Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 5.djvu/254

 246

NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. v. MARCH 31, 1900.

of Haarlem, mercifully sent round a notice orderin

that every house wherein lay a mother and new born baby should have its knocker muffled in whii to preserve it from sacking. As a thanksgiving o the providential escape, the Dutch woman soo pliecf her needle and bobbins to produce a trul feminine souvenir of the event, in perfect harmon with the prim neatness of the nation ; indeed, th little insignificant tools of the needlewoman allow the humblest, endowed with little brain and heart to rise to any emergency and contribute man rds to the world's histor

valuable links and reco of customs and manners.

This description of

rare piece of historical needlework is likely to hel collectors of embroidery and lace in the classifica tion of treasures formerly of some province pre viously unknown to them."

ASTARTE.

" SERIFF." This is a word I have neve met with in any dictionary. I am told it i used by printers and typefounders for the wedge-shaped ends of the Koman capita letters and figures, so well-defined in ancien Latin lapidary inscriptions. The "seriff' has come down to us through this medium and the capitals and initial letters in MSS from the Assyrian cuneiform letters, which owe their form and origin to the use of a particular instrument .impressed in the sofl

clay tablets before they were baked. This instrument the late Mr.

James

Nasmyth, of hammer fame, suggested was a sort of style of square section and end, oi which the point of one angle was pressed into the clay. The end was also used when the letters, made up in this way, were copied in stone. The sides of the triangular indenta- tions were carved concave, which somewhat disguised their mechanical origin. The curved sides and straight top have been persisted in more or less ever since. Our early coiners made up their letters in the same way by using the various triangular- headed and other shaped punches they had ready to hand. A. S. ELLIS.

[See ' Ceriph : Serif,' ' N. & Q.,' 4 th S. iii. 381, 444, 471. The latter spelling is general in printing offices, but the word will be found in most dictionaries under 'Ceriph,' sometimes with a cross-reference to ' Serif.']

TOM - ALL -ALONE'S. This spot has been asserted to have been in the neighbourhood of Clare Market, but while the locality may have been there, Dickens probably got the name from Chatham, close to the resi- dence of his father. In a small pamphlet recently published, entitled 'Historic Notes of Chatham and Rochester in Bygone Days,' there is a paragraph that

"the site of the new docks was a piece of waste land, called Tom-all- Alone. Near to it were moored 100 years ago old ships containing French prisoners

of war Many of them were buried in shallow

graves in the marshes near, now washed out by the tide."

AYEAHK.

"CHEVEIL." I take the following from a telegram sent off from Ladysmith on 28 Feb. by Mr. H. W. Nevinson, war correspondent of the Daily Chronicle, and published in that journal on 3 March : "The horses were con- verted into chevril, or horse essence, which is wholesome and popular." The word is, of course, formed on the model of u Bovril."

A. L. MAYHEW.

"Wo AD." Some of our dictionaries are neither lucid nor accurate in the definition of this plant or dj^e. Skeat describes it as " a plant used as a blue dye-stuff"; Stormonth as "a plant formerly extensively cultivated ......now superseded by indigo." Webster

gives a more particular definition, and adds correctly, "but is now used only with indigo as a ferment in the vat."

I have had the pleasure of attending a private lecture on vvoad delivered by my friend Dr. Plowright, of King's Lynn, and without trenching too far on his historical and botanical researches, I may perhaps be allowed to give a few particulars which are likely to prove interesting.

Most of us have a slight acquaintance with woad from early childhood, having been taught that the early Britons smeared them- selves with this dye, either for the purpose of terrifying their enemies or beautifying
 * heir persons. Curiously enough, the Latin

ristorians differ as to the colour, one pro- nouncing it to be blue, another black, a third green. As a matter of fact they were all correct. Though blue is the usual extraction, sometimes the material will come out green, while the hands of the woad-workers become as black as niggers' hands, and are only re- stored to their natural hue with a change of skin. In the middle of the sixteenth century came the importation of indigo ; and though attempts were made to shut it out in the nterests of the home trade, these attempts were only partially and temporarily success-
 * ul, and eventually indigo superseded woad,

>eing both a cheaper and more brilliant dye. 3ut now a curious thing happened. It ooked for all the world as if woad had been rushed out of existence and could never aise its head again. And, indeed, most of /he factories had to put up their shutters, so hat nine people out of ten are probably yers. Experiments, however, proved that ne addition of a certain percentage of fer- mented woad to indigo produced a much
 * norant of the fact that woad is still used by