Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 5.djvu/341

 9*s.v. APRIL 28,i9oo.j NOTES AND QUERIES.

333

Yes, you sit on your rock in a blustering breeze; Begone with your partner, disturb not mine ease; In the world of the north men still cling to you, Tho' elsewhere you're hated by Gentile and Jew; When you 're seen in the Conqueror's hand as a whip How pale grows each cheek and how quivers each

lip!

But, mistress, believe me, you were seen in the dark When you played on old No' that unmaidenly lark, And his angry spouse dropped you clean out of the

Ark

(" Like to like," as she did so, I heard her remark). Though the roe's weight I doubt, yet hark to the flow Of Hallam's Greek puns as he rides in the Row, Declaring the season from start unto close Shows nothing to equal a sweet English rose.

J. P. OWEN.

[See 1 st S. ii. 10, 77; xii. 365, 520. This riddle is ascribed to the Bishop of Salisbury. "The Church of Christ" is given as the answer. Another con- tributor says it is purposely impossible, being, in fact, nonsense.]

THE ORIENTATION OP CHURCHES : ST. GEORGE'S, BLOOMSBURY. The altar of this church was originally on the east side in the recess now used as a baptistery. When Bed- ford House was demolished in the early part of this century the Duke of Bedford presented the very fine altar-piece which stood in the private chapel to St. George's Church. The recess above mentioned was too small to receive the altar-piece, the only possible position being the north wall. The axis of the church was therefore turned through an angle of ninety degrees, and now lies north and south, the pews being altered accordingly. This was ail made clear in a lecture on the church given in the vestry about March, 1899, by Mr. C. Fitzroy Doll, architect, of Gower Street. See also Wheatley's ' London Past and Present,' ii. 98. R, B. P.

[See 6 th S. xii. 165; and, under various headings, the Indexes generally to ' N. & Q.']

A LONG AND YOUNG FAMILY. In a recent number of Stubbs's Gazette for the Textile and Woollen Trades a letter is inserted by an Irish solicitor addressed to the creditors of a de- ceased draper, in which he craves their indul- gence towards the widow on the ground of the deceased having left " a long and young family." I have not before seen the use of the word long for large, but presume it may be common in Ireland. A. G. REID.

Auchterarder.

ON VERIFYING QUOTATIONS. I have had an opportunity lately of experiencing the value of old Dr. Route's well-known precept. Mr. Lecky in his ' History of Rationalism in Europe' (seventh ed., vol. i. p. 55) says that "boots with pointed toes had been lately

[fourteenth century] introduced, and were supposed by many to have been peculiarly offensive to the Almighty," and as his authority he gives in a note Hecker, ' Epi- demics of the Middle Ages,' p. 82. On turn- ing to Hecker I find that what he states is :

"They [the priests of Liege] intimidated the people to such a degree that there was an express ordinance that no one should make any but square- toed shoes, because these fanatics had manifested a morbid dislike to the pointed shoes which had come into fashion immediately after the Great Mortality in 1350."

It was to the demonized or possessed per- sons that the pointed shoes were offensive, and not, as Mr. Lecky, to make a piquant point, puts it, to the Almighty.

A. SMYTHE PALMER.

S. Woodford.

"ANY." Under the heading "None," in p. 235, ante, "any men" is assailed, though for no reason that will hold water, as "un- grammatical "; and, farther, it is there spoken of as if it were confined to " vulgar usage." Revelation of its polite English synonym is disappointingly withheld.

" Any," as a plural, in the forms " anie," "eni," &c., has been employed since about 1230, as, after slight search, may be dis- covered.

As to the particular collocation " any men," Wyclif, translating the Vulgate's aliquos, has "ony men" in 2 Peter iii. 9, where the Authorized Version has simply the pronoun "any," plural; and again ^in 1 Peter iii. 1, rendering, respectively, rif as and rives.

Bishop Pecock, Capgrave, and the ' Paston Letters ' supply abundant evidence that already in the fifteenth century the plural "any" was firmly established in our language.

Seeing that, in modern days, it has had the practical sanction of James Harris, Dr. John- son, Bishop Warburton, Bishop Lowth, Bishop Hurd, Cowper, Goldsmith, Gibbon, Burke, Home Tooke, Southey, Coleridge, Landor, Bishop Thirl wall, De Quincey, Cardinal New- man, and Lord Macaulay, as appears from quotations now lying before me, one must be very nice indeed to regard it as illegitimate.

F. H.

[Other notes received also vindicate the use.]

THE WANDERING JEW. The following story of a wandering man after his resuscitation is of a similar stamp to what I quoted last under this heading (9 th S. iv. 166), and origin- ally occurs in Yang Hiuen-Chi's ' Record of the Cathedrals in Lo-Yang,' written in the sixth century A.D. As Tu Lung-Wei's col- lection of ancient Chinese works, entitled