Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 5.djvu/279

 s.v. APRIL 7, im] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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some one who could give them a poetical illustration. He carried one or two of them to Mr. Combe, who undertook the subject. The bookseller, knowing his procrastinating temper, left him but one drawing at a time, which he illustrated in verse, without knowing the subject of the drawing that was next to come."

About the year 1850, when the "Repository of Arts " in the Strand had passed to Acker- mann's sons (Adolphus, Ferdinand, and George), one of the assistants was known in the shop as " Dr. Syntax," from his resemblance (real or fancied) to the illus- trious parson. I believe it was Adolphus Ackermann who first bestowed the sobriquet. HERBERT B. CLAYTON.

39, Renfrew Road, Lower Kennington Lane.

TAXES ON KNOWLEDGE (9 th S. v. 79, 83, 177). Cleave's cartoonist, J. G. Grant, was slightly noted in his day. Portrait caricaturists were scarce, and Grant's crude, coarsely drawn cuts showed a fair amount of rough-and- ready talent, though in no wise helped by the execrable engraving. After the decline of Cleave's political ventures, J. G. Grant (who could draw on stone) was so fortunate as to obtain a situation under Government (at the Admiralty, I think) as a lithographic draughtsman. He is, in all probability, now deceased. HERBERT B. CLAYTON.

39, Renfrew Road, Lower Kennington Lane.

O'MoRE FAMILY (9 th S. iv. 537). O'Hart in 'Irish Pedigrees,' third edit., 1881, part vi.

Ep. 163-4, gives " the stem of the Moore imily " :

" No. 114. Roger Caoch (son of Connall, who died 1518), slain by his brother Philip.

"No. 115. Charles O'Moore of Ballynea, now Ballyna Enfield, son of Roger Caoch, died 1601.

" No. 116. Colonnel Roger, son of Charles, died 1646; he ^yas the Rory O'More of popular tradition and song in Ireland."

From Lodge's ' Peerage of Ireland ' we learn that Margaret Butler, only daughter of Thomas Butler, and granddaughter of the eighth Earl of Ormond, married first Rory O'More of Leix, and second Sir Maurice Fitzgerald of Lackagh.

In the "Fiants," published in Irish Public Record Reports, are several references to the O'Mores. No. 2448 of Eliz. is a grant of Manor of Ballynaa, co. Kildare, to Calloghe O'More, gentleman, son and heir of Rory O'More, deceased. See also 2606, 2693, 3967. H. HOUSTON BALL.

I am the possessor of O'Hart's ' Irish Pedigrees,' to which Miss KATHLEEN WARD appeals, but my edition (third, 1881) throws no light on the query. The book (certainly my edition) is a disappointing one, not only

on this question, but on every other about which I wished to know something definite and enlightening. In fact, a more un- satisfactory congeries of names, notes, and dates I have never come across. " Big head and little wits" may, in this connexion, be* rendered "Big book (839 pp.) and scant information." The only two tit-bits I can glean anent the query are (1) that the name O'Mordha has been modernized O'More (p. xvii), and (2) that it occurs (p. 691) amongst the families in Ireland down to the fifteenth century in the county of Femes. Scant intelligence this, but all that I am able to offer. Personally, I incline to the opinion that the two alluded to by Miss KATHLEEN WARD were father and son.

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

BENJAMIN ROBERT HAYDON (9 th S. v. 109). This subject has been already referred to in 'N. & Q.' See 4 th S. xi. 158, 203, 222, 246, 268, 288, 408 ; xii. 338. SENGA.

COINS IN FOUNDATION STONES (9 th S. iv. 499 ; v. 197). During some alterations in one of the original houses built in Philadelphia, U.S., soon after the foundation of that city by Penn in the seventeenth century, I saw a number of English coins of the period un- earthed from the threshold of the principal entrance, under which they had been buried. They were all copper coins, and one of the workmen told me he had often found similar coins under the thresholds of old houses in that part of the city. I remember seeing some Georgian pennies removed from under- neath the doorstep of an old house in New York, where they had evidently been placed when the house was built. It would seem to have been the custom for the early colonists in America to place coins brought from the mother country under the thresholds of their new homes, either for a sentimental reason, or else possibly to mark the date of their erection. FREDERICK T. HIBGAME.

THE WORDS " GAVEL " AND " SHIELING " (9 th S. v. 85, 210). I fear I have no reply to MR. ADDY'S last communication. Now that he has authoritatively declared that "the evi- dence to which he has referred is sufficient

to nullify all previous conclusions " regarding the A.-S. gafol, in the sense of tribute, there is no more to be said. The "evidence," by the way, does not mention the word gafol at all ; it only mentions j%rca, which appears in A,-S. as /oral. The word geafel, a fork, only occurs once in our literature, and is then spelt with ea.