Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 8.djvu/102

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NOTES -AND QUERIES.

VIII. JULY 27, 1901.

the compiler of a useful 'List of Civil War Tracts relating to the County of Lincoln, is the fortunate possessor of a copy.

The under-mentioned tract may also be or assistance to MR. CARTER :

"A True Relation of the Taking of the City, Minster, and Castle of Lincoln, with all their Ordnance, Ammunition, and Horse, by the karl ot Manchester and Col. Cromwell, with a List of the Commanders, and the number of Common bouldiers, that was there taken. 1644." Four leaves. A. R. CORNS.

City Library, Lincoln.

A LADLE (9 th S. vii. 467). Wooden boxes attached to long fishing-rod sticks, used for the purpose of collecting the alms of the faithful, are by no means so obsolete as W. S. may assume. They are common enough in Italy, as well as upon this island. During the past month, for instance, I have attended services for several successive Sundays at Carrara Cathedral. There these wooden boxes are attached to sticks, each fully eight feet long, and during the service lay col- lectors, arrayed in somewhat dilapidated scarlet cassocks, pass them over the heads of worshippers, shaking the boxes the while in the faces of likely givers, just as decrepit blind men in the streets are apt to rattle halfpence in tin boxes in the ears of chance passers-by. Ffty years ago some of us were wont to sing

Old John Wesley had a coat

All buttoned down before.

These servers, however, do not button their cassocks in front, but wear them quite loose dressing-gown fashion with just a fastened band around the waist. This has an untidy look about it. H. HEMS.

Bastia, Corsica.

I saw the method of collecting the offertory in a wooden ladle employed in the church at Gairnshiel, near Ballater, Deeside, in 1898.

C. C. ELEY.

Last time I was at a service in St. John's (Episcopal Church), Edinburgh, about a yeai ago. the collection was taken up in a ladle said ladle being in this case a bag with a circular mouth at the end of a long stick rather the kind of thing with which one might clean out an aquarium. But I have seen the wooden box W. S. describes quite lately in the Church of Scotland. Perhap it is worth noting that in this Church tru congregation when not paying as they g< in sit in solemn silence during that time instead of trying to sing hymns. This paus after the sermon is effective and striking to a stranger. IBAGUE.

--CUSTICE" (9 th S. viii. 16).-I have never een one of these instruments of torture, but well remember a person describing it as naving been in use at a school in this county ome forty years ago. I understood it to be much more elaborate than " a flat black ruler.' My informant (who had felt its infliction) aid it was about a foot long and ot the jonsistency of an ordinary ruler. At one jnd it finished off with a flat disc about the ize of a child's hand. This disc had a round icle in the centre, covered on the upper side with a hard leather flap. To administer punishment the open palm was struck ,martly with the instrument, which caused an unpleasant pinch in the centre of the hand. A Cornish man has since told me that n the school in which he received his ele- mentary education. JOHN T. PAGE. West Haddon, Northamptonshire.
 * he custice was quite a familiar object to him

From the glossary annexed to the 'Dia- logue in the Devonshire Dialect' (see 8 th S. viii. 369, 431) I extract the following :

" Custick or Custis, s. The schoolmaster's ferule. Perhaps from Kussen, Dutch, a pad : that is, metonymically, the cushion of the hand ; or corrup- tion of ' Cut, stick ! ' i. e., ' Stick, do your duty.' "

Self-respect impels me to add that I regard the foregoing derivations merely as curiosities of etymology. GUALTERULUS.

TAVERNS IN SEVEN DIALS AND SOHO (9 th S. vii. 487). If little is known of the taverns named, it is that probably from the point of view of the local historian they are not worth knowing, except in so far as some of them, like the neighbouring "Noah's Ark," the "Hare and Hounds," the "Witch's Head," the " Black Horse " in Dyott Street, &c., tes- tified to the degraded social life of the quarter and the time in which they first flourished. But a further reason for the absence of note- worthy associations, either historical or lite- rary, would be that the neighbourhood was studded with the rival attractions of the coffee-houses at the time when this quarter of London was inhabited by people of fashion and distinction. But by 1740 to 1760 fashion, if not distinction, had begun to migrate Berkeley Square way and Hyde Park- wards. The *' Carlisle Arms " is no doubt a relic of this period, since the neighbouring Carlisle House, belonging to the Earls of Carlisle, one of whom was living there as late as 1756, was on the east side of Soho Square at the corner of Sutton Street, and afterwards D'Almaine's music shop. The raison d'etre of such a sign is further suggested by the fact that Carlisle House was where the notorious Mrs. Cornelys,