Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 8.djvu/258

 250

NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. viii, SEPT. 21, 1901.

connexion is, however, far from clear, and any light upon the point or upon the after history of this line of the family would be acceptable. W. D. PINK.

Lowton, Newton-le- Willows.

"ALEWIVES" (9 th S. vii. 406). As it is not certain that the inquirer has encountered the following quotation, bearing on the point raised, in Whittier's ' Abraham Davenport, for what it is worth it may be as well to cite it, showing as it would appear to do that, while there is some association between the shad and the alewife, they are different sorts of fish. The passage runs thus :

An act to amend an act to regulate

The shad and alewive fisheries.

The expression is "shad and alewive," not "shad or alewive." It will perhaps be of some interest to note that the poet spells the word with a v in the singular.

ARTHUR MAYALL.

LITTLE JOHN'S REMAINS (9 th S. viii. 124). The following, from 'A History of Caw- thorne,' by Charles T. Pratt, M.A., vicar of Cawthorne, 1882, is the best answer I can give to the query re the above :

" There is a large ancient bow at Cannon Hall, which is said to have belonged to Little John, the lieutenant of Robin Hood's band. The late Rev. Charles Spencer Stanhope gave the following tra- ditional history of it to the Rev. Dr. Gatty, who inserts it as a note on p. 3 of his ' Hallamshire' :

4 ' Oct. 5, 1865. There is a bow at Cannon Hall, said to have been the bow of Little John, bearing on it the name of Col. Naylor, 1715, who is said to have been the last man who bent it and shot a deer with it. There was also a cuirass of chain mail and an arrow or two which were said to have be- longed to Little John, but they were lost in repairs of the house about 1780; but I have heard my father say that the cuirass had been much reduced by people stealing rings from it for memorials. Hathersage, in Derbyshire, was an estate formerly belonging to the Spencer family, and was left by the last Spencer to the son of his eldest daughter, John Ashton Shuttleworth. In this churchyard was the head and footstone of the grave of Little John ; and his bows, arrows, and cuirass, according to Ash- mole, as I am told, used to hang up in the chancel of Hathersage Church.

" Ashmole MS. 1,137, fol. 147 : " Little John lyes buried in Hathersage Churchyard, within three miles from Castleton, near High Peake, with one stone set up at his head and another at his feete but a large distance between them. They sav a parte of his bowe hangs up in the said church "

Prom thence they have long disappeared, and a bow, &c., are found at Cannon Hall, a seat of the Spencers, who were also owners of Hathersage, and this bow was always known by the name of Little John s bow. It is of spliced yew, of great size and above six feet long, though the ends where the horns were attached are broken off. The late James Shuttleworth, who died about 1826, had the grave opened, I fancy about 1780, and the only bone which

was found, beyond what instantly crumbled to dust, were thigh-bones of the extraordinary length of 28 inches. I remember in the year 1820, when Sir Francis, father of Sir Charles Wood, Bart., of Hickleton (now Lord Halifax), was at Cannon Hall, on my recounting this anecdote, sending up for the old woodman Hinchliffe, who told it me, and he took a two-foot rule out of his pocket and, extend- ing the little slide, showed the exact length. He mentioned besides that he was the gravedigger's son, and was present at the disinterring of the said bone.' Mr. Stanhope adds, ' My brother (Mr. John Stanhope) said the bow was removed from the church to the Hall at Hathersage for better security.' "

From this it would appear that neither Mr. Stanhope nor the old woodman who was present at the exhumation knew anything of the removal of the bone in question to Cannon Hall. E. G. B.

" TOUCAN " (9 th S. vii. 486; viii. 22, 67, 85, 171). PROF. NEWTON says that what the facts are to which I am the first to draw attention is to him not clear. The answer is, I am the first to show that in the compound Toucanta- bourace, instead of (as Buffon assumed) the first two syllables meaning " feather," it is the third that bears that meaning. The rest of the word (bourace) means " to dance," as is clear from the entry " porace, dangar," in the ' Diccionario Anonymo' of 1795. I have thus rendered to English lexicographj^ the service of reducing the possible etymologies of toucan from three to two. Of the two that are left I incline to the explanation of Burton and Cavalcariti that the term is an imitation of the cry of the bird. PROF. NEWTON, in the ' Encyclopaedia Britannica,' speaks of Prof. Skeat having proved that it is from ti, nose, and cang, bone. This is incorrect. Prof. Skeat merely mentioned it as a guess of Caetano. It is, in fact, a speculation only one degree more probable than that which connects "asparagus " with " sparrow-grass." Its weakness lies in the fact that it is founded on the apocopated Guarani form tucd. Directly we know that the Tupi or full form is tucdna it falls to the ground. It is charac- teristic of the Guarani dialect that in many zoological terms it cuts off the final syllable. Thus the Tupi garidma (a bird) becomes sarid, and the Tupi jaguara and tapiira become yagua and tapii ; but it would obviously be most unscientific to etymologize from the shorter instead of from the full forms.

JAMES PL ATT, Jun.

CIVIL WAR : STORMING OF LINCOLN (9 th S. viii. 43, 93, 148). I doubt if a complete, or even approximately complete list could be found of the prisoners taken at Naseby. However, the following extract from the