Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 7.djvu/80

 NOTES AND QUERIES. [g s. vn. JAN., 1001.

many centres, but are overlooked by careless workers. Probably there is not a county in England which does not contain in a public or semi-public library a copy of this great work. In my district there is a copy in the Free Library, another in the Devon and Exeter Institution, Exeter, and another in the Free Library at Plymouth ; and I will venture to say there is no one with literary tastes in the county of Devon who could not, through friends or by the expenditure of a shilling or two, obtain any information he desired from the ' Dictionary,' without clogging the pages of *N. & Q.' with replies to queries which are no longer justified by the state of our national biography. Would not ' N. & Q.' do well to collect and publish a list of the centres where the * Dictionary of National Biography,' the 4 New English Dictionary,' and the new 4 Dialect Dictionary ' can be consulted ?

JAMES DALLAS. Lympstone, South Devon.

STRIKING THE ANVIL (9 th S. vi. 367, 452). DR. WALLACE-JAMES'S excellent and faithful description of the blacksmith and his assistant as they labour respectively with small ham- mer and sledge or forehammer, as we call it in Scotland prompts a reference to Burns's animated delineation of the same scene in his interior on a winter evening. The young ploughmen have assembled for the sharpen- ing of their " irons " their coulters and their socks and one or other of these stalwart "swankies" readily wields the forehammer to assist the laborious toil of " Burnewin," or Burn-the-wind, the blacksmith. Some Scotch drink in a"lugget caup"near by in a wooden bowl, that is, with ears as useful towards supply of additional energy and spirit ; and the proceedings are thus set forth :
 * Scotch Drink.' The picture is of a smithy

When Vulcan gies his bellows breath, An' ploughmen gather wi' their graith, O rare ! to see thee fizz an' f reath

I' th' lugget caup ! Then Burnewin comes on like death

At ev'ry chaup.

Nae mercy, then, for airn or steel ; The brawnie, bainie, ploughman chiel Brings hard owrehip, wi' sturdy wheel,

The strong forehammer, Till block an' studdie ring an' reel

Wi' dinsome clamour.

THOMAS BAYNE.

Perhaps the following translation from Bishop Lowth's ' Isaiah/ made originally in 1778, may prove illustrative. The supposabl

date of the prophecy may be B.C. 7] 6 :

Every one assisted his neighbour,

And said to his brother, Be of good courage.

The carver encourageth the smith ; Ie that smootheth with the hammer, him that

smiteth on the anvil : Saying of the solder, It is good ; And he fixeth the idol with nails, that it shall not

move. Isaiah xli. 6, 7.

As is well known, Bishop Lowth was one of the first to draw attention to Hebrew Doetry, though many advances have been made since his day. Is the word " soldering," or "sodering," as used in the A.V. ?

JOHN PICKFORD, M.A. Newbourne Rectory, Woodbridge.

EARLY LINES ON CRICKET (9 th S. vi. 506). The volume to which your correspondent refers has just come into my possession, now clad in a neat coat of calf. The lines on cricket had caught my eye, and I thought of opying them out for 'N. & Q.,' when I found that W. I. R. V. had anticipated me. I was lesitating about the two words which have .ost their last letters, but I have no doubt his reading is right. The date I suppose to be not later than 1700. The name is written at the foot of three separate pages, and is un- doubtedly " John Reeves, 1748." At the foot of sig. Ee i. is an old recipe, written in capital .etters of varying size : "Yarrow. The Leaves chewed in the mouth ease the topthach."

Referring to the book itself, it is Richard Jugge's quarto edition of 1553 (not 1552); but, in comparing this copy with another of the same issue, I have noted some variations, which would be more interesting to the Bibliographical Society than to the general reader, so no more of them here.

C. DEEDES.

Brighton.

A very curious poem on cricket, dated 1773, consisting of seventy quatrain stanzas, en titled ' Surrey Triumphant/ may be found in Evans's ' Old Ballads,' vol. iv. pp. 323-35 (1784). It is intended as a parody on 'Chevy Chace, 1 and purports to have been written by J. Dun- combe, M.A. The game appears to have been a very protracted one, as it is said

This game did last from Monday morn

Till Wednesday afternoon, For when bell Harry* rung to prayers The batting scarce was done.

JOHN PICKFORD, M.A. Newbourne Rectory, Woodbridge.

"HATTOCK" (9 th S. vi. 308, 413, 497). Grimm countenances the use of Hackelnberg for the Wild Huntsman in connexion with the Low Saxon legend concerning a sixteenth- century master of the hounds of the Duke of Brunswick, and mentions that Westphalian

" At Canterbury Cathedral."