Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 6.djvu/137

 9° S- VI- Aw- ll. 1900-] NOTES AND QUERIES. 111 exsted_close to the west ford of Oxford. It was this charter he relied on to prove his assertion that its boundaries ran southwards, and in making this assertion he found sup- port xn turning Anglo-Saxon adjectives into adverbs, and called such a liberty an idiom (9"' S. v. 520). That argument was a forlorn hope, and _my readers will see that I was able to turn it inside out (9"‘ S. v. 251-2). I Will now perform the same operation for what is apparently his present forlorn hope, of the Bayworth evidence. The position of B€l’lgB in the Bayworth boundary, or rt of _1t, which he quotes against me affords lilim th1s_ hope. The gist of it is this. Because B6I'l§8 is mentioned in this boundary of Bay- w_ort the place must be, according to himself, sout of Iffley (9"‘ S. v. 518). This 18 really wonderful, seeing that the outl 'ing part of Bayworth included part or the wliole of Grandpont, a tithingh of the parish of St, Aldates, Oxford, whic, formerly in Berk- shire, was lgyothe City of Oxford Order, 1889, under the _ cal Government Act, 1888 in- cluded wlthin the extended city of Oxford, and transferred to Oxfordshire. Berige, an island or meadow, is mentioned in the char- ter of Eadwy relating to Hayworth, A.D. 955-6. BerI?e on cearwyllan ” is mentioned also in the_ enmngton charter of the same date. As it was in, or close to the Cherwell-and there is but one Cherwell-it must have been close  Oxford, which is the place where, according to later records, these Bayworth meadows on which Grandpont was situated actually existed. The outlying meads of Bayworth lay close to, or partly within, the bounds of the Anglo-Saxon burgh of Oxford itself. They lay close to the south ford, where Grandipont was afterwards built, the mill of whlc “belonged to the abbey of Abingdon before the Norman Conquest,”* and this stood on “ the south bridge and which belonged to Baieworth.”+ “Ba1worth, whereunto belongeth Langford Mill standing then at the south bridge of Oxford.”1 MR. STBVENSON either does not know these circumstances, or has suppressed them. _ T. W. SHORE. 105, Rxtherdon Road, S. W. _l__ ‘ THE BIBLIOTHEQUE NATIONALE AND Itrzxnans' (9"' S. vi. 68).-For STRANGER’S information, I can state that a permit is necessary, and rightly so, as similarly a ' ‘Surve of the Ant' 't' fOf d,’ b Anthon a Wood, edited byllg. Ellarlle. X or y 1f.z.~J;,...._ ermit is required for admittance into our Bational Library at the British Museum. On entering the doors of the Bibliotheque Nationale the reader is met by an official in gold-laced cocked hat and coat with many gilt buttons, sitting at a small desk, who ives him a printed paper, without which Be is not allowed to go a metre further. Having obtained this paper, he selects his desk, which is numbere but unprovided with ink, pens, pen-brush, weight, paper- knife, blotting- ad, or book-rest, all of which are su plied fidr free use at every desk in the British Museum. He then finds that the general catalogue of the printed books is printed no furt er than the letter B (it was so in May, 1899, but may extend to O or D now) ; that there is no catalogue in MS. for the readers to consult, and that he must write upon slips of paper Provided for the purplose (which he obtains rom the officials at t e crescent-shaped desk at the further end of the library) the particulars of the books he requires as fully and hs accurately as he may be able from his own knowledgle, for at this library the 'reader has to supp these particulars, which at the Britislli Museum are so fully and precisely given in the printed general catalogue A to Z. For instance, if the reader asks the officials (there being no catalogue), “ What books have you upon Jurisprudence?" (or any other subject) he w' 1 be asked in reply, “What books do you reiuirel Write t em down, and if we ave t em they will be brought to you.” He does so (as far as those onl he may know of, which may not be a tentll, or twentieth part of those in the library which he would ike to consult if he knew for certain by a catalogue that they were there), and hands the pa r sli s to these oflicials, as also the paper ‘hee had) received from the cocked-hat oflicial. Then, after waiting] from twenty minutes to two hours (as I ave often and often done), he is informed whether the books are ound or not. All the books he may have had during the day are entered (by the officials at the crescent-shap`ed desk) upon the paper he obtained from t e official at the door, and when he has rendered up all of them to those oiiicials the paper is returned to him, which he must give up to the official at the door as he leaves the ibrary. Such was the state of official chaos in this magni- ficent library in May, 1899 ! Books can be reserved for the followin day by inserting in them slips of paper with your name on each. There are catalogues or some of the particular collections of books. C. Mason.