Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 5.djvu/374

 366

NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. v. MAY 5, 1900.

strong vitality, for the majority of labourers will refer to their gardens, or allotments, as consisting of so many lug. They never add an s for the plural. The stick or pole used in the act of measuring was formerly called a lug. CHAS. GILLMAN.

Church Fields, Salisbury.

Welsh Hook. Halliwell says, "A kind of bill or axe having two edges. 'A Welsh hookj rancon, un visarma,' Howell." Wimbell^ an auger. Still in use. }is, 3is, seyd the wymbylle, I ame als rounde as a tnyrnbyll ; My Maysters werke I will remembyre, I schall crepe fast into the tymbyre, And help my maister within a stounde To store his cofere with xx pounde.

MS. Ashmole 61 (fifteenth cent.).

JOHN P. STILWELL. Hilfield, Yateley, Hants.

In the Vandyke Exhibition at Burlington House there was a portrait of the fourth Lord Wharton, lent by the Empress of Russia. Lord Wharton is represented holding in his hand what the Catalogue calls a " shepherd's crook," but it is clearly a staff with three prongs at the end of it. This must be the sprangstaff or prangstaff mentioned by C. H.

Prangs, I suppose, = prongs.

SHERBORNE.

Most of these are in HalliwelPs ' Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words ' : Prang- staff, see under ' Prong ' ; Welsh hook under 4 Welch Hook' ; winbell, probably " wimble" ; and lugg under ' Lug.' W. C. B.

Edward Phillips in his 'New World of Words,' 1720, says that contravallation, or counterline, is a trench guarded with a parapet, or breastwork, which the besiegers usually cut round a place, without musket shot of it, to secure themselves on that side, and to stop the sallies of the garrison, so that the whole army which carries on a siege lies between the circumvallation and contraval- lation.

Archdeacon Nares in his 'Glossary of English Authors ' describes a Welsh hook to be a sword made in a hooked form, and quotes :

" And swore the devil his true liege-man upon the cross of a Welsh-hook."' 1 Henry IV.' (1598), II. iv. As tall a man as ever swagger With Welse-hook or long dagger. B. Jonson, * Masque in Honour of Wales,' vi. 49.

" And that no man presume to wear any weapon especially Welch-hooks, and forest bills." 'Sir John Oldcastle'( 1600).

EVERARD HOME COLEMAN.

71, Brecknock Road, N,

' THE THREE SISTER ARTS ' (9 th S. v. 313). C. S. S., of Yale University Library, quotes Sir. W. H. Husk in reference to 'An Enter- }ainment of Musick,' a piece with music by 3r. Pepusch. It may interest him to know Library. The title-page runs thus :
 * hat the score is in the British Museum

" The score of An Entertainment of Musick call'd The Union of the Three Sister Arts as it is per- brm'd at the Theatre in Lincolns Inn Fields for S l Cecilia's Day, 1723, Compos'd by D r Pepusch."

This score was

' Printed for I Walsh sery* to his Majesty at the EEarp and Hoboy in Catherine Street in the Strand, and I no & Joseph Hare at the Viol and Flute in Oornhill near the Royal Exchange."

J. S. S. (London).

ROMAN NUMERALS (9 th S. iii. 90, 214, 423 ; v. 57, 151, 233, 428). The University of Berlin n its ' Index Lectionum ' for the current semester uses the dates MDCCCIC.-MDCCCC. Our library possesses a copy of Scapula's Greek Lexicon,' edited by Harmar, pub- lished at London, and dated cioiocxxxmx. (1637). Should not analogy and brevity be our guides in forming combinations 1 The principle involved is that a single letter is placed on the left for subtraction instead of several on the right for addition. Thus ix. is shorter than vim., &c. Why, then, not use CD. for 400 and CM. for 900, ic. for 99, and so on 1 The Berlin use above is curiously incon- sistent, and the example of Harmar's Scapula is bad, as vn. is shorter, as well as simpler, than mx. But our eyes would be saved much worry if Roman numerals, along with German characters, could be abolished.

E. H. BROMBY.

University, Melbourne.

"RACKSTROW'S OLD MAN" (9 th S. v. 269). There is plenty of information to be had about Rackstrow's Museum, but I have only time to hunt up one little bit. This is one of his original handbills (issued about 1761), headed "Rackstrow's Museum. To be seen at No. 197, Fleet-Street, near Temple-Bar. In the First and Second Rooms." A very full account is given of the collection, which con- sisted in the main of male and female ana- tomical figures. They must have been well worth a visit, as close imitations of the in- ternal organs were displayed, in which " the Circulation of the Blood is imitated (by Liquors resembling the Arterial and Veinous Blood, flowing through Glass Vessels whose Figure and Situation exactly correspond with the natural Blood Vessels), also the Action of the Heart and Motion of the Lungs as in Breathing. The whole making a most wonderful and beautiful Appearance."

The bulk of the exhibits in the first and