Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 6.djvu/397

 9* s. vi. OOP. 27, i9oo.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 327 was removed, and reinterred in the churc of Santa Croce at Florence. Foscolo's poverty is only to be explaine< by his improvident habits. He had numerou friends who supplied him with money, an with his contributions to the quarterly re views and what he gained by his readings anc lessons should have been able to live in com fort, if not in luxury. His amours cost him nothing, and his mistresses frequently gav< him assistance. JOHN HEBB. A SCOTCH " BULL."—We have heard of Irish " bulls," in season and out of it; let me quote, as a variant, a Scotch one from Glasgow. It occurs in an interesting little book by J. S. Jeans, 'Western Worthies, 1872, p. 94 : " Innumerable masts, denoting our traffic with all parts of theglobe, may be counted." W. ROBERTS. " BUFFET."—The earliest instance of this word, used in the sense of " a low footstool a footstool," given in the ' New Eng. Diet., is dated 1432. In a lease made bv the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's in the twelfth century a list of landlord's fixtures is given. Amongst other things this list includes "duo bancha tornatilia. et una mensa dormiens, et unura buffeth* (Hales's 'Domesday ol St. Paul's,' p. 137). Thus the history of the word is carried about 300 years further back. S. O. ADDY. "THE DEVIL TO PAY."—This popular saying has already been treated in 'N. & Q.' (2nd S. xii. 380), and is noticed in the ' H.E.D.,' but has been disfigured and distorted in meaning by the facetious addition "and no pitch hot," and wholly marred by the explanation of devil as part of a ship s structure. My con- cern, however, is not with this sorry travesty. I wish to suggest that the word pay means to please, or rather appease, in the original phrase—of which the earliest example in the H.E.D.' is dated 1711, when pay in this sense was obsolete—as it certainly does in a passage from one of the later recensions of the text of Robert of Gloucester's ' Chronicle' which contains this very expression (Rolls ed., p. 821, Appendix T). To his account of the insults to which the Roffensians subjected St. Augus- tine the chronicler adds that they behaved thus " fane deouel to payje," or, in modern speech, " to please the devil." The meaning, it is true, is not exactly the same as that of our proverbial expression, owing to the different construction, giving pay an active force. But since " as hard to please as the devil," " a devil of a shindy," and " a devilish to-do" are phrases that sound familiar to me, and as an old meaning of pay was that of its etymon pacare, to appease, I have reason for regarding the proper interpretation of " the devil to pay " as the appeasement or paci- fication of our immortal enemy, without connotation of the pecuniary satisfaction denoted by the verb in current use. So we have another instance of the conservation in proverbs of words or their meanings. F. ADAMS. TENURE BY BURNTOFFERINO.—The acknow- ledgments of the tenants of the Crown in Guienne, made in 1272-3, which are recorded in the Wolfenbuttel MS., include one (No. 93) to which the attention of folk-lorists should be drawn. Arnold of Corbin was bound to attend the king, when he should visit Tuixse, to a certain oak named Condal, and there provide a cart full of faggots, drawn by two tailless cows, to which he was to set fire in the royal presence, in such a way that the whole should be burnt up, including the cattle, unless these succeeded in escaping.* I may be mistaken, but I seem to see in this traces of tree-worship, and of the period when the king or chief was also the high priest of the tribe. I shall be glad to have In' opinion of students of these matters. Q. V. "TAPSTER."—Perhaps the following use of Visitations of the Archdeacon of Canter- jury' in the cathedral library, may be of nterest for the ' New English Dictionary ': "1615. St. Johns in Thanet [i.e., Margate]. William Saunders the head tapster at the kings- arms for refusing to pay his cess to the poor being welve pence."—Volume for the years 1610-17, ol. 210. ARTHUR HUSSEY. Tankerton-on-Sea, Kent. FOLK-LORE : SWEPT AND GARNISHED. — A Bachelor friend of mine who this summer ccupied a furnished flat in a country villa ear St. Petersburg was moving back into own, and, having put his traps into a cart, ad told his servant to give the rooms a enet de domino rege et duce, ratione uxoria suaj . ...militiam de Tuixse cum suis pertinenciis; pro ua, quando dominus rex facit transitum per Tuixse lebet] assoeiare dominum regem usque ad quercum el COXKVII Condal et debet ibi habere, propter suum onorem, unum oneratum currum de facibus, et ebent trahere currum due vacce escodate vel sine mil', et cum erunt in dicto quercu, debet ponere gnem in currum [printed quercum], et dicta hec loi et autrea Bibliotheques,' 1S12, ziv. ii. 329 note.
 * he word "tapster," from a volume of the
 * " Arnaldus de Corbin domiccllus dixit quod
 * comburi, nisi vacce possint evadere."—' Notices
 * Extraits des MamiscritH de la Biblioth^que du