Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 7.djvu/299

 9*8. vii. APRIL 13, 1901.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

291

The true folk-tale, which is the genuine out- come of popular belief, has no claim to be included in the ranks of " fantastic fiction."

I am surprised to find that MR. YARDLEY has omitted from his list a book which is as superior to ' Vathek ' as ' Gulliver ' is superior to * Peter Wilkins.' I shall never forget the evening, some forty-five years ago, when the dear friend of my boyhood, Edward Gruffydd Peacock, brought to my father's house a copy of a little book which had just been com- pleted by his brother-in-law, and which to a lad of sixteen seemed filled with all the colour and glory of the East. As one of the sections of this charming book has lately been reprinted in a separate form, I presume that 'The Shaving of Shagpat' still finds readers ; and though the taste for fantastic fiction may die out, it may be hoped that a work in which charm of diction and delicacy of treatment are combined with the airiest humour and with true poetic fancy will long appeal to an appreciative circle.

W. F. PRIDEAUX.

STEERE (9 th S. vii. 49). The following refer- ences to pedigrees of families bearing this name occur in Dr. George W. Marshall's
 * Genealogist's Guide,' 1893 :

Steer. Stonehouse's 'History of the Isle of Axholme,' 344 ; Reed's ' History of the Isle of Axholme,' edited by T. C. Fletcher, 64 ; Eastwood's ' History of Ecclesfield,' 207 ; ' N. & Q.,' 2 nd S. iv. 90, 219, 297.

Steere. Berry's 'Surrey Genealogies,' 34; Burke's 'Landed Gentry,' 5 supp.; Dalla way's 'Sussex,' ii. 1, 334 ; Burke's 'Colonial Gentry,' i. 4. ASTARTE.

FUNERAL CARDS (9 th S. vii. 88, 171). I have no doubt that funeral tickets, the precursors of funeral cards, were very generally issued in the eighteenth century on the decease of persons of any consideration, though they are now, so far as my experience goes, extremely scarce, being much more likely to be de- stroyed than trade cards. Having never, I believe, missed a chance of obtaining one when offered, I only possess eleven of these rather gruesome productions. They are on paper, usually of large size, some of them measuring as much as 10 in. in length by 9 in. in height. The announcement of the date of the funeral sometimes entirely in print, sometimes in MS., sometimes a few engraved words and the particulars in MS. is usually framed by a border, more or less decorative, very symbolical of the future state of the body of the defunct, of its conveyal to its resting - place, and the grief of the survivors, and in one or two cases conceived

in the worst possible taste. These curious productions were issued in connexion with the funerals respectively of Edward Crouch, 16 May, 1725 ; Mrs. Lydia Benn, 1 May, 1740 ; Peter Theobald, November, 1742; Isaac Spurrier, 15 August, 1749 ; Sir Hans Sloane, Bart., 18 January, 1753 ; Mathew Pryor, 27 May, 1753; Edward Williams, 12 April, 1761 ; Mrs. Margaret Smith, " 18th inst," no date (about 1770) ; James Batty, Esq., 10 March, 1806, procession from Great Room of the Society of Arts to St. Paul's Cathe- dral. The writing on this ticket is in the hand of Mr. Graves, father of the late Mr. Graves, the publisher, of Pall Mall, from whom I ob- tained it. The other tickets have not been filled in. A well known ticket by Bartolozzi expresses the thanks of the executors and family of Sir Joshua Reynolds for the tribute of respect paid by those who attended at his funeral in St. Paul's, 3 March, 1792. There is, of course, the well-known invitation en- graved by Hogarth, of which I have only Ireland's facsimile. J. ELIOT HODGKIN.

"NuNTY" (9 th S. vii. 130, 194). I think "grumpy" is the nearest synonym to this word as I have generally heard it used in Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire. What the root meaning may be I cannot say. Does the phrase " nun ting about " (behav- ing in a sulky, dissatisfied, disagreeable manner) throw any light upon it ?

C. C. B.

It is a strange coincidence, which I do not think, however, fortuitous, that here in the Mark of Brandenburg the same word exists with exactly the same meaning as the East Yorkshire vocable. Nuttig (pronounced nut- tich) means klein, unbedeutend : "en nuttijet Kind "; "is det en nuttijet Ding." It belongs to the substantive die Nutte, a small child, girl, a small marble, which exists also in Hanover. I am inclined to regard the Eng- lish only as a nasalized form of the original one. Popular speech is very fond of nasaliza- tion, especially before dentals. I may be allowed to give some instances : to split, substantive splint, is also in German Splitter and Splinter ; to trundle, German dialectal word trudeln=io roll ; German Trutschel and Tnmtschel=c\umsy fat woman ; gantlope for qatlope. As the English lower classes speak of the " milentary " instead of the military, ours say " visentiren " for visitiren, to search ; " sich mungkiren " for sich moquiren. In the Berlin jargon the battalion of Gardeschiitzen, who, before their transference to the capital, had been garrisoned in Neufchatel (which once belonged to Prussia), were popularly