Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 4.djvu/78

 58 NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. iv. JULY w, •» these twenty-four, thirteen called the bird the landrail and eleven the corn-crake, and this in various parts of the country, so that neither name can be regarded as local. See ' Our Summer Migrants,' by J. E. Harting (London, 1875), p. 312. note. W. R. TATE. Walpole Vicarage, Haiesworth. I can answer for it that in the days, now nearly fifty years ago, when my brother and self snot partridges, and occasionally a land- rail, at my native place near Tamworth, in South Staffordshire, this bird was commonly called the "corn-crake," even by ourselves and by our brothers and sisters, though we knew that its ornithological name was " land- rail." EDWARD P. WOLFERSTAN. At this season of the year the corn-crake abounds in the meadows " all along " the Der- went. This was the general name for the bird, few knowing it as the landrail. Bird- catchers used to go out at dusk into the unmown meadows for the purpose of captur- ing the bird, taking with them a decoy "call," a small instrument which they made them- selves and called a "corn-crake." It was made of wood, and when rubbed in a cer- tain way along the thigh produced a sound exactly like the call of the corn-crake. THOS. RATCLIFFE. Worksop. JACK PLACKETT'S COMMON (9th S. ii. 508; iii. 423, 491).—An account of the robbery of Mr. Faye by John Plackett will be found in the Gent. Mag. for May, 1762, vol. xxxii. p. 293, and a record of his trial and execution at pp. 340-1 of the same volume. It is stated that " a little before he was turned off, after calling out for silence, he made the following declaration: ' The first robbery I committed was on a young woman on the long causeway, Islington, about 16 years ago; the second was on a man in Mr. Jennings's ass field in the same town ; the next was stealing a cornier from Mr. Beazley in St. John's Street, for wiiich I was transported 7 years, but staid 14; the next robbery, after my return to England, was stealing a silver watch, gown and trollopee from my uncle's house ; and the last fatal robbery was on the Danish young gentleman, for which I deservedly suffer.'" See also the 'Annual Register' for 1762, p. 95. The identity of John Plackett being satis- factorily established, did the fact of his exe- cution on "the spot of ground between the upper end of the City Road and the road from Goswell Street" (as it is described in the Gent. Mac/.) make that spot common land? During the last century it was not an un- usual thing to execute criminals on the scene of their offences. Several of the rioters of 1780 were hanged opposite houses which they nad burnt and looted. Did these executions take place on common or public land, or on the property of private individuals ? In the latter case was the sentence of the law carried out with the consent of the owner of the property, or could it override his personal rights ? I do not remember to have seen this point discussed before. To conclude with another query, which can be answered under a separate heading, What was a " trollopee " ? W. F. PRIDEAUX. [Other notes received.] NOTES ON BOOKS, 4o. Scot/iik Kinos: a Revival Chronology of Scottish Hixlory, 1005-1625. By Sir Archibald A. Dunbar. (Douglas.) SIR ARCHIBALD DUNBAB'S scholarly and useful compilation, a copy of which is politely and oblig- ingly sent "for the editor's reference library,' is a work of marked erudition and conspicuous ability. It supplies a table of Scottish kings from the accession of Malcolm II. to the death of James VI., and constitutes an endeavour to settle the exact date of every noteworthy event in Scottish history during something more than six centuries. Its contents are very varied, com- prising pedigrees extending over a thousand and fifty-three years and ending with the Diamond Jubilee of Her Majesty. A table of the marriages of Scottish kings, an alphabetical calendar of saints' days and feasts, a Church calendar, a Latin calendar with translation, a Scottish calendar, 4,c., are also supplied. In the pedigrees we trace the names of James VII. (II. England) and VIII., Charles III., and Henry JX. Foot-notes supply over five thousand references indicating the principal sources that have been consulted. Other matter of no less interest and value is included in a work to the utility of which a full index largely contributes. We fail to trace any word of the visit to James VI. of Guillaume de Saluste, Sieur du Bartas, concerning which information has only recently been acquired, and plume ourselves on being able, in a book so full and exact, to hint at an omission. The reader will be prepared in an account of Scottish kings to meet with a grisly succession of phrases such as "killed," "slain," "deposed," "assassinated," &c. Duncan "the gracious" and James III. are the only monarchs described as murdered. Opposite Mary Stuart stands nothing more than "abdicated." This fine work, in its class one of the best and most trustworthy we can recall, is dedicated,- by per- mission, toller Majesty. Dante: the Divina Commedia and Canzoniere. Translated by the late K. H. Plumptre. Vols. 111., IV., and V. (Isbister & Co.) THK three final volumes of 'The Divina Commodia and Canzonicre' of Dante, by the late l)ean of Wells, tread close on the heels of their predecessors in the convenient and dainty edition of Messrs. Isbister A Co. The third volume consists of the