Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 4.djvu/289

 9* s. iv. OCT. 28, w] NOTES AND QUERIES. 353 elementary facts are mastered, English ety'' mology cannot be rightly understood. The talk about heronceau is all behind the age. It is simply a later form of heroncel, as explained in the 'H.E.D.,' which (as usual) has been carefully neglected. The French dictionaries are extremely imperfect, so that one has to supplement them by reading French texts. I was the very person who found heroncel. It occurs in the 'Liber Custumarum' (Record Series), vol. i. p. 304, 1. 32; and I recorded it, in 1882, in ' A Hough List of English Words found in Anglo-French,' published for the Philological Society. WALTER W. SKEAT. A CYCLOPEDIA OF BRITISH DOMESTIC ARCHEOLOGY (9th S. iv. 206, 292,331).—By the courtesy of the publisher I have been able to see a copy of 'Murray's Cyclist's Road-Book," from London to the .New Forest, 1897. It is a handy little book of thirty-four leaves, with fourteen pages of maps, and costs two shillings. In itself it seems to be an admirable volume : but it does not come near my conception. I would leave the routes entirely to the maps. Every place in a county should be entered, all in alphabetical order. There are inter- esting things in almost every village, which are known to those who are locally informed, but which never get into any guide-book, ana are unsuspected by him who follows a guide- book " route." 1 am not thinking so much of the Saturday-afternoon cyclist, whose main object is to reach a certain point, as of those (not cyclists only) who wish in a summer's holiday to explore a given district. W. C. B. BRICK DATED 1383 : ARABIC NUMERALS (9th S. iv. 46, 93, 156, 184, 214, 276).—I beg to offer my thanks to MR. CANN HUGHES for kindly referring roe to a paper on the Wykes of South Tawton, by the Rev. W. H. Thornton, M.A. It is one already known to me, and is, unfortunately, less reliable than entertaining. I would only too readily accept a challenge to refute more or less serious inaccuracies in nearly every paragraph. A fuller account of the old Wyke or Wykes family is in course of preparation ; but the present seems an appro- priate opportunity for making a disclaimer in these pages. ETHEL LEOA-WEEKES. " GRISKY": " GRISSY"(9lh S.iv.207).-! think griskii must be the same as a word heard in Soutn Westmorland ten or fifteen years ago, which I took at the time, and still believe, to be glisky. The weather was fairly fine, and the sun shone brightly, but there were many cumulus clouds about. Meeting a country- man in my morning walk, I made the remark that it was a fine day, and he answered, "Yes, but it's glisky, and added that he thought the rain would come before long. I concluded that the word had some con- nexion with glister, glint, &c., and it seemed well to describe such a day as often, in early May, begins brightly ancf ends in a downpour. The man was quite unknown to me, so I had no means of finding where his word came from. ROUT. J. WHITWELL. LEPROSY OF HOUSES (9th S. iii. 409, 497).— Connected with this subject a useful little book may be mentioned, ' The Sanitary Code of the Pentateuch'; also the R.T.S. 'By- Paths of Bible Knowledge.' EDWARD H. MARSHALL, M.A. Hastings. LITTLE GIDDING CHURCH (9th S. iv. 267).— The late Cuthbert Bede presented many of his drawings to Peterborough Museum, in- cluding probably the interior of Little Gid- ding Church. JOHN TAYLOR. Northampton. CUTHBERT BEDE (9th S. iv. 267).—Cuthbert Bede's son, the Rev. Cuthbert Bradley, of Ox- ford, will no doubt give H. T. all the informa- tion he wants. Northamptonshire Notes and Queries (vol. iv. part 26) contains a list of Cuthbert Bede's books and drawings. JOHN TAYLOR. Northampton. CRITICISM OF RAINE'S 'ST. CUTHBERT'(9thS. iv. 269).—The little booklet for which MR. BOYLE inquires is entitled :— "Remarks | on the | 'Saint Cuthbert' | of | the Rev. James Raine, M.A. | &c. &c. &c. | Quodcumque ostendis mihi sic, incredulusodi. I Sold by I Heaton, Newcastle; Fewster. Durham ; | Keating & Brown, and Booker, London. Preston & Heaton, Printers, Newcastle, 68 pp. and "Errata," 12mo. My copy has a MS. line, "By Dr. Lin- gara, D.D.," on the title-page. Unfortun- ately it is missing from its accustomed place, and I send the title from my catalogue, in the hope that some other reader of 'N. <fe Q.' may be thereby enabled to comply with MR. BOYLE'S request. RICHARD WELFORD. A WELSH GIPSY STORY (9th S. iv. 161).— MR. AXON says, "There are few more difficult problems than those connected with the transmission of folk - tales from one country to another"; and further on, "The method of their diffusion is a problem for which modern scholarship is still seeking an adequate solution." As a help towards that solution, the following may be of use.