Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 6.djvu/381

 9¢~s.vLo<n-.2o,19oaJ NOTES AND QUERIES. 315 made the appellation a byword was in the really backward manner in which some of the plays were mounted by Mr. Benjamin Webster at the New Adelp i Theatre (built in 1858). As an old lover o the play, well do I remember the arrival of the guests on the stage-the gentlemen, elderly but haughty in manner, clad in shabb(y evening clothes much too large for them, an the ladies ofquestxon- able age, thin of neck and red’ of arm, in garments of a bygone time. But why think of the poor “ supers”'l Surely their comings and goings were recorded in the pages of Pwnc in the sixties. As to Benjamin Web- ster himself-leaving his hoarse voice out of the question-has _he ever had' any superior in his art, for which he laboured so earnestly and successfully? Will his Triplet (lperhaps his best part), his Lavater, his Be phegor, his Leroux, and his Landry (a triumph of acting) ever be forgotten by those persons who were charmed by his acting of the parts named? Never! But his plays were not pfoduced like those of Sir Henry Irving, r. Tree, and others of to-day. In the “ Adelphi drama” were included such pla s as ‘ The Pilot,’ ‘ The Flying Dutch- man,’ ‘The Wreck Ashore,’ ‘Victorine,’ ‘Jack Sheppard’ ‘Rory ’More,’ &c. ; and of later years Buckstone’s charming ‘The Green Bushes’ (in which Madame Celeste played the principal art), ‘The Flowers of the Forest] The eas Heart,’ the German- American Elay ‘Leah,’ ‘The Colleen Bawn’ gxerhaps t e greatest success of all), Dion oucicault’s clever dramatic version of Gerald Griflin’s novel ‘The Collegians,’ and last, but not least, ‘No Thoroughfare,’ with Charles Fechter and his “braiceless char-r-r-ge” Miss Leclercq. Cf the actors and actresses who appeared at the Adel hi Theatre, will such artists as Madame Celeste and Mrs. Keeley, Webster, Wright, Paul Bedford, John Too e Fechter, and Dion Boucicault be surpassed? I may mention that it is now near? forty years since the evening on which I rst saw ‘The Colleen Bawn.’ The house was crammed, and of the large audience no two persons enjoyed the acting of Boucicault and his clever wife more than Her Majesty the Queen and the Prince Consort. Sad to say, it was the last visit of Her Majesty to a theatre, for the reason that a few months afterwards Albert the Good was sleeping the sleeg that knows no wakin. T e plays at the Adelphi in the days of my youth were simply de i htful. But there are other events connected; with the house. I shall never forget the evening on which I sggcially visited Weston’s Music - Hall, Hol rn, for the purpose of seeing Paul Bedford in his old age wheeled in a Bath chair on to the front of the stage to sing “Jolly nose, the bright rubies that garnish thy tip” (the song he was famous for in ‘Jack Shepgard ’). It was sad, very sad-it was an exhi ition that haunts me still. HENRY GERALD Horn. Clapham, S.W. THR PRNANCR or A MARRIED PRIEST (9"‘ S. vi. 187).-The date given, viz., 1554, dis- plays the collision between Church and State that worked so despotically under the Tudors. We all know the secret history of Cranmer’s marria e, condoned under Henry VIII.; so, when éueen Mary ascended in 1553, the re- version to celibacy was enforced, and thus Boer Sir John Turnour had to do penance; ut, if we knew his whole history, we might find that he resumed his discarded wife un er the reactionary Queen Elizabeth. A. H. “THR Hams uoRR ” (9"' S. vi. 229).-In Jamieson’s dictionary this is noticed as an Ayrshire word meaning “free grace or good- will,” is illustrated by the second of MR. LIAYHEW’8 quotations, and is said to be a corruption of “Gaelic matlzamlmas more (pronounced maanish more), ¥°eat grace, complete pardon.”. ADAMS. Jamieson defines this as an Ayrshire expression denoting “free grace or good will.” He illustrates the use of it by a quotation from ‘ Sir Andrew W lie,’ ch. xcvi., and adds that he has been told, that the phrase is from the Gaelic vhathamlmas more(pronounced maanis/1. more), and signifying great grace, complete pardon. The ex ression is certainly not common in Lowland Scotland, and it is curious that it should have got a hold in Ayrshire. A knowledge of Gaelic would be helpful towards an elucidation of its origin an development. Tuonus BAYNR. TAVERN SIGNS : “ THR BAY HORSE ” (9"* S. vi. 169).-The popularity of' “The Bay Horse” as a tavern sign doubtless arose from the general excellence of its qualities in point of usefulness and steadiness of temperament. And in Yorkshire, where the love of the native for a horse is such that if you shake a bridle over his grave he will rise and steal one, the stout bay horse especially that of the East Riding, was highly esteemed for both saddle and draught urposes. This description is no doubt applicable also tothe “Yorkshire Grey,” from its comparative stability, docility, and non-excitabihty. And similarly the ‘ Red ”