Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 4.djvu/327

 a-s. iv. Nov. 4, mi NOTES AND QUERIES. 385 In 'Military Manners and Customs' (pp. 201-2) Mr. James Anson Farrer refers to the old custom of falling down and kiss- ing the earth before starting on a charge or assault of battle. He writes :— " This kissing of the earth was an abbreviated form of taking a particle of it in the mouth, as both Elmham and Livius mention to have been done by the English at Agincourt before attacking the French; and this again was an abbreviated form of receiving the sacrament, for Villani says of the Flemish at Cambray, 1302, that they made a priest- go all over the field with the sacred elements, and that instead of communicating each man took a little earth and put it into his mouth. This seems a more likely explanation than that the custom was intended as a reminder to the soldier of his mortality, as if in a trade like his there could be any lack of testimony of that sort." It seems to me that Mr. Anson Farrer is open to correction. It must have been in one of the lost books of Livy that he predicted Agincourt. St. Swithin. The consecrated host was exhibited to the combatants at the Battle of the Standard, fought on Cowton Moor, three miles from Northallerton, in 1138. The following inter- esting account of the Standard is given in Murray's 'Handbook for Yorkshire'(1874) :— " The northern barons, incited greatly by Thur- stan. Archbishop of York, who, very aged and feeble, was unable himself to advance beyond Tliii.sk, assembled in haste, and encamped near North Allerton, having in the midst of their host the ' Standard '—a tall mast raised on a four-wheeled elatfortu like the Italian ' Carroccio,' and bearing eneath a silver crucifix, and a silver pyx contain- ing the consecrated host, the holy banners- of St. Peter of York, St. John of Beverley, and St. Wilfred of Ripon—the great protecting saints of Yorkshire."—P. 243. There was a fine painting of the ' Battle of the Standard,' though I cannot remember the name of the artist; and a spirited engraving was once very common depicting the fierce fight raging round the silver pyx. John Pickford, M.A. Newbourno Rectory, Woodbridge. Statistics of Heraldry (9th S. iv. 245).— Ample material for the calculations here de- sired may be found, all classified and indexed, in Papworth's encyclopaedic collection of armorials. A. H. " Howk " (9th 13. iv. 308). — " Howk out" " howk up," is in use here, meaning to pull up, and sometimes to cleanse such things as a drain or sewer, or to do away with an accumulation of rubbish :— " If I was him I shou'd hev them ketlocks howked oot o1 yon barley; if he doesn't they '1 Kinour it all." " They howked up a strange big stoan wi' a cross cutten on it in diggm' a grave e' Bottesworth chech yard." " Them bairns hes fill'd my big chist wi' all soarts o' rammil; I mun hev it all howk'd oot an' bout, for 1 want to put them fallin' apples in it." " It's time th' road-men howk'd oot that drean i" th' Red Lion Entry. It stinks that bad I can't abear mysen when I walk along side on it." Edward Peacock. Dunstan House, Kirton-in-Lindsey. I have heard this word occasionally in the Midland Counties. To "howk up" there means to dig or " pick " up (with a pickaxe). I have never heard the word used in the sense Kings- ley gives it. C. C. B. London Corporation Becords (9th S. iv. 289).—On 29 October, 1891, tho Court of Com- mon Council was requested by the Parish Clerks' Company to place in the Corporation Library one Hundred and thirty-two volumes, originally printed and published by the Company :— "The weekly bills of all the christenings and burials within the City of London and bills of mortality from the 20th December, 1664, to the 1st of November, 1698, according to the reports made to the Honourable the Lord Mayor by the Worshipful Company of Parish Clerks, three vols., large folio." " The same continued from the 16th December, 1701. to the 15th December, 1829, 128 vols., with a duplicate for the year 1751, small quarto." These volumes are accessible to the public, and have not, so far as I can ascertain, been reprinted. Everard Home Coleman. 71, Brecknock Road. Aldgate and Whitechapel (9th S. iv. 168, 269).—There is an earlier form of the name of Aldgate than those referred to by Col. Prideaux. This is the eleventh century Ealsegate in Herman, ' De Miraculis S. Ead- mundi,' in 'Memorials of St. Edmund's Abbey ' (Bolls Series), i. 43. In the English Historical Review, xii. 491, note 18, I have suggested a derivation from the personal name Ealh, gen. Eales. The later form Alegate shows that there was a vowel, e or u, following the I. The gen. es frequently disappears at an early date in local names, and therefore the etymology above given may be right, if we assume a metathesis of the es. The personal name AW?* would give a gen. Eales also. But perhaps the origin may be sought in the name Alusa, known in the Old English royal pedigrees, for the late gen. of this would be Ealesan, and this could occur in the eleventh century in composition as Ealse. This would explain the form in Herman ; but Alusa is such a rare name that one feels some hesitation in invoking it to