Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 6.djvu/372

 306 NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. vi. OCT. 20,1900. I think it has originated from one o'clock being the usual dinner hour of the working classes — an hour eagerly longed for, yet quickly gone, and when all is bustle for the midday meal. An equivalent familiar phrase, " Like a house on fire," is noticed in Brewer's 'Phrase and Fable,' which, strange to say, ignores that of which I am writing. F. ADAMS. 115, Albany Road, S.E. This phrase is still common in the Midland counties. Possibly it originated in the fact that one o'clock is soon struck, but the first meaning of these popular phrases is often very obscure. What, for instance, is the explanation of the corresponding "like station"? C. C. B. This phrase, meaning with speed, ^i.ni^, eagerness, energy, probably originated with the expiration of the workman's midday rest and refreshment hour, from twelve till one o'clock, when he returned to work in great haste to escape a stipulated mulcting. J. H. MACMICHAEL. "GYMNASTICS." —The following occurs in the ' Noctes Ambrosianse,' i. 241 :— Shepherd. Wha wrote yon article in the Magazine on 'Captain Cleeas and Jymnastics'? Tickler. Jymnastics !—James—if you love me— G hard. The other is the Cockney pronunciation. Shepherd. Weel, then, GGGhhymnastics ! Wull that do? Tickler. I wrote the article. It may be remarked that what is here condemned by Tickler as the cockney pro nunciation now prevails in Scotland. The whimsicality of development in such things is remarkable. When we profess culture in these latter days we say " Keltic," and are nol even ashamed of " Kikero" ; but we are still shy of " Herakles" and " kritikism," and Tickler's distinction in reference to the pro- nunciation of " gymnastics " is not recognized. Are there perchance those who use the " g hard " i THOMAS BAYNE. THE LONG MYND, SHROPSHIRE.—I have recently walked the whole length of the Long Mynd—some fifteen miles—and I think it would be difficult to find a finer walk in England. Mynd is, I presume, equivalent to the Welsh mynydd, a mountain; but the country people from whom I had once or twice to ask my way spoke of the range as the "Longman hills." This suggests the question whether the name Man, applied to several of the Cumberland hills, is a corrup- tion of mynydd. I hope so. By the way, it detracts sensibly from the pleasure of climb- ing the Lakeland hills that they have often such grotesque and ignoble names. What respect can one have for a mountain called Wry-Nose, or Eobinson, or Old Man t How much finer are Mynydd Dulyn, Moel Eilio, Arenig Fawr! C. C. B. BEN JONSON'S " LILY OF A DAY."—In an article ' On Loss of Time' in the first number of the Monthly Review the writer tells us • "Ben Jonson says 'a lily of a day' is a prettier thing than an oak." It is clearly implied that the word used by the poet is prettier," for in the next sentence it appears between inverted commas : " Perhaps our lives are 'prettier' than Abraham's.'* The lines A lily of a day Is fairer far in May are among our household words, and it can hardly be that "prettier" is another reading. HENRY ATTWELL. Barnes. [Unfortunately such casual half-literary notes as those referred to above are very seldom accurate in matters of quotation. We constantly note worse misrepresentations of classic English.] "SKILLY."—I am told that in workhouses the matutinal gruel is dubbed skilly. This reminds me of having read in some account of early monastic institutions that a small bell called the skilla (cf. Old Germanic skellan, to ring, to resound) was rung for breakfast, which, again, suggests that the origin of the word skillet, still used in New England for a round iron pot on three legs devoted to the boiling of Indian meal gruel, or " mush," may be other than that attributed to it in Webster's dictionary: "O.F. escuellette from Latin scutella, dim. of scutra, a dish." ETHEL LEGA-WEEKES. FOLK - MEDICINE. — In a review of the 'Journal du Voyage de Deux Jeunes Hol- landais a Paris en 1656-1658' which occurs in the Athenaeum of 25 August, we are told that "one of their companions died apparently of brain fever, although live fowls were split open and applied to his head, a remedy, we believe, still in use amongst the peasants of Lombardy" (p. 241). I believe similar cruel practices still go on in this country, but are usually performed in secret. I have no personal knowledge of a very recent instance, but I have it On evi- dence which I cannot doubt that, some forty years ago, a farmer living in the Isle of Axholme who possessed a flock of tame Mgeons was asked by a woman who lived icar him to give her one of the birds. He lad a suspicion of the purpose for which it