Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 8.djvu/241

 viii. SEPT. 14, loci.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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Warwick Castle in the reign of Edward III How were these connected with John Peche of Kingsthorpe, Leicestershire, and Sherow Hall, Derbyshire, in the fifteenth century ? MEMOR ET FIDELIS

CHARLES LAMB AND THE ROYAL ACADEMY (9 th S. viii. 104, 150). MR. HEBB may like to knosv that there is a picture by George Dance called ' The Demoniac ' in the Diploma Gal- lery, Burlington House. H. B. P.

Among the numerous short poems of A. S.

Pushkin is one addressed 'To Dawe,

Esq.,' of which I offer an attempt at free translation :

Why doth thy wondrous pencil's skill

My negro profile deign to trace ? By tnee immortalized, yet still

Mephisto's hisses hail that face. Go, sketch Olena, fresh and fair,

In warmth of heartfelt inspiration ; Sure, youth and beauty only share The debt of genius' adoration.

Pushkin, as is well known, was descended on the mother's side from Hannibal, a negro favourite of the Tsar Peter the Great, the subject of an historical sketch by this wonder- fully versatile writer.

FRANCIS P. MARCHANT. Brixton Hill.

PHILLIPPO (9 th S. vii. 468 ; viii. 72, 131). Was burial alive a legal punishment for women in Burgundy at the time when the wife of the Lord of Chateauneuf is alleged to have poisoned her husband ? Such a thing is not improbable. If we may accept the testimony of John Foxe, themartyrologist, it was so in the sixteenth century in Flanders. He tells his readers of the wife of a certain Adrian, a tailor of Dornick (Tournai), who was buried alive in 1545. She was, he says, "inclosed in an iron grate formed in shape of a pasty, was laid in the earth and buried quick, after the usual punish- ment of that country for women" ('Acts and Monuments,' ed. 1856, vol. iv. p. 386). Another instance of the year 1549 from Bergen, in Hennegau, is recorded p. 391.

EDWARD PEACOCK.

" TURN " (9 th S. viii. 121). As a rule a per- former waits for his " turn " in the wings, having already been " called " from the dressing-room. The word is almost exclu- sively in this sense used in the music-halls and on the variety stage. On the stage proper the stage of the drama the word "cue" is used. An actor waits at the wings for his "cue," which is the last word of the actor or actress speaking, which gives him his entrance, or which, supposing

him the performer to be on the stage, indicates to him that it is his turn to carry on the dialogue and the action of the play. "Extra turn "almost invariably means that a new performer is having his first public trial at that particular house. If he goes well he is tolerably sure of securing an engagement. S. J. A. F.

SMOKING A COBBLER (9 th S. vii. 509 ; viii. 148). Our revered Editor will perhaps permit me by an apt quotation to illustrate a meaning of the term " smoke " which, I fancy, is even now more frequently used than either of those mentioned as above in ' N. & Q.' If it does nothing else better it could not do it will bring us into good literary society, and attest the vivacity of the pranks of a distinguished company in the beginning of the eighteenth century. In his 'Journal to Stella,' under the date 2 December, 1710, Swift wrote :

" Steele, the rogue, has done the impudentest thing in the world ; he said something in a Toiler, that we ought to use the words 'Great Britain,' and not ' England,' in common conversation ; as ' the finest lady in Great Britain,' &c. Upon this Rowe, Prior, and I sent him a letter turning this into ridicule. He has to-day printed the letter and signed it J. S., M. P., and N. R., the first letters of our names. Congreve to-day told me he smoked it immediately."

If he had said he " twigged " it, Congreve would have used a modern equivalent for the term in question. O.

' The Smoked Miser ; or, the Benefit of Hanging,' is the title of a farce by Douglas Jerrold, first performed at Sadler's Wells Theatre when under the management of Egerton, previously to 1840 ('Life of E. L. Blanchard,' by Clement Scott, p. 175).

JOHN HEBB.

CHAIN - MAIL REINTRODUCED INTO THE BRITISH ARMY (9 th S. vi. 488 ; viii. 131). The chain shoulder straps were introduced nto the British army while Sir George Luck, K.C.B., was Inspector - General of Cavalry in Great Britain and Ireland. The reason is given in the following cutting from the Military Mail of 9 August :

"In the steel curb shoulder-protection, which low forms a part of the equipment of almost all cavalry, the troops have a permanent reminder of one of the most exciting adventures which befell Sir George Luck, the Lieutenant-General com- nanding the Bengal Forces. During the Afghan perations of 1878-80 he took his regiment (the 5th Hussars) up to Candahar, and encountered at Fakht-i-Pul a strong body of hill-men led by Afghan sowars, who made things pretty warm for him for a few minutes. In the hand-to-hand fighting he >ecame engaged with a gigantic Pathan, who broke