Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 4.djvu/137

 9» S. IV. Sept. 16, '99.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 225 Here we have an account of the fines exacted by the Lord of Hallamshire from thirteen men for feeding their swine and " shoy tes," i. e., " shots " or young pigs, in the extensive woods and waste grounds which lay to the west of Sheffield. It is not clear why the lord's agent took a piece of cloth " in goge," that is, in " gage " or pledge, from one of the trespassers. Perhaps he couid not pay the shilling fine, and the agent kept the cloth until the money was forthcoming. It does not appear whether the lord was solely entitled to these waste grounds, or whether he shared rights of common along with other persons. At all events, we may be sure that the men fined were then legally regarded as trespassers. S. O. Addy. Venison for the City.—The following is from the Daily News of 24 July :— "In accordance with annual custom, the First Commissioner of Works has sent to the Lord Mayor warrants for four bucks, to the Sheriffs three, and to the Recorder, Chamberlain, Town Clerk, Common Serjeant, and Remembrancer one each. The war- rants are addressed to the Keeper of Bushey Park. Similar warrants for does are issued in December. The warrants had their origin in the early charters granted to tho citizens of London, in which their untings were secured to them. Charters accord- ing the citizens' rights of hunting in the Royal Forest were granted by Henry I. in 1101. and by Henry II. (1174). John (1199), and Henry III. (1227). There is extant in the British Museum an original warrant to Sir John Gedeney, Lord Mayor in 1428, granting him two fat bucks from Eltham Park, and four from Windsor, and it bears the signatures of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of Lon- don, and six other members of the Privy Council. In the Lansdowne MSS. an original letter from Sir John Langley, Lord Mayor in 1557, to the Lord High Treasurer, asking for the venison warrant and other privileges in regard to the City's hunts, is preserved; and in the Burgh ley Papers is a list of the royal forests, chases, and parks, out of which warrants for venison had been granted to the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London by Queen Eliza- beth." W. D. Pink. "Bucks" and "Good Fellows" in 1778.— The names applied in various ages to the jeunesse dore'e, and to that world in which selfish amusement is the aim of life, would make a curious study. In Charles Graham's 'Miscellaneous Pieces' (Kendal, 1778 ; second edition, Liverpool, 1793) we find a graphic picture of the coarse amusements of those who were then styled " bucks " and " good fellows." If a man, he says, is going a journey he must appoint a meeting in a tavern for his "farewell":— " If the master of tho treat does not 'keep it up' until day-light, he is looked upon as one of a dastardly spirit. They imagine too, that they shall appear ' dull rogues' unless they distinguish them- selves by some extraordinary atchievement.—Ac- cordingly, some bright genius more enterprizing than the rest, gives the signal in the true buck stile 'come, my bucks! let's kick up a dust!' smash goes the punch-bowl, and the whole apparatus on the table. Chairs, looking glasses, &c, are sacrificed as an offering to Bacchus. After which, they all sally forth like a troop of banditti; perhaps a tiddler in the train, most miserably persecuting cat- gut, and may be said to act literally, in the cha- racter of Orpheus, making the beasts dance around him. It is difficult to describe the various instances, of wit and genius displayed on these occasions. After having given sufficient proof of the harmony of their vocal powers, by voiciferating in the highest key, they have recourse to muscular force. Car- riages, carts, butcher's bulks, in a word, every moveable object in their way, is overturned, dis- placed or broken. After having exhausted their more than Herculean rage, on these unresisting, harmless objects, they return in triumph, like so many Caesars or Alexanders, and recount, over the concluding bowl, these unparallel'd nocturnal ex- ploits ; and compliment each other as droll geniuses, and infinite in facetiousness and humour." The passage is not without interest as an illustration of the manners of the eighteenth century. William E. A. Axon. Moss Side, Manchester. Curious Inn Signs.—Though this subject has been often referred to in former volumes of ' N. & Q.,' and recently revived, yet it is by no means exhausted. Allow me, there- fore, to add one or two very amusing ones to the list. Dean Swift, on his appointment in 1699 to the vicarage of Laracor, co. Meath, is said to have written the following inscription on a shop where the trades of barber and publican were combined :— Roam not from pole to pole, But step in here, Where nought excels the shaving But the beer. I can remember when a boy to have seen this inscription in a small town on a sign where the occupier was both publican and barber, and rejoiced in the name of Bayley: Go to the pole [or poll] And support old Bayley. In both these instances the barber's pole suspended on the outside of the shop adds to the point. John Pickford, M.A. Newbourno Rectory, Woodbridge. Mr. Quiller-Couch. —In the Catalogue of Messrs. A. Maurice & Co., booksellers, of Bedford Street, W.C., I find the following item : " Quiller - Couch, Dramatists of the Present Day, first edition, post 8vo. cloth, fine copy, scarce, 3s. 6d., 1871." Now the work in question, the contents of which first saw the light in the Athenaeum, was by the