Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 6.djvu/398

 328 NOTES AND QUERIES. [eh s. VI- of.-r. 27, ww- parting coup de balai, so as to leave things tidy and shipshape, when the landlady, a simple country soul, hurried in and snatched away the broom, exclaiming that it was very unlucky for an out oing tenant to sweep out his apartment on Teaving. This articular form of superstition is new to me. T10 doubt there is an old Russian proverb forbidding one to carry litter out of the hut (the peasants generally burn the floor-sweepings indoors), aquivalent to our “Wash your dirty linen at home” or “Tell no tales out of school,” but this hardly seems to fit the case I narrate. Had my friend been other than an excellent steady customer one might have sus ected some muddled recol- lection of the Bible parable in the old lady’s mind, and that, being glad to see the last of a restless inmate, she looked askance at the sweelping business as a possible prelude to her odger’s return in company with other choice spirits. H. E. M. St. Petersburg. Guerin. WE must request correspondents desiring infor- mation on farm y matters of only private interest to aflix their names and addresses to their queries, Ein order that the answers may be addressed to them irect. “ J ocK'rELEG.”-Under this word Jamieson says :- _ “After he [James VI.] had gone to England, it is said, he boasted to some of his courtiers that he would repeat a sentence which none of them could understand. Calling one of his stable boys, he said to him, ‘Callan, hae, there ’s threttie pennies, ae wa, and buy me a jockteleg; and gin 'e hyde, f’ll gang to the bougars of the house, and tak a caber and reesle your rxggin wi’t.”’ He further quotes from Lord Hailes’s ‘Speci- men of a Scottish Glossary ’ :- “ Joclieleg, a folding knife. The etymology of this word remained unknown till, not many years ago, an old knife was found, havin this inscri tion, Jacques de Lie;/e, the name of the cutler. Tllus it is in exact analogy with Andrea di Ferrara.” I should be glad to know whether the story about James I. occurs in any writer before Jamieson; perhaps it was only one of the current ora on dits of his time. Also, is anything known about the old knifeinscribed .hzcques de Liege? Lord Hailes does not say that he had himself seen it, and its existence may only have been a matter of hearsay. The statement is suspiciously like many which have been manufactured to explain an unknown name, but it may have been true notwithstanding. Evidence is much wanted. Our first quotation for Joclcteleg, in the form “ Jock the leg knife,” is of 1672. Allan Ramsay, 1727, has joctaleq. J. A. H. BIURRAY. [See 8*“ S. vii. 506; viii. ll3.] “ OWL IN IVY BUSH.”-In Dr. A. Clarkefs ‘Memoirs of Wesley Family,’ 232 (1823), it is said, “ Mrs. Wesley gave out the following line : ‘ Like to an owl in ivy bush.”’ Acorre- spondent tells me that one of the English versions of Ps. cii. 6 is commonly reputed to have, “ Like to an owl in ivy bush, that rueful thing am I.” The correspondent in question believed this to be the version of Sternhold and Hopkins. This has, however, nothing like it. Tate and Brady (ed. 1696) have:- Or like an Owl that sits all day On barren trees forlorn. Can any reader of ‘ N. & Q.’ tell me where the “owl in ivy bush” occurs? Dr. A. Clarke seems to have known or believed that the words really occur in a psalm or hymn, otherwise one might have thought them merely a parody of seventeenth - century hymnology. J. A. H. MURRAY. Oxford. “ MIRRUP.”-In a list of Dorsetshire words printed in ‘N. & Q.,’ 5"‘ S. viii. 45, I find “mirrup” given as a word for a donkey. This is the onl evidence we have for the word in the collected material of ‘E.l).D.’ As the word does not occur in alphabetical order, it may be a misprint. I shou d be glad to hear whether this word (or anything like it) is still heard in Dorset. A. L. Mavnsw. Oxford. “To M1R'rLE.”-This word occurs in the ‘Glossary of the Dialect of Craven,’ 1828: “ Mirtle, to waste away, to crumble ” ; also in Holloway’s ‘Dict. of Provincialisms] 1839: “To lllirtle, to waste away, North.” The word is found twice in the ‘Destruction of Troy’ (circa 1400): “All maumentre ...... myrtlit to peses,” l. 4301, and “Maumettes myrtild in ces,” l. 4312. Any further in- formation abbut the dialect or literary use of this rare word would be welcome. A. L. M Avnnw. Oxford. PRICES or PARCHMENT AND VELLUM.-I have no doubt that some student has worked out the question of the price in England of this part of the raw material of books before the invention of printing. Can one of your readers tell me where I can find the parti- culars for the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries? Q. V.