed hitherto in finding any quota- tion for vole-mouse earlier than 1805. Vole appears to be later still; the naturalists of the last century seem not to have known the term at all. The 'Encyclopaedia Britannica' boldly con- structs a German word, wiM-maus, in order to have the pleasure of deriving the English vole-mouse from it. I suspect that the deri- vation would be the other way. .but is not wiM-maus a ghost-word ? WALTER W. SKEAT. QUEUES AS WORN IN THE ARMY IN 1798.— In Uapt. R. J. Macdonald's recently published ' History of the Dress of the Royal Artillery, 1625-1897,' reviewed in the Athenaeum, are added some ' Military Reminiscences of the Latter End of the Eighteenth Century,' taken from notes and thumbnail sketches by the late General A. C. Mercer—the Capt. Mercer of Waterloo fame. Among these notes Mercer gives his recollection of the queues worn at the time (1798) that he was a student at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. I have taken the quotation bodily from the Athenaeum, thinking that it will prove interest- ing to some of my fellow-readers of ' N. & Q.' It is as follows :— " On the top the hair wag cut close, and the stumps well rubbed back with hard or stick pomatum, a kind of grease made up in hard rolls about an inch in diameter and three or four inches long, if I recollect right, run into paper moulds, like resin for the violin. The stumpy nair, at first stub- born, by perseverance and pomatum, was, after a time, quite forced out of its natural direction and made to grow backwards instead of forwards. The remainder of the hair was gathered into a queue behind, which, according to regulation, should be ten inches long, and tied close to the head ; this we called a rooter, but the dandies affected a loose tye, and began some inches lower down. Those whoso hair was not long enough had false queues made of stuffed chamois leather with a brush of hair at the end, and this had to be spliced on to his own hair. For uniformity's sake the gunners, &o.. wore false queues of strong black leather, which they cleaned and polished like their shoes. As it was difficult to tie one's own queue, we used to assist each other, and it was a sort of accomplishment, the being able to give a good queue. But the visits of two barbers once a fortnight offered the best opportunity of getting a capital queue—sometimes, to be sure, such a rooter that it was difficult to shut the eyes: yet many slept in them for a whole week, or till the next barberian visit The business of nairdressing was pushed to a ridiculous excess by the late Duke of Kent, particularly whilst Governor of Gibraltar. The first person who boarded every ship coming into harbour was His Royal Highness's hairdresser, and no officer was allowed to land until he had sub- mitted his head to be operated on by this function- ary. On the top it was to be cut in a horseshoe form: a string put round the ear and held in the mouth decided the termination (downwards) of the whiskers, and such fooleries. Sir A. Frazer once travelled in a coach with a wild-looking boy of six- teen whose hair was as shaggy as that of a wild colt. He was going then to join the duke's regiment, whence he had been sent, with six months' leave of absence and positive orders not to cut his hair, which, on his first joining, had been found too short to admit of being properly put into shape." F. A. RUSSELL. RINGING BELLS DURING A THUNDERSTORM. —If this custom hag not already been re- gistered in ' N. & Q.' it may be worth while to place it on record in its columns. The ' Torquay Directory ' says :— " It transpires that, in conformity with an old usage, the Dells in Dawlish Parish Church were rung during the recent thunderstorms, in the belief that ' the Spirit of the Bells would overcome the Spirit of the Lightning.' This superstitious belief in the efficacy of bell-ringing in thunderstorms is very old. The surprise is that it should have sur- vived to this day, and that the practice should still obtain at the pretty little South Devon resort of Dawlish. Lightning and thunder I break asunder