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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. v. JUNE 2, 1900.

the more common word ; but in formal language (such as in the statutes, legal documents, &c.) the full word is the correct term, and the one always made use of. With reference to the well-known card game, one might as well argue that because nap (the abbreviation) is the term more fre- quently met, napoleon (the full form) was foreign or unnaturalized. J. S. M. T.

PROVERB. Thomas Hearne has recorded the following :

" I wish [he says] men to make their owne Handes their Executors and their Eyes their Over- seers, not forgetting the old Proverbe Women be forgetfull, Children be unkinde, Executors be covetous, and take what they finde. If anybody aske where the deads goods became,

they answer

So God mee helpe and holydome Hee dyed a poore man."

Hearne's ' Remarks and Collections,' ed. Doble, iii. 107.

EDWARD PEACOCK.

EPITAPH AT BANBURY. In * Keliquise Hearnianse ' (vol. ii. p. 179, second edition, enlarged) the following curious note occurs :

" Oct. 4. [1723]. An epitaph in Banbury church yard upon a young man who dyed by a mortification which seized in his toe (his toe ana leg both being cut off before he died) : Ah ! cruel death, to make three meals of one, To taste and eat, then eat till all was gon. But know, thou tyrant, w n th' last trump shall

call; He '11 find his feet to stand, when thou shalt fall."

A ' History of Banbury ' gives the name as Richard Richards, and the date as 7 April, 1651, more than two hundred and forty years ago. It would be interesting to know if the epitaph is still in existence.

JOHN PICKFORD, M.A. Newbourne Rectory, Woodbridge.

"STIVER" AND "STEEVER." I find most people look upon these as merely two alter- native pronunciations of the same word. This is not the case ; they came into English from two different languages. Stiver is Dutch, its original spelling being stuiver. Steever is German, its original spelling being Stiiber. Though both words are in common use, in the sense of a penny or small coin, only the first (probably because it is the oldest) is re- cognized by dictionaries. Prof. Skeat, for instance, in his 'Etymological Dictionary,' gives ' Stiver,' with a quotation from Evelyn's r Diary' (1641), and the obvious derivation from the Dutch, and remarks that it is "allied to German Stiiber" He appears to have no suspicion that the German Stiiber in its turn has yielded an English word. It

came into English, I may add, not directly from German, but through the medium of the jargon known as Yiddish.

JAMES PLATT, Jun.

IRELAND YARD, BLACKFRIARS. In pulling down a house, No. 7, on the west side of Ireland Yard, St. Andrew's Hill, Queen Victoria Street, lately in the occupation of Messrs. Reuben Lidstone & Son, carpenters, some fragments of walling and vaulting were discovered embedded in the modern walls, which are believed to be the remains of the Dominican priory founded by Hubert de Burgh in 1221, and removed from Holborn to Blackfriars in 1276. From the character of the mouldings, the remains appear to belong, in point of date, to the latter part of the reign of Edward I. There is a sketch of the ruins recently discovered by Mr. H. W. Brewer in the Daily Graphic, 14 May.

In 1613 Shakespeare bought a house in Blackfriars from Henry Walker for 140., which he bequeathed to his daughter Susanna Hall. This house was situate on the west side of St. Andrew's Hill, formerly Puddle Hill or Puddle Dock Hill, and was, according to Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, either partially on, or very near, the locality now and for more than two centuries known as Ireland's Yard.

Ireland's Yard derives its name from William Ireland, a haberdasher, who occu- pied the house at the time of Shakespeare's purchase. In the deed of conveyance to the poet the house is described as

" abutting upon a street leading down to Puddle

Wharf now or late in the tenure or occupation

of one William Ireland, part of which said tene- ment is erected over a great gate leading to a capital messuage which some time was in the tenure of William Black well, Esq., deceased, and since in the tenure or occupation of the Right Honourable Henry, now Earl of Northumberland."

JOHN HEBB.

MILITARY DESPATCH. The following touch- ing extracts from the will of the Austrian Field-Marshal Benedek, written in 1873, may have some interest at a time when the pub- lication of military despatches is a subject of discussion :

" I have a long, laborious, and active soldier's life behind me, but for all that I write my last wishes with peace and in a sound mind. I have never tried to make money, and never known how to keep it. I have been a loyal, true, and brave soldier, and am, it is true, a creedless, but a humble Christian. I look forward to my end with a quiet conscience, and herewith expressly declare that 1 leave behind me no memoirs or other biographical material. All my notes and diaries on the campaign of 1866 I have burned with my own hands."