Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 5.djvu/321

 9<s. V.APRIL 21, i9oo.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

fax, dated 12 September, 1727, contains, however, a far more interesting reference, recommending

" one William Scafe, a Watchmaker, borne at Burley, near Denton [cp. York], served his time to his Father, a Blacksmith ! but now the most cele- brated workman perhaps in London and Europe ! "

W. I. R. V.

ALDERSGATE. From time to time in your columns the derivation of the word Alders- gate has been discussed. Bearing on this subject, the following quotation from 'The Ordinary,' by William Cartwright, Act III. sc. i., has a certain interest. Of course Cartwright was no etymologist : Moth. Now Aldersgate

Is hotten so from one that Aldrich hight ;

Or else of elders, that is ancient men ;

Or else of aldern-trees which growden there ;

Or else, as Heralds says, from Aluredus.

The collected edition of Cartwright's plays and poems was published in 1651, some years after his death. PHILIP NORMAN.

[See 8 th S. iii. 488 ; iv. 97 ; 9 th S. i. 333, 431 ; ii. 10.]

'THE THREE SISTER ARTS.'

"An Entertainment of Musick, call'd The Union of the Three Sister Arts. As it is perform'd at the Theatre in Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, for St. Cecilia's Day. Set to Musick by Dr. Pepusch. London. Printed, and sold by J. Wood, in Little-Britain; and at the Theatre in Lincoln's-Inn-Fields. 1723. [Price 6d.] "

This is the title of a pamphlet (of 20 pp.) which the 'Biographia Dramatica' says was "not printed." And W. H. Husk, in his 'Account of the Musical Celebrations on St. Cecilia's Day,' London, 1857, says :

" This entertainment was never printed, but the

music was published in score in the December

following [1723]."

Husk adds that the piece was very successful, naming six dates of its repetition. A prefa- tory note of the author is signed "K. L.," which evidently means Richard Leveridge. The dramatis personce are given as Mrs. Chambers, Mr. Leveridge, Mr. Le Gare. Mr. Leveridge and Dr. Pepusch were collaborators also in a song printed in vol. ii. of 'The Musical Miscellany,' Lond., 1729. J. S. S.

Yale University Library.

GENEROUS THOUGH CURIOUS KINDNESS TO A DYING MOTHER. In 'Songs of my Pilgrim- age,' by Elizabeth Campbell (Edinburgh, 1875), with an introduction by George Gil- fillan, the author, in the sketch of her life, tells a curious story about " the lady of the Castle":

"My father, whose name was James Duncan, was a ploughman I was three months old when my

father came to the Castle of Findowry to work the first pair of horses. He served there twenty years. 1 never knew the loss of my mother, her death was like a dream to me. Truly God tempers the wind

to the shorn lamb The lady of the Castle gave us

the milk of the best cow in the Castle byre ror the benefit of my baby sister, Barbara, because the mid- wife caused the death of my mother when Barbara was born. She gave the cow's first calf to my mother, for she lingered eighteen months on her deathbed. The lady was so whimsical she let the calf wade in the fields of corn, and no one dared to turn it out. But they managed to pet and spoil it, and so it grew dangerous by learning to gore people. My father sold it into a Highland drove passing for the southern markets for ten pounds. The lady was offended with my father for selling it. She said she would have given him the best cow in her posses- sion, and kept it in a park to suckle calves, tor my

mother's sake The stately, stern, old lady

must have felt very lonely without children of her

own she would gather us poor children in to

amuse herself with and also do us good The old

lady span fine linen for her own amusement in the great old arch of the Castle kitchen fireplace, that you could have driven a coach and six through."

This was about the year 1810. Findowry is in Forfarshire. The author seems to think " the stately, stern, old lady " gave the calf to the ploughman's wife and let it run about the cornfields from a " whimsical " idea, strengthened by the fact of herself being childless. This may have been the case ; but did her unusual kindness not originate in some old custom, like the multitude of other unexplained practices among the past gene- rations of country folk ? P. F. H.

Perth.

TABLET TO MR. GLADSTONE. The fact is worthy of being recorded in 'N. & Q.' although he contributed to its columns but on one occasion, 8 th S. ii. 310 that last Octo- ber a tablet was affixed to the house, No. 62, Rodney Street, Liverpool, in which Mr. Glad- stone was born. The tablet, which resulted from a movement of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, is simple in design, oblong in shape, of yellow Delia Robbia ware, and bears the following inscription :

Historic Society

of

Lancashire and Cheshire.

William

Ewart

Gladstone

Was born in this house Dec. 29, 1809.

The tablet is embedded in the wall between the portico and one of the south windows of the nouse, which recedes a few inches from its neighbours, indicating (which is the fact) a previously detached existence, and is a sub- stantial three-storied brick edifice. The pre- sent owner and occupant of the historic house