Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 5.djvu/96

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. v. FEB. 3, im

the day, which, at the beginning of this cen- tury, made all the fine ladies take to making shoes." Some further account of this curious freak of fashion would be interesting.

JAMES HOOPER. Norwich.

CARD-MATCHES.-

" My Lord Temple, as vain as if he was descended from the stroller Pindar, or had made up card- matches at the siege of Genoa, has resigned the Privy Seal, because he has not the Garter.

What is the meaning of these mentions of Pindar and of the siege of Genoa 1 The sen- tence occurs in Horace Walpole's letter to Montagu of 17 November, 1759 (Cunning- ham's ed., vol. Hi. p. 266). The 'H.E.1V gives: " Card-match=a piece of card dipped in melted sulphur." H. T. B.

MEN WEARING EARRINGS. Can any one explain why some working-men, especially navvies, wear earrings ? W. CURZON YEO.

Richmond, Surrey.

[Is there not a belief that earrings are good for the sight?]

POND FARM, LEICESTER, AND WHITEBROOK FAMILY. William Whitebrook, who was born about 1716 and married about 1750, was in the last-named year in possession of a farm known as Pond Farm, near Leicester. I shall be glad of any information upon the following points : (1) The exact location of Pond (1 Pound) Farm, which was the largest in the southern vicinity of Leicester ; (2) the name of the parish in which it was situated ; (3) the dates the exact dates, for those I give are only approximate of the birth and mar- riage of the William Whitebrook named ; (4) whether he was its tenant or owner.

W.

" JESSO." What are the meaning and origin of this word, and what books give an account of "the lands of Jesso" mentioned in Bar- clay's 1808 'Dictionary' in connexion with the word ' Continent "I H. J. B.

DR. JAMES GORDON MORGAN. Could any of your correspondents give information regarding the descendants or family of Dr. James Gordon Morgan ? He took the degree of M.B. at Cambridge (St. John's College) in 1806. He afterwards practised medicine at Barnstaple, in Devonshire. He married an heiress, Ann Douglas, by whom he had a numerous family. The eldest son is registered as baptized there : " William Archibald Mor- gan, 23 Dec., 1813"; and a daughter Jean, 14 May, 1823, also born at Barnstaple.

ALEX. FORBES.

WHISKERS. In a notice in the Saturday Review of 13 January of Mr. M. H. Spiel- rnarm's work, ' The Hitherto Unidentified Contributions of W. M. Thackeray to Punch,' it is said :

" On one very trifling point we think that Mr. Spielmann is under a misapprehension. ' It is curious and characteristic, he says. ' that Thackeray, who illustrates his own text' (in which there is mention of whiskered guardsmen), ' has drawn the warriors with moustaches only.' Now, an old dictionary defines a whisker as 'a tuft of hair on the upper lip of a man,' and we take it that these terms were not properly differentiated even as late as 1846. ' Beard ' used to be a word of quite generic signification. We still keep the old nomen- clature when we speak of the whiskers of a cat."

With the note that in * Pendennis,' which was in course of publication in 1849-50, the im- mortal Major certainly indicates that he knows what a moustache means and that in the sense in which it is used to-day I would ask whether anywhere outside the Saturday Review's "old dictionary" whiskers have been considered the equivalent. A. F. R.

"EVERY BULLET HAS ITS BILLET." In what song do these words occur 1 E. MEIN.

[It is assigned to King William III. See 5 th S. viii. 68. We have before us a copy of the song refrain occurs in each verse. The song is described as sung by Mr. G. Smith at the late Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, in the opera of ' The Circassian Bride.']
 * Ev'ry Bullet has its Billet,' by H. R. Bishop. This

DEVIZES. What is the origin of this name? I have recently come across an old Act of Parliament, "anno vicesimo quarto" of George II., "for repairing the road leading from West Lavington to the Devizes," A.D. 1750. H. Y. POWELL.

Bayswater.

[See 1 st S. vii. 11 ; 5 th S. x. 115, 417 ; and par- ticularly 7 th S. vii. 491.]

BEEZELEY. In Warner's 'Collections for Hants,' 1795, vol. i. p. 88, I find, "Beezeley five miles East from Petersfield" no more. I presume this must have been a Sussex hamlet since disappeared. Information as to it and its etymology I would esteem a favour. F. C. BEAZLEY.

Fern Hill, Oxton, Birkenhead.

OLD WOODEN CHEST. I should like to ask your readers if any of them have yet come across an old chest cut from a length of solid tree trunk about whose age there is a well- founded opinion. Along with St. Augustine's chair there was found at Stanford Bishop such a chest, but I have not seen any account of it from which its age has been gathered. Is it, or may it with the chair be, assigned to the seventh century 1 In our parish church here