Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 5.djvu/137

 9 s. v. FEB. 17, i9oo.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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old French. But these words afford no help, unless they once bore a more extended mean- ing than is now attributed to them, and the root would seem to lie in some continental, as well as Anglo-Saxon, language.

W. H. DUIGNAN. Walsall.

FANNY CORNFORTH. Any clue to her family will oblige. She was one of Rossetti's models.

A. C. H.

'THE HEIR OF LINNE.' Two verses from a ballad "of early date" are quoted in the 1 History of Lynn in Massachusetts ' by Alonzo Lewis. They read as follows :

The bonnie heire, the weel faured heire, And the weary heire of Linne, Yonder he stands at his father's gate, And naebody bids him come in.

Then he did spy a little wee locke, And the key gied linking in, And he gat goud and money therein, To pay the lands o' Linne.

If of an early date it must refer to King's Lynn in Norfolk, as Saugus was not called Linn before 20 November, 1637. Can any

THE STORY OF ST. HELEN, QUEEN OF ENGLAND.

(9 th S. iv. 182.)

A VISIT to the Grande Bibliotheque de la Ville, Rue Gen til, Lyon, has convinced me that no manuscript entitled 'Ystoire d'Helayne,' attributed either to Alexandre de Paris or to any one else, is known there. The authorities mentioned at Brussels must have been misinformed on the subiect. At Lyon, however, there is the 'Chronique d'Elaine,' described under the cote or press- mark 767 in the Catalogue of the manu- scripts in the Municipal Library which MM. Desvernay and Molinier are about to publish. As this manuscript, which is on paper, and of about the same date as Wauquelin's prose version at Brussels, is incorrectly described on pp. 445-7 of a work entitled "Manuscrits de la Bibliotheque de Lyon, par Ant. Fr. Delandine," tome premier (Paris, 1812), and as it concerns the history of England as imagined in the fifteenth cen-


 * "" >'~*-Y X J OI J&ngiana as imagined in i/ne mieeuwi ceii-

reader give the author, the source whence tury, it may be that a few notes upon it,

quoted, or explain the meaning of the ballad? jotted down in its presence, may prove inter-

H. J. HILLEN. esting to the critics of * N. & Q.,' and elicit

[There are different versions of the ' Heir of further information as to its origin and off-

Linne.' That from which you quote is the Scottish ballad. All that is known concerning it is told in 'English and Scottish Ballads,' edited by Francis James Child, vol. viii. p. 60 (Sampson Low & Co.. 1861).]

MR. GLADSTONE'S HEIGHT. What was Mr* Gladstone's height? I had the privilege of hearing him speak from a platform many years ago in Liverpool when a boy, and have seen him seated in a carriage, but could not judge of his stature from either view. Besides, I have heard varying statements as to his stature. In Sir Algernon West's gossipy ' Recollections ' the following passage occurs (vol. ii. p. 193) :

'"As a boy,' he [Mr. Gladstone] said, 'I

spring. It contains more than 20,000 verses in alexandrine rimes, ending thus :

Jhesus yeulle garder de mal et de tourment A tous jours de leur vie sans nul empeschement Tous ceulz qui ont oy et prins esbatement Alonsment trestons boire il en est temps vraiement Cy fineray delaine qui tant ot de tourment.

Explicit

Cy fineray mon cronique delaine lequel a este orthographic par le commandement et requeste de ma tres noble et puissans loyse dame de crequi canapples et de pluisseurs aultres terres et seignouries Alexandrij manu propria.

If the two final words mean that Alex- andre was not merely the copyist, but the poet, the author must have lived in the middle

i "//"f^nf 8 -' T my '^eentn birtnaay 1 1 o f t h e fifteenth century, when Dame Louise was only 4 feet 10 inches, most of my growth being i n rpmi; flniirishpH Thpro aro nlap^ after I was sixteen, and now I am shorter than I * V re( J ul 1 'ounsned. . reare places^ was as a young man.' I told him that it was the Clairy-Crequy and Canaples in the Departe- natural tendency of advancing years." ment de la Somme, not far from Amiens. M.

Little or no reliance can be placed on photo- ^lix Desvernay, the Administrator of the graphs, which are notoriously deceptive, other- Great Library, is unable to explain the wise I should judge him (from one in my syllable ment after alons in the bevering line, possession in which he is standing by Lord One might think that ent, an old form of en, Brougham) to have been some 5 feet 8 inches. wa meant, if en did not come just after it. But perhaps some reader can enlighten me. ^ an ifc be a poetical licence for maintenant? As

J. B. McGovERN. St. Stephen's Rectory, C.-on-M., Manchester.

,

recording the provenance of the manuscript, it is to be noted that on the outside of the parchment