Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 5.djvu/43

 9 th S. V. JAN. 13, 1900.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

35

first reference I traced to 1680, I have been able to put it back ten years. In the 'Domestic State Papers of Charles II.' in the Record Office (vol. cclxxviii., No. 148) is a letter dated from Chester, 10 Sept., 1670, from " Ma. Anderton " to Charles Perrott, clerk to Williamson, Arlington's secretary, in which he says :

" I wanted y newes paper for Monday last past & I assure you 1 had rather been w%out it 3 moneths before than mist of it in y e Assize time."

The fashion in which the terra is here employed would seem to indicate familiar use. ALFRED F. BOBBINS.

RUBENS'S PORTRAIT OF THE MARCHESA GRIMALDI (9 th S. iv. 438). This portrait is the property of Mr. Barikes, of Kingston Lacy, near Wimborne, where it now hangs. GERALD PONSONBY.

INSTRUMENTAL CHOIR (7 th S. xii. 347, 416, 469 ; 8 th S. i. 195, 336, 498 ; ii. 15 ; 9 th S. ii. 513; iii. 178; iv. 12, 74, 445). Has the fine specimen of a barrel-organ (used in a church) belonging to Salt, near Stafford, been chro- nicled in ' N. & Q.' 1 It was in situ and in excellent order in 1879, and is probably there still. It was supplanted in regular use by a modern organ, but was carefully preserved by the then vicar, the Rev. W. Vincent.

W. H. QUARRELL.

CARDINAL NEWMAN AND * N. & Q.' (9 th S. iv. 498). Cardinal Newman's letter was originally addressed to the Guardian, and appeared in that publication 25 Feb., 1880, but was reproduced in 'N. & Q.,' 6 th S. i. 232. MR. MARSHALL'S previous query, of more than nine years ago, will be found in 7 th S. x. 174.

EVERARD HOME COLEMAN.

171, Brecknock Road. " MARY HAD A LITTLE LAMB " (9 th S. iv. 499). -Curiously, this question is almost simul- aneous with the publication of the answer in he Pittsburgh Dispatch, a paper from which obtain many items of curious literary ^formation. The Dispatch says that the Mary" in question was Mary Elizabeth lawyer, a Massachusetts girl. The lamb was one of two deserted by their mother. One of the lambs "followed her to school one day," and on " that morning a young student named

Rawlston was a visitor to the school a few

days later he handed Mary the first three verses of the poem. He died soon after, ignorant of the immortality of his verses.' The lamb lived for many years, and was finally killed by a cow. Mary's mother made its wool into stockings, which eventual^ became "yellow with age." Finally, Mary

ravelled the stockings, stuck pieces of the yarn on cards, with attestations of their his- tory, and " sold them to secure money to help to save the Old South Church of Boston." This does not give the date of publication, nor does the Dispatch give its authority for any part of the statement.

H. SNOWDEN WARD.

The Athenceum of 31 May, 1879, reported the death of Mrs. Hale, once a voluminous writer, author of a volume of verse, 'The Genius of Oblivion, and other Original Poems,' so long ago as 1823. According to an extract from an American paper made shortly after her death, Mrs. Sarah Josepha Hale, the editor of 'Godey's Lady's Book,' resided at Boston in 1830, when and where the poem in question was first published.

EVERARD HOME COLEMAN.

71, Brecknock Road.

" HOODOCK " (9 th S. iv. 517). This word is undoubtedly difficult, and the suggestion offered in the supplement to Jamieson seems to meet the difficulty fairly well. There is no doubt that " hoody " signifies carrion-crow, but it remains to be proved that " hopdock " is the same word or a word akin to it. All that can be said is that, till something better is offered as an explanation, "hoodock," in the line

The harpy, hoodock, purse-proud race, may signify " like a ' hoody,' or carrion-crow, foul and greedy." Robert Chambers, who was not without experience in such things, glosses the word as " miserly " in his ' Works of Burns,' 1851, repeating this in the library edition of 1857. Scott Douglas follows Chambers, c Works of Burns,' ii. 29.

THOMAS BAYNE.

THE FUTURE OF BOOKS AND BOOKMEN (9 th S. iv. 476). In one of his 'Roundabout Papers,' viz., ' The Last Sketch,' Thackeray, it will be remembered, cheers his heart with similar hopeful speculations :

" Some day our spirits may be permitted to walk in galleries of fancies more wondrous and beautiful than any achieved works which at present we see, and our minds to behold and delight in master- pieces which poets' and artists' minds have fathered and conceived only."

H. E. M.

St. Petersburg.

THAMES TUNNEL (9 th S. iv. 419, 467). As an old native of the " port of London," Graves- end, I have been awaiting difference of opinion as to MR. GEORGE MARSHALL'S sum- ming up of Ralph Dodd, civil engineer, as "a man of ideas only, which came tp nothing."