Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 6.djvu/514

 426 NOTES AND QUERIDS. me-s.v1.1>E<».1,1900 aboute, schewyng a heyghe ensaumpal to alle men and wommcn that ry3te os thei machen clene the houce, alle withine boring owte the fgre and straw- ing thare flowres, ry3te so 38 schul e clanson the houce of 3oure sowle.” It is strange that this should have been over- looked by r. Murray’s aids. F. ADAMS. “ LET THEM ALL cons.”-It is interesting to note a very ancient illustration of this hrase, one which, reported as used by our soldiers at one of the early battles in the recent Boer War, seems, curiously enough, to have been virtually employed by their Saxon ancestors as far back as t e battle of Hastings. Wace, in his ‘Roman de Rou,’ describes the conduct of the Saxons on the night before that battle as follows 2- Mult les veissiez demener Tre mer e saillir e chanter Bufier e crier welseil E Iaticome. Mr. A. J. Ellis thus renders the passage! “ You might see them much sporting, am- bolling, singin, joking, and crying ‘§7Vaes hael’ and ‘ Laet hit cuman.’ ” Hit is no doubt (literally) merely the shock of battle ; but the similarity of expression is certainly swkggg. “Casscxr Amon NUMMI,” &c. (See ante, p. 190.)-In vol. ii. p. 215 of his ‘Notes from a Diary, 1873-1881 ’-to which entertaining hook I will not play little Jack Horner by ulling out one of the numerous plums- Sir M. E. Grant Duff quotes a witty ap lica- tion by Mansel (Dean of St. Paul’s) of) this line of old J uvenal. H. E. M. St. Petersburg. “ ELEcT1oNEEn.”-The recent Parliamentary election has caused the newspapers to make a new and unnecessar ' word, viz., an “ elec- tioneer.” At first I tlnought it was only a slip, due to haste. But the Saturday Review, 29 September, p. 385, had a heading in lar e tyJJe, “Statesmen or Electioneersl” The ‘I .E.D.’ has the verb “to electioneer,” but the substantive is “electioneerer.” (See ‘ N. & Q.,’ 9"‘ S. ii. 343 a). W. C. B. Ku.1.1Nc Pros IN THE WANE or THE MooN. (See ante, p. 173.)-At the above reference Mn. F. ADAMS quotes from Brady a passage to the effect that formerly few persons would kill their hogs “ but when the moon was on the increase.” It is not many years since I was warned by a neighbour not to buy a side of bacon from a certain man because he had killed his »ig in the wane of the moon, and consequently the bacon would never “set” Properly- 0. C. B. YOUNG AND Wonnswonrn.-It is always pleasant to find a parallelism in poetical out- ook, not because, as is sometimes supposed, a reseinblance in thought or opinion suggests pla iarism or imitation, but rather because of tie essential kinship of genius revealed in the discovery. Wordsworth’s “primrose by a river’s brim,” e.g., is as famous as Shake- speare’s “sermons instones,” &c., and the one loses nothing through the importance of the other. In Satire i. of his ‘Seven Character- istical Satires’ (fourth paragraph from the end) Young has this worthy companion to these two suggestive passages:- On every thorn delightful wisdom grows ; In every rill a sweet instruction fiows. But some, untau ht, o’erhear the whisp’ring rill, In spite of sacred! leisure block heads still. This is the class, wholly impervious to the charms of natural beauty, to which Words- worth’s PeterBell manifestly belongs, although it does not follow here prompted the vidua. U NOTHING LIKE aware if the origin been considered in At a. public dinner one of the s eakers, that the class depicted delineation of the indi- THOMAS BAYNE. LEATHER.”-I am not of this phrase has ever the Kages of ‘N. dz Q.’ at w ich I was present, while praising t e work of the Naval Brigade at Ladysmith, paren- thetically remarked, “ for there is nothing like leather, gentlemen,” at which the audience broke into laughter and cheers. Taking up a Canadian newspaper imme- diately afterwards, I observed a uotation from James Payn, who, talking oil literary men making the best speakers, interpolates the same phrase. I suppose here it has some reference to the cobbler sticking to his last, and thereby turning out the best work, but am not sure. Subsequently meeting the speaker above mentioned, I asked him what he meant when he introduced the phrase into his speech. He did not seem quite clear about it imself, but gave me this explana- tion of its origin-that when a certain town was attacked each workman produced in self-defence the best of his own work, e.g., the blacksmith made 'avelins or what not, the carpenter handspilies, while the cobbler or tanner utilized leather so effectively for various purposes as to render his trade roverbial. The explanation, to say the least of it, seems a trifle lame. Another gentleman, however, had a different story to tell. He informed me that he had always heard the origin of the hrase to be this-that a certain leather mercliant, having amassed a fortune by his trade, used to drive