Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 5.djvu/421

 v. MAY 26, im] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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when contemplating the really elegant and artistic design which now graces the front of the present No. 24 in the street. Mr. Tayler- son, to whom the work was entrusted, may well feel proud of results. I take this to be the first mural adornment of a like descrip- tion as yet erected in London. Let us hope it may be the forerunner of others to be raised by those who hold historic associations in reverence. CECIL CLARKE.

Authors' Club, S.W.

CHRISTIAN NAMES. I observe the answers, 9 th S. iy. 518; v. 53, 194, 324, to ' "Doctor" a Christian Name.' I have myself seen a re- markable instance of Biblical names, so to speak, inflicted on a child. When in a county court a year or two ago I saw a plaint-note in which one of the litigants was named Faith Hope Charity Jones. On my pointing out to the registrar's clerk that this was an inappropriate name for a plaintiff, he told me that she was a married woman, her maiden name having been Peace.

W. H. QUARRELL.

"GOOBER" AND u PINDAR." These two botanical terms, better known in America than in England, are synonyms for the ground-nut or pea-nut, Arachis hypogcea. They occur in the * Century Dictionary,' with the remark, " Supposed to be of West Indian or African origin"; "goober" occurs in the It may be worth while pointing out, for the benefit of future lexicographers, that "goober' is Angolan, and "pindar"^ Congolese. The authority for this is the Rev. W. H. Bentley's- 'Dictionary of the Congo Language' (1887) He writes nguba and mpinda. The Angolan plural of the first word is ginguba, frequently used by Europeans instead of the singular Thus the late Sir R. F. Burton ('Lands o: Cazembe,' 1873) speaks of the "ginguba o: Angola." The Conde de Ficalho CPlantas Uteis da Africa Portugueza,' 1884) gives the African names of the nut as " mpinda na costa do Congo e Ambriz, ginguba em Angola." JAMES PLATT, Jun.
 * H.E.D.' without even this vague etymology.

"FLORIN " = SCOTCHMAN. If it has not bee already recorded in *N. & Q.'it may be worth noting that the native races in Natal cal a two-shilling piece a "Scotchman." It i stated to have originated in a Scotchmar giving a Kaffir one of these coins, let us hope by mistake, in place of the half-crown he owed. If this be true it is curipUvS that a Kaffi should have been able to discriminate between a Scotchman and an Englishman.

HOLCOMBE INGLBBY.

INDEX TO 'NOTES AND QUERIES.' The fol- owing paragraph, which appeared in theAthe- >,ceum of 5 May, may be of interest to readers, >ut more particularly to the fortunate pos- essors of the indexes to the early series :

" The great increase in the commercial value of he General Indexes to Notes and Queries was illus- rated on Friday in last week, when a copy of the jreneral Index to the Fifth Series realized 51. at Vlessrs. Puttick & Simpson's."

The AthenoBum of 20 May, 1899, contained

an ad vertisement offering the sum of 51. for a

opy of the General Index to the Third Series.

EVERARD HOME COLEMAN. 71, Brecknock Road.

MACAULAY'S * HORATIUS.'

And even the ranks of Tuscany Could scarce forbear to cheer.

Mr. F. R. Oliphant, writing to his mother, the late Mrs. Oliphant, 2 April, 1888, says : " Did you ever hear of the heroic young Col. Lefevre, who was one of the most brilliant French cavalry officers in the Peninsular War? His gal- lantry was so splendid that the British soldiers cheered him as he charged them at the head of his regiment." ' Autob. and Letters of Mrs. Oliphant' (Black wood, 1899), p. 355.

Sometimes truth is both stranger and stronger than fiction. C. LAWRENCE FORD, B.A.

A VOTELESS CANDIDATE. I should imagine a voteless candidate for Parliamentary hon- ours to be almost unique. In a pleasantly frank little collection of anecdotes and memoirs of the eminent City men of the time, with the title 'City Biography,' 1800, 1 find it stated (p. 37) in reference to Alder- man William Curtis (Lord Mayor in 1796) :

"He commenced his political life by offering himself a candidate for the Borough of Seaford, in Sussex, in which, however, he failed, not having a single vote."

W. ROBERTS.

SOWENS. A Scotsman inside Mafeking helped to mitigate the strain following on strictly limited rations by introducing so wens as an article of food. Readers of Scottish song will remember the following reference to this form of sustenance in the 'Blythsome Bridal,' which is replete with promise of dainties :

And there will be lapper'd-milk kebbucks,

And sowens, and farles, and baps ; With swats, and well-scraped paunches,

And brandy in stoups and in caps. Another allusion stands thus in the song 'Wallifoufa'theCat':

She 's eaten up a' the cheese,

0' the kebbuk she 's no left a bit ; She 's dung down the bit skate on the brace,. And 'tis fa'eu in the sowen kit.