Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 4.djvu/182

 262 NOTES AND QUERIES. [9» s. iv. iter, ao, ■«. tilt-cart, when the ' H.E.D.' comes to it, may possibly throw some light on this. If our ancestors used hemispherical tents, we should suppose they must have been supported on hemispherical wickerwork, like the form of some baskets. That they made basket work, and that this art suggested the curious Keltic interlaced patterns of illuminations and sculptured stone crosses, may, I suppose, be taken as proved. I will venture one last con- jecture or provisional hypothesis. Did our forbears conceive the starry heavens as a dome, improving on the earlier notion of the Egyptians and Chaldseans, who perhaps con- sidered it as a pyramid, because they once dwelt in tents supported by a central pole? The word zenith is of Arabian origin. There is more to be said for the pyramid conception than might seem at first sight, for it gives a set of four very simple plane projections for the places of the stars. T. Wilson. Harpenden. An Irish Device* anticipated in Eng- land.—While admitting some slight inaccu- racies in my summary of the story told by the rollicking O'Shaughnessy in Charles Lever's ("Harry Lorrequer") military novel, ' Charles O'Malley, the Irish Dragoon,' cited by me from memory (as indicated by your correspondent, whose courtesy in so kindly supplying the reference I beg hereby grate- fully to acknowledge), it appears to me that errors in detail do not affect the point of the yarn in regard to the object with which I submitted the query. That object was to call the attention of the readers of ' N. & Q.' to an interesting anticipation of the incident narrated, by analogy with a similar ruse. On Friday, 22 September, 1704, one Tom Sharp, a notorious housebreaker, and, in a sense, a literary character — for he has left behind him a graphic account of Newgate during the seventeenth century, still occa- sionally cited as a reference — was hanged for the murder of a watchman while at- tempting to commit a burglary at a shoe- maker's shop situate at the corner of Great Wild Street, looking up Great Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields. According to a custom then prevailing in the strict adn'lnistration of criminal law, of carrying the death sen- tence into effect on a site as nearly as possible adjacent to that of the commission of the crime for which the convict was doomed to suffer, the authorities ordered that the gal- lows should be erected at the "four-wont" way formed by Drury-t&jy^traversing the 195. east end of Long Acre and the westerly termination of Great Queen Street, not half a hundred yards from the spot where the poor watchman had been murderously done to death. The analogy to Charles Lever's story is thus told by Capt. Alexander Smith,* and I give it in the original form, with its quaint spelling, punctuation, capitals, and italics. The bailiffs name was Abraham Wood : " Abram had a Writ against an Engraver who kept a House opposite to Long Acre in Drury Lane, and having been several times to serve it, but could never light on the Man, because he work'd at his Business above Stairs, as not daring to shew his Head for fear of being arrested, for he owed a great deal of Money, Mr. Bum was in a Resolution of spending no more Time over him ; till, shortly after, hearing that one Tom Sharp, a House-breaker, was to be hang'd at the end of Long Acre, for murdering a Watch-man, he and his Follower dress'd them- selves like Carpenters, having Leather Aprons on, and Rules tuck'd in at the Apron Strings: then going early the morning or two before the Male- factor was to be executed, to the place appointed for Execution, they there began to pull out their Rules, and were very busie in marking out the Ground where they thought best for erecting the Gibbet. This drew several of the House-keepers about 'em presently, and among the rest the En- graver, who, out of a self-end humour of thinking he might make somewhat the more by People standing in his House to see the Execution, in Case this Gibbet was near it, gave Abram a Crown, saying, "I'll give you a Crown more if you'll put the Oibbet hereabouts;' at the same time pointing where he would have it. " Quoth A bram: ' We must put it fronting exactly up Long Acre ; besides, ■conld I put it nearer your Door, I should require more Money than you propose, even as much as this' [at the same time pulling it out of his pocket] ' H fit requires, which is twenty- five Pounds.' So taking his prisoner away who could not give in Bail to the Action, he was carried to Jayl, without seeing Tom Sharp executed ; but hop'd he should one time or other make a Holyday to see the Bailiff hang'd himself." This episode is to be found in my friend Mr. John Ashton's useful compilation 'Eighteenth- Century Waifs,' under the heading "Imprison- ment for Debt," on p. 228. ' Charles O'Malley' was first published in Dublin in 1841. I do not need to quote the story as given in that edition on pp. 110 et seq., for, as 1 have said, my abbreviated version (ante, p. 29) will suffice to demonstrate the identity of the leading idea; but I may men- tion that, just as the judgment debtor in the old tale was deceived by the actions of the bailiffs, clad in aprons and manipulating their foot-rules, into taking those officers for car- Comical and Tragical History of the Lives and Adventures of the most noted Bayliffs in and about London and Westminster,' London, 1723, p. 37 et seq.
 * See ' Arrest for Debt in Ireland,' ante, pp. 29,
 * From " The Life of Abraham Wood," ■ The