Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 5.djvu/465

 9* s. V.JUNE 9, i9oo.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

457

when ifc was used as a measure of capacity, and before the introduction of the imperial bushel, it was eight bushels. As the term measure, of what measure was it the quarter or fourth part 1 I have asked many people in the corn trade, but they cannot tell me.
 * quarter " connotes one-fourth of some larger

A. H.

STONE SEDILIA IN MEDIEVAL CHURCHES. In Gloucester Cathedral (originally Bene- dictine), Paisley and Crossraguel abbeys (Cluniac), Furness Abbey (Cistercian), Roth- well Church, Northants (built f or Augustinian nuns), St. Mary Ottery and Stratford-on- Avon (collegiate churches), and Turvey and Luton (parish churches in Bedfordshire), four sedilia for the use of the clergy are to be found. From the examples given, it is clear that the feature was not peculiar to any particular religious order or body of eccle- siastics. Can any one inform me the reason of the fourth seat? Is it possible that it was a mere freak of the respective architects ?

J. C.

BARON HAUSTEAD. Burke's ' Extinct Peer- age ' does not give the name of his wife. Who was she 1 E. E. COPE.

Sulhamstead Park, Berks.

AUTHOR OF VERSES WANTED. Can any of your readers supply the authorship of the following lines upon the subject how to be happy though poor, and when and where they appeared 1

To be contented is the only plan

To bear the pinch of poverty in man ;

Don't care a for what says Mrs. Grundy,

Who wouldn't spare a copy [copper ?] e'en on Sunday.

Ne'er tell a soul that you are wanting bread,

For friends who know this then will wish you dead.

If hungry, starve ; if thirsty, take a draught

Of that cheap wine which good old Adam quaffed ;

If bedless, beardless, minus sock or shoe,

Your friends will bury you

That 's all that they will do.

C. YATES. Totton, Hants.

" COARSIE." In Mr. Axon's ' Cheshire Gleanings' (p. 15) there is an account of a murder of a city merchant, George Sandars, in 1573, taken from a tract reprinted in Mr. Richard Simpson's 'School of Shakspere' (ii. 220), in which the following passage occurs :

" She [Sandars's wife, who confessed to have been privy to the murder] saw also her own kindred and children, whom she had not only bereft bothe of father and mother, but also left them a coarsic and shame."

What is a " coarsie " ? JOHN HEBB.

[See'Corsie'in'H.E.D. 3 ]

THE ORDER OF Avis. In Calderon's his- torical play * The Constant Prince,' the hero, Prince Ferdinand of Portugal, grandson of John of Gaunt, is described as Grand Master of the Order of Avis, and going into battle with the cry of "Avis and Christ" on his lips. When was the Order of Avis created, and was Avis a saint 1 I have not Mr. Baring-Gould's 4 Lives of the Saints ' to refer to. In Bailey's ' Dictionary ' there is a curious list of British and foreign orders of knighthood, but it does not include that of Avis. Since writing the foregoing I have found in Elvin's ' Orders of Chivalry,' 1892, a figure of the decoration of this order (plate xxii. fig. 3), which there is called the " Portuguese Military Order of St. Bento d'Aviz, or of Evora," b'ut no light is thrown on the origin of the order.

JAMES HOOPER.

Norwich.

[There is no mention of St. Avis in Baring-Gould.]

THE GAME OF "Fox MYNE HOST." In the Worcestershire Quarter Sessions Rolls there is mention of a charge brought against a certain parson in the year 1602, for that he (amongst other things) "played in an ale- house at a game called 'Fox myne host.'" Can any of your readers furnish information as to this game ? J. C. F.

["They may afterwards play at Foxe mine Host or some other Drinking Game at Cards or Dice." Translation by Mabbe of 'Guzman d'Alfarache,' i. iii. ii. 194. See 'H.E.D.' under * Fox, to make drunk.']

THE FLAG. (9 th S. v. 414, 440.)

IT has been a pleasant sight to see the Union Jack so much in evidence on a worthy occasion. But it is surprising how very little pride we take in seeing it correctly made ; and, considering that just now the one wish of the empire is to keep it the right side up, it is rather melancholy to see that, almost as often as not, it is carefully inverted.

Even our books of reference know very little about it. I looked out ' Jack (Union) ' in Webster's * Dictionary ' (new edition), and found it quite incorrectly drawn and en- graved. All the white lines are there made of the same breadth, which is absurd ; and this is a very common fault. In looking at the specimens in our streets, I observe that almost every conceivable error is made. Either the stripes are of wrong breadths, or they do not converge, or they are misarranged. The makers seem, as a rule, to know nothing