Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 5.djvu/23

 9 tb S. V. JAN. 6, 1900.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

15

spondent prompt, but I am afraid they are not correct. I know the neighbourhood anc the well intimately. I have known many who have gone on the first Sunday in May to dilute their potations with its water. I think the practice has entirely died out. In Lan- cashire the use of the " apostrophe s " when speaking in the possessive case is largely ignored. Not far from the well is a hill known as " John Hoyle coppice "the coppice of John Hoyle. The well is known as " Mary Hoyle well" no doubt, in my mind, mean- ing the well of Mary Hoyle. Who John Hoyle was I cannot ascertain, but I opine that John and Mary were of one family, and that while to the one is assigned the " coppice," to the other is assigned the well. B. S.

" A PICKLED ROPE " (9 th S. iv. 479). In the phrase in Fletcher's * Bonduca,' "A pickled rope will choke ye," Petillius, who has pre- viously told his soldiers, ungraciously enough, to eat turf, timber, old mats, or shoes, ex- horts them further to fall in love, a state which in war is assumed to stimulate bravery, and calculated to make them forget all about eating, failing to do which they may expect a rope's-ending for cowardice. Hence the phrase appears to mean a castigation (with a pickled rope) will correct the cowardice that is assumed to characterize one who has neither this incentive to courage nor that of having enough to eat. Compare a "rod in

Eickle," i. e., soaked in brine to keep it supple )r chastening purposes, and the phrase "to rope's-end," i.e., to chastise with the " whipped " end of a rope, formerly a punish- ment much resorted to illegally at sea : Buy a rope's end ; that will I bestow Among my wife and her confederates For locking me out of my doors by day.

' Comedy of Errors, 5 IV. i. 16.

4 To choke " here means to correct, reprove. A "choke-pear" is figuratively a reproof, correction, a check by which one is put to silence ; and to " choke a person off," i. e., to stop his garrulity, is still a vulgar expression. J. HOLDEN MACMICHAEL.

THE AUTHORSHIP OF 'THE RED, WHITE, AND BLUE' (9 th S. iv. 164, 231, 312, 338, 426, 502). With regard to the above song, I have always understood it was written in honour of the "Allied Armies" during the Crimean War. At all events, I distinctly remember it then, as a child of some ten j^ears old ; and the cover of the song was adorned with the Union Jack and the French tricolour flags. Wherever the word "Columbia" occurs in the song as printed in your issue of December 16, it was " Britannia " in the version I

remember in the year 1854. The first verse ran thus :

Britannia, the pride of the ocean,

The home of the brave and the free, The shrine of each sailor's devotion,

No land can compare unto thee. Thy mandates make heroes assemble,

With Vict'ry's bright laurels in view ; Thy banners make tyranny tremble

When borne by the Red, White, and Blue.

The second verse was much as stated, but the third concluded quite differently, viz. : May the French from the English ne'er sever,

But each to their colours prove true, The Army and Navy for ever, (And?) Three cheers for the Red, White, and

Blue.

I do not think there can be any doubt that your correspondent S. J. A. F. is right about its having been originally an English song.

F. W. H.

I am emboldened to make a suggestion which may settle this controversy. Your correspondent T. A. O. mentions (iv. 338) the coincidence of the above song, at the time of and following the Crimean War, with the equally well-known * Cheer, Boys, Cheer ! ' My own recollection is to the same effect ; and if reference could be made by any of your correspondents who may be in a position to do so to the veteran author of the last- named song, Mr. Henry Russell, whose residence is 18, Howley Place, W., I have little doubt his well-stored memory could authoritatively intervene. I well remember hearing Mr. Henry Russell sing ' Cheer, Boys, Cheer!' in his entertainment at some date prior to May, 1856, and my recollection is that I was familiar with that song and ' The Red, White, and Blue' in about an equal degree for a good while before then. Some time since I read Mr. Russell's book of reminiscences, a good part of which deals with America and the friends he made there ; and whether the origin of the song is British or American I am pretty certain he would know. W. B. H.

Further contributions on this subject not invited.]

PREFACES (9 th S. iv. 479). Isaac Disraeli, n his * Curiosities of Literature,' says 'that long before the days of Johnson it had )een a custom with many authors to solicit for this department of their work the ornamental con- ribution of a man of genius. Cicero tells his riend Atticus that he had a volume of prefaces or introductions always ready by him to be used as ircumstances required."

A correspondent in * N. & Q.' (6 th S. xii. 427) asked, "When were prefaces first introduced?" and stated that Howell, in his preface to ' An Institution of General History,' asserted that