Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 4.djvu/98

 194 NOTES AND QUERIES. ^s.rv.SErr.a.w. Lillias Scot, dated on the plate in ink 1771. The right-hand upper corner of the title-page bears the pencilled name " E. W. Martin"; not, I think, in the autograph of the note on Mac Leod. A fly-leaf has in faded ink a short addition to the text of the book, which, in the formation of one letter (M), resembles the writing of the note on Mac Leod. W. G. Boswell-Stone. 47, Wickham Road, Beckenham. [It is attributed to M'Leod in Halkett and Laing, iv. 2646.] "Fey" (9th S. iii. 224, 394).-" Fey," " f ye," or " fie," to cleanse, is a word of common use in Norfolk. In the churchwardens' accounts of St. Peter Mancroft, Norwich, there is the following entry for the year 1579 : " Paid to rownd itobyn for fyenge the necessarye iii' iiijd." Mr. Rider Haggard in his ' Farmer's Year,' Longman's Magazine, of October last, I think, refers to labourers " fieing " a ditch. "Fyeing out a holl" is good Norfolk for cleaning out a ditch ; ancT one may hear a man say, " That owd sweep ha' been here to fye my chiinbly out," or a servant to her mistress, " I saa, 'm, I 'a had a rare fye out." In a Gurney lease, dated 1579, is the follow- ing : " Seven baskets of good, well-feyed, suf- ficientlye chapmanable barleye." The word ' chapmanable " deserves notice. " Bottomfying " is a word of constant use in Norfolk. I append a trader's current advertisement from a Norwich publication, Jarrold's ABC Railway Guide, in which this word occurs: " Estimates given for bottom- fying lakes, mill-dams, ifec. J. Hobrough & Son, Norwich." James Hooper. Norwich. Victor Hugo : " The Flying Dutchman " (9th S. iv. 109).—Are not the last of these lines merely a repetition, an expansion of the first? The rocks themselves are the watch- dogs that guard the land, and the noise of the sea beating at the foot of them is to the affrighted peasant as the barking of dogs. Later on in the same poem the rocks are again spoken of as if they were endowed with life :- Comme un fou tirant sa chaine, L'eau jette des cris de haine Aux durs recifa; Les rocs, sourds a ses huees, Melent aux blemes nuees Leurs fronts pensifs,— though it would be rash to affirm that the poet intended any connexion between the imagery of the two passages. As to the origin of the legend of the " Fly- ing Dutchman," the story seems to have been common among Dutch mariners, who, in the h seventeenth century, were constantly sailing past the Cape on their way to and from Batavia. Various tales were told of her. By some she was said to have been a ship manned by pirates who cut their captain s throat; by others that the captain was a villain doomed to sail about in Southern latitudes and tormented by a perpetual desire to send letters to a very pretty wife. But woe to the man who took charge of those letters ! His vessel never reached her port. Victor Hugo's " phantom ship," accordingly, appears somewhat outside its proper latitudes, though he is, perhaps, right in introducing it in the middle of a storm. But off the Capo the vessel's peculiarity was that during a dead calm it was suddenly sighted emerging from the deep, and sailing smoothly, with every stitch of canvas flying, before a tempestuous wind amid waves that were running mountains high. According to Marryat, when the son of the doomed captain was able to present him with a sacred relic, the chain was broken and the phantom ship dissolved. It remains to be added that tales of phantom ships are probably very old, and Hauff gives one in his German stories which is apparently derived from the Arabs. Larousse has the following curious note under 'Voltigeur':— " Grand voltigeur holiandais, navire imaginaire qui, d'apres unelegende recue des marins du siecle dernier, portait dans ses flancs tout un peuple com- T. P. Armstrong. mande par Satan." Putney. The poet says that the rocks speak and cry " Demon !" He then says that the man from his thatched cottage hears the dogs of stone, or the rocks, barking after Satan, or the Demon. The last three lines refer to the first three lines. The peasant hears the super- natural noise that the rocks are making. E. Yardley. Chute and Mildmay Families (9th S. iii. 488 ; iv. 74, 136).—C. H., at the last reference, wonders if there are any other cases known of such young marriages as that of Halliday Mildmay. May I refer him to ' Early Mar- riages,' 6th S. vi. 347; vii. 91, 134; viii. 94, 176, 413, 5241 Celer et Audax. A P.elic of Napoleon (9th S. iii. 3, 75, 175, 25<, 373, 438 ; iv. 72, 136).—I have not seen all the correspondence on this subject which appears to have taken place, but, having been shown two years ago by the courteous M. Alfred de Foville, Master of the Mint, and Director of the Musee de la Monnaie in Paris, a bronze cast of Napoleon's face, I wrote to