Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 7.djvu/173

 VII. MARCH 2, 1901.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

165

P. 106 a. Green baize, for 200 read 220.

P. 138 a. Trousers, for ii. read iii. ; for 54 read 58.

EIGHTH SEEIES.

P. 1. Classified Articles, Parallel Passages delete. EVERAED HOME COLEMAN.

71, Brecknock Road.

THE EMPIRE AND THE KINGDOM OF ARLES. I have cut the following from a review in the Academy of 2 February of " My First Voyage and my First Lie. .Related by Alphonse Daudet to Robert H. Sherard." It is a curious example of how historical traditions survive, and as such is well worthy of a place in your columns :

" There are no better fellows in the world than the bargees of the Rhone, with their eyes clear and sparkling like the white wine of Condrieu, a place on the banks of the Rhone, the native place of most of them. During my voyage on the Bonnar- delle I used to amuse myself by watching them at their work on the barges which, like our steamer, were going up the river. I could see them seated, bare-legged, on the leader of a string of mules, guiding through invisible fords the sturdy animals who towed huge barges laden with barrels of wine and blocks of quarried stone. Now and again the man at the tiller would command in a loud voice, according as the boats were to go to the right or to

the left: ' Emperif Riaumef (Empire, Roy-

aume) which to the mariners of the Rhone signi- fies, Port or Starboard. These terms are derived from the ancient appellations with which in the Middle Ages they distinguished the shores of the Kingdom of Aries and of the Empire of Germany. Oh, magic sound of these Proven9al syllables, which for six hundred years have rung out ever the same on the winds or the Rhone. Emperi ! Riaume ! Empire! Kingdom! Even to-day, when I hear them - for these terms are still used by the mariners of the Rhone the same emotions take me."

ASTARTE.

"HUTCHING ABOUT." I heard this phrase for the first time a few days ago. It was used to express the action of a person moving about within his clothing to accommodate a tight or ill-fitting garment to his body : " I was hutchin' about in my shirt."

"To TRUNK UP." The same speaker sub- sequently delighted me by saying, apropos of a travelling menagerie, " The elephants went past a garden with cabbages in it, and did not they trunk them up ! " " To trunk up " struck me as being worthy of a place among the forcible English idioms of Bunyan and other writers, whose choice of words was uninfluenced by a classical education.

"BECOME." Recently a labouring man remarked, " It becomes you to be here, when I am trimming these roses, to see if I am doing them right," meaning that it was

advisable that I should be present. This use of "become" is rather quaint, but correct enough, I imagine. LINCOLN GREEN.

Moscow AND LONDON DEBRIS. In the Property Market Review, 26 January, is a short notice of the late Mr. J. H. Salter, the last proprietor of St. Chad's Well. Near the forgotten spring were the huge dust and cinder heaps at Battle Bridge. These were sold to the Russians, who con verted the de'bris into building material for the reconstruction of Moscow after the historic conflagration of 1812, so graphically illustrated by Vassili Verestchagin. " Holy Mother, white-walled Moscow," is thus partly rebuilt from the refuse of our metropolis.

FRANCIS P. MARCHANT.

Brixton Hill.

FERDINAND VII. As the last edition of the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica' has been reprinted on terms such as to secure a very wide circulation, it is as well to point out slips when one's attention is called to them, so that they may be corrected when a new edition is being prepared. One of these I met with recently on having occasion to refer to the account of Charles IV., King of Spain. His famous (or infamous) son and heir, after- wards Ferdinand VII., is three times in the article in question called Frederick. Charles made no attempt to recover the throne after the expulsion of Joseph Bonaparte, but con- tinued in retirement at Rome (where he had gone in 1811), and died there in 1819. The 'Annual Register' gives the exact date as 20 January, but the ' Nouvelle Biographie Generale ' puts it 28 November.

W. T. LYNN.

Blackheath.

"BARTED." On p. 3 of the Pall Mall Gazette for 12 February the words " He was barted in 1841 " occur. The verb to bart, meaning to make a baronet, is not imbooked in the ' H.E.D.,' though bart. as a noun is.

E. S. DODGSON.

[We sincerely hope that it never will be, any more than to mote.]

LONDON EVENING PAPERS. Perhaps it may be of future interest to note that the Sun was the only evening paper published in London on the day of the Queen's funeral, 2 February. IBAGUE.

" KNIGHTS OF THE MOON." Among some old letters, &c., left by a gentleman who resided for a time in London over a century ago, I found a pasteboard card, 3$ in. by 2j in., bearing the following copperplate