Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 7.djvu/26

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. VII.JAN. 5, 1901.

he could not refuse to marry her in her chemise only. At Kirton-in-Lindsey there was a popular belief that the woman must be actually nude when she left her residence for that of her intended husband, in order to relieve him from her debts, and a case of this kind occurred. The woman left her house from a bedroom window stark naked, and put on her clothes as she stood upon the top of the ladder by which she accomplished her descent. The notion of a marriage in a chemise was prevalent at Cotteuham, in Cambridgeshire, recently.

EVERARD HOME COLEMAN. 71, Brecknock Road.

A number of smock marriages in America between 1724 and 1789 are very fully de- scribed in Alice Morse Earlo's ' Customs and Fashions in Old New England,' p. 78. At New York, in 1784, a man under sentence of death was pardoned on marrying on the gallows a woman clad only in a shift. I do not know if the ' Life of Gustavus Vassa' is a good authority for this. M. N. G.

TROY WEIGHT FOR BREAD (9 th S. vi. 468). The following extract from 'The Assise of Bread,' published in 1592, explains the use of troy weight in connexion with bread :

"Note also, that this Assise of all sortes of bread, ought alwaies to bee approued by the Trove weight, deriued from the graines of wheate : whereof two graines, taken in the nnddest of the eare maketh the xvi. parte of a Sterling peny iiii grames maketh the eight parte of a peny Sterlin<* eight graines make the fourth parte of a peny sterling, and two and tliirtie graines of wheate, make the whole Sterling peny. Twcntie of which pence, make the ounce Troy, xvd. three quarters of an ounce, xd. halfe an ounce, fine pence a quarter of an ounce and ijd. ob. halfe a quarter of an ounce which weight being named Troy weight, serueth only to - wey Bread, U,,ld, Siluer, precious Jewels and Kllectuanes, or which weighte, there is but xij. ounces to the pound. '

The statutory use of troy weight in relation to the assize of bread continued from the reign of Henry II to that of Queen Anno, but was repealed by 8 Anne, cap. 19, which enacts that from 1 May, 1710, the "Assize shall be set in Averdupois and not Troy

So much on the subjects of troy wei-ht

and bread being weighed by this weight has

already appeared in ' N. &*Q.,> that I do not

mnk anything more remains to be said See

4* S. ix. 447, 514 ; 8". S. x. 255, 278, 305, *

EVERARD HOME COLEMAN. MILE END GATE POTTERY (9 th S vi 488)- Surely one need not look for a pottery

there was more probably a "public" whose proprietor was named Sinclair, and who, ambitious of fame, put his name upon the bottle which contained a liquor (call it rum) which he sold, and marked his bottles just as modern publicans and chemists often do.

LlEUT.-COL. MOORHOUSE (9 th S. VI. 410).

Col. Mark Wilks, in his ' Historical Sketches of the South of India,' vol. iii. p. 125, says of Lieut.-Col. Moorehouse (sic):

" He had risen from the ranks, but nature herself tiad made him a gentleman ; uneducated, he had made himself a man of science : a career of uninter- rupted distinction had commanded general respect ; and his amiable character universal attachment."

W. C. L. FLOYD.

" VIVA " (9 th S. vi. 266, 311, 391, 451). Pray let me correct two printers' errors in my letter on this subject. I wrote "Stubbins," not " Slubbins," as the irreverent nickname of St. Alban's Hall in my time ; and it was "trams," not "trains," that I said annihilated distance in Oxford nowadays. We have not yet got (as in some South American cities) to trains careering through the main streets of Oxford. But I am not sure if the irresponsible rush of the motor-car is not worse. May I add, with reference to "New" versus "New College," that one often hears the abbreviated form used by men of other colleges, but never (so far as I know) by New College men them- selves 1 This fact may serve to reconcile the somewhat conflicting opinions of your other correspondents.

OSWALD HUNTER-BLAIR, O.S.B.

Oxford.

Certainly we did not shout " On, St. Ed- mund, on !" when I was at St. Edmund Hall, 1863-66. I never heard of any tradition to the effect that this river-cry had ever been used. Some eight years after I had left Ox- ford I was rebuked by an Oxonian, junior to myself, for speaking of "New" instead of New College. GEORGE ANGUS.

St. Andrews, N.B.

NURSERY RIMES (9 th S. vi. 27, 93, 216, 491). It is not H alii well that must be blamed for changing "maids" into "men" in the rime MR. LELAND quotes. The version I have been familiar with in popular speech all my life long is

Rub a dub dub, three men in a tub.

C. C. B.

"To KEECH" (9 th S. vi. 408).- Archdeacon Nares, in his ' Glossary of the Works of Eng- lish Authors,' describes keeck as a mass of fat rolled up by the butcher in a lump. Iq