Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 5.djvu/305

 V.APRIL 14, 1900.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

297

traveller who knows the dangers of the road carrie in his pocket a small piece of oatcake, not intende as food, but as a charm against the Fecir-Gortha" S. A. D'AECY, L.E.C.P. and S.I. Rosslea, Clones, co. Fermanagh.

'LETTEES ON THE ENGLISH NATION '(9 th ! v. 186). Walpole probably was referring to

"Letters on the English and French Nations containing Curious and Useful Observations or their Constitutions Natural and Political ; Nervou and Humorous Descriptions of the Virtues, Vices Ridicules and Foibles of the Inhabitants ; Critica Remarks on their Writers ; Together with Mora Reflections interspersed throughout the Work

In Two Volumes. By Mons. L'Abbe" le Blanc

London : 1747."

I have only the first volume, and I do no find the book in the Bodleian Library, bu_ it seems to answer to the description given in the quotation. Q. V.

BAE-AT-GIN & Co. (9 th S. v. 249). The perplexity of S. J. A. F. is easily quieted. A M. Eugene Baratgin owns several oyster shops in London. His somewhat peculiar name no doubt tempts him to cut it up thus as an advertisement for the sale of his bivalves. Voila tout ! CECIL CLAEKE.

Authors' Club, S.W.

I also have noticed this strange name, as I pass the shop almost daily, and also a branch shop which Mr. Baratgin has at 3, Praed Street. He informs me that the name is French (one word, Baratgin), and that he adopted that division of it merely to draw attention, and by way of an advertisement.

EDWAED P. WOLFEESTAN.

u CHILDEEPOX " (9 th S. v. 128, 235). I am much obliged for C. C. B.'s information about Dr. Salmon writing in 1695 of smallpox while treating of infants' diseases, also while treat- ing of diseases of adults. I should be obliged for the name of the work where the passage occurs, as Dr. W. Salmon's works (I suppose this is the Salmon referred to) are so numerous. The British Museum apparently does not con- tain a work of this kind or title.

C. G. S.-M. 23, Upper Bedford Place, W.C.

BOUNDAEY STONES IN OPEN FIELDS (9 th S. iv. 476, 542). In connexion with this in- teresting question may be mentioned the long line of boundary stones (which I saw in 1871) running along the frontier of Dutch Limburg and Prussia. These stones, white and shaped like English milestones, could be seen stretching away to a great distance right and left of the fine road (said to have been built by Napoleon) between Maastricht

and Aix-la-Chapelle. And if I remember rightly, at a spot near to the intersection line of this road with the boundary stones, one can stand in three countries at one and the same time Prussia, Belgium, and Holland a feat which any one of ordinary length of limb can easily perform. Nor do those stones present any agricultural difficulties, being some fifteen to twenty yards apart.

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

" MAEY HAD A LITTLE LAMB " (9 th S. iv. 499 ; v. 35). As usual, ME. COLEMAN is right, for Mrs. Sarah J. Hale certainly wrote the verses in question. They were first published in a little duodecimo volume having only twenty- four pages, entitled * Poems for our Children ' (Boston, 1830), of which every poem was written by Mrs. Hale, and this particular one was based on an incident of her own child- hood. Yet it is not at all strange that ME. WAED should have lighted upon the Sawyer- Rawlston story, for it has been rife for many years and grows in detail. Mary Sawj r er is not a myth, but was an actual Massachusetts girl, who, after she became Mrs. Tyler and Mrs. Hale's verses had gained popularity, "eally claimed their authorship for John Eloulston, as related, and probably thought she was right. Some newspaper slips of this story were enclosed to Mrs. Hale in 1878, the year before her death, and in reply she made a, positive assertion of her own sole author- ship, with much circumstantial detail. Mrs. ilale generously supposed Mrs. Tyler to be lonestly mistaken, saying that the incident f the lamb, in itself, was not uncommon, and ery possibly young Mr. Roulston did write, >n some such occasion, verses that Mrs. Tyler, ifter the lapse of years, thought she recognized ri the well-known ones; but it could be only a trick of memory, since the latter were v holly Mrs. Hale's own. As the story was persisted in, Mrs. Hale's son again specifically enied the claim in a letter to the Boston J ranscript of 10 April, 1889. In some of these epetitions Mrs. Tyler's portrait appeared in ,n American newspaper that fell into the lands of Mr. E. A. Freeman, the historian, and rew from him a very amusing letter to Miss Charlotte Yonge, dated 28 Oct., 1888. It is oo long to quote entire, but begins by calling pon Miss Yonge, as "the natural guardian f original poems for infant minds," to say 'hether " Mary of Massachusetts " was not n impostor :

" My daughters and I both hold that it was not lary, but Sarah, who had the little lamb that ent to school against the rule. So we are call in- ined to look upon the Massachusetts version as