Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 7.djvu/294

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. vn. APRIL is, 1901.

sign of the "Golden Harp and Hautboy." and where Handel's principal works were pub- lished. The premises were used as a theatre about 1842 ; and I am inclined to think that the front was cemented at that time, and the decoration in the tympanum of the second- floor windows, emblematic of the drama, introduced, which has been mistaken for Walsh's sign the " Golden Harp," which has long since disappeared. JOHN HEBB.

" WHOM "= HOME. The change of h into wh in several of our English dialects has often been noted in these columns. An amusing instance comes to me from Moira, near Ashby-de-la-Zouch. Moira is the centre of a colliery district, and is familiarly known by the pitmen and their families as "Wh5m." The story goes that a young woman found crying on the platform of Ashby station explained that she had missed her train because the ticket-clerk, who was fresh to the place, did not know where " Whtfm " was.

C. C. B.

THE 42ND AT FONTENOY. When the 42nd were retiring before the assault of the Irish Brigade at Fontenoy, a sergeant, seeing how necessary it was that it should keep its ranks if it was not to be annihilated, is reported to have said, " Front and rear, keep thegither." GEOFFREY HILL.

WEST -COUNTRYMEN'S TAILS. The blue- jackets of H.M. ships commissioned on the east coast affect to consider the West-Country men inferior to themselves, and say they have tails. In March the ship's company of H.M.S. Rodney turned over bodily, when that ship paid off, to H.M.S. Anson, then at Plymouth. The train from Chatham dock- yard was run west "in commission" the carriages nearest the engine answering to fo'c's'le, others nearer the centre to berths for men of higher rank, officers (in uniform) in middle saloon, and marines behind. The engine flew the " jack" ; the captain's pennant was 'midships, and the white ensign astern. When the train got into Devonshire the bluejackets had their heads out at once, chaffing the people at the stations and asking about their tails. IBAGUE.

[The charge that Englishmen, and especially men of Kent, have tails has been brought in France and Scotland. See 8 th S. x. 148, 'Caudatus Anglicus.']

INFLUENZA. It is very well known that the influenza is not an exclusively modern complaint, but I am not sure whether a curious reference to it by Bower, the cori- tinuator of Fordun's chronicle, has been noted. Writing of the year 1420, he says

that among those who died in Scotland that year were Sir Henry St. Clair, Earl of Ork- ney ; Sir James Douglas, of Dalkeith ; Sir William de Abernethy, Sir William de St. Clair, Sir William Cockburn, and many others, all by "that infirmity whereby not only great men, but innumerable quantity of the commonalty perished, which was vulgarly termed le Quhew [le Quhew a vulgaribus dicebatur]" (Bower, xv. 32). Now quh in Scottish texts usually represents the sound of wh (properly aspirated) ; therefore it seems that in the fifteenth century the influenza was known as "the Whew," just as it is known in the twentieth century as " the Flue." I have refrained from quoting at length Bower's explanation of the cause of the epidemic, but there seems little doubt that the disease was identical with that with which we are so grievously familiar.

HERBERT MAXWELL.

[For other references to influenza see 6 th S. viii. 407, 478 ; ix. 55 ; 7 th S. ix. 68, 132, 184, 267 ; x. 332, 376 ; xi. 446 ; xii. 51 ; 8 th S. i. 126, 194, 356 ; ii. 44 ; vii. 46.]

GERM OF A MODERN CENTAUR-MYTH. I do not know if many readers of *N. & Q.' are interested in such " old wives' fables," but I cut the following from the Peterburgskii Listok (Petersburg Leaflet) of 11 (24) February, which borrows it from the Youg (South) newspaper :

" At Lysaya Gora village, Elisavetgrad district (Kherson government), a peasant woman, Agra- fena K, has been brought to bed of a strange monster : it is of the female sex, and its eyes and one of its ears are human, but the face and the other ear are those of a horse. The arms are behind instead of before, and legs, face, and ears are hairy. This abortion is reported to have lived seven days."

Of course, no importance is to be attributed to this fantastical description of a miscarriage such as can be seen in any anatomical museum, but the imaginative paragraphist seems almost to hint at some such unnatural combination as is described in the tenth book of Appuleius's ' Golden Ass,' although one is much less tempted to believe in his suggestion of a horse father than in his discovery of a mare's nest. H. E. M.

St. Petersburg.

TITHE.

" Tithe was originally a rent charge paid to monasteries or churches by those who farmed their lands." ' Alfred, the West Saxon King of the English,' by Dugald Macfadyen, M.A., sometime Exhibitioner in Modern History on the foundation of Merton College, Oxford, 1901, p. 5 (footnote). Mr. Macfadyen does not cite any authority for his statement. Surely, when tithe was paid to a church, this did not mean that the land belonged to the church ; or, when