Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 8.djvu/301

 9* s. viii. OCT. r,, INI.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

293

of patient labour must have been spent upo them. On one bobbin is the name "Ann and on another " Susan," done in red dot With the set are two bodkins, both fine worked, one marked in red and blue do " Mary Fenemore 1830," and the other in spiral from bottom to top " Tis hard to par from my swethart." Between each won are two dots, red and blue. Another interes ing feature of this is that every bobbin an the bodkins are " odd " no two alike in th details of turning, carving, and other orna mentation. THOS. RATCLIFFE.

Worksop.

Lace bobbins as described by MR. COURTE NAY are used in Bedfordshire and the sur rounding counties. They are- about fou inches long, and have a number of.colourec glass beads fastened to one end to give them the necessary weight. Some are made o bone, with names, posies, or ornaments carvec on them, others of wood, inlaid with wooc or metal in various patterns. Many of these are very old. The Honiton bobbins are,. believe, shorter and thicker. E. MEIN.

NAPOLEON'S LIBRARY (9 th S. viii. 145, 189) A cutting from the Daily Telegraph, con taining a portion of the review in that paper upon Lord Rosebery's work, says :

" He took 800 volumes to Waterloo [sic], includ ing the Bible, Ossian, Homer, Bossuet, and all the seventy volumes of Voltaire. The British Govern- ment sent him a bill for 1,400/. for books, and the sum being unpaid at his death, they sold them in London for a few hundred pounds. Napo- leon's marginal notes would have given them price- less value to-day. ' Had this asset been preserved to the nation,' says Lord Rosebery, 'we might have been inclined to shut our eyes to its history and origin.' "

GEORGE C. PEACHEY.

" SITOEHORNED " (9 th S. vii. 289, 395 ; viii. 48). -Will some one kindly explain the following passage in Thomas Killigrew's play 'The Parson's Wedding' (Dodsley's 'Plays,' 1744, p. 455)?

"Parson. Death, if I suffer this, we shall have that damn'd courtier pluck on his shoes with the parson's musons. Fine i' faith ! none but the small Levite's brew to plant your shoeing horn-seed in ? How now ? "

What were "musons," and who was the "small Levite"? Does "horn-seed" allude to the cuckold's horns ?

J. H. MAcMlCHAEL.

JOHN THORPE, ARCHITECT (9 th S. viii. 101). " Students have been accustomed to give the credit of architectural invention to the almost mytho- logical John of Padua, John Thorpe, Smithson, and Havens. Havens and his claim to the Gate of

Honour at Caius have been exploded by the antiquarians of Cambridge. For John Thorpe the late Mr. Wyatt Papworth undertook the task of removing almost all authentic title to fame, and has shorn him of so many supposed attributes, that beyond the presumption that the signature John Thorpe attached to certain plans in the Soane Museum was written by a man bearing that name, there is little glory left for his memory. John of Padua, if he ever existed, must now be looked on as little more than a mason with a dash of the clerk of the works in his character, and Smithson's credentials are ruthlessly narrowed down to the doubtful testimony of an eulogistic tombstone." ' The Understanding of Architecture,' Edinburgh Review, April, 1898.

JOHN HEBB. 14, Spring Gardens, S.W.

"As WARM AS A BAT" (9 th S. viii. 142). Dr. Brewer (' Handbook of Phrase and Fable ')

says that in South Staffordshire slaty coal which will not burn, but which lies in the ire till it becomes red hot, is called "bat." As warm as a toast" is still a very common

saying. Among Bohn's collection of proverbs s "As warm as a mouse in a churn"; and ' As hot as Mary Palmer " was a proverbial

simile common during the Stuart period, laving, it is said, originated in a witty

circumstance during the Commonwealth, and

used by Cavaliers to the annoyance of the ^uritans (see 'Wine and Walnuts,' vol. ii.

p. 62, foot-note). J. H. MACMICHAEL.

Many years ago I saw a brick put in a fire A\\ it was hot, then it was wrapped in several ! olds of an old blanket and put to the feet of n invalid in bed. If this was a common ustom long ago, and if a bat half a brick- nay mean a whole brick, a meaning for the )hrase is obvious. JOHN MILNE.

108, Clifton Road, Aberdeen.

WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR'S HALF BROTHERS ND SISTERS (9 th S. viii. 199). Orderic Vital 3k. vii. chap, xvi.) calls Harlowen de Burgo [erluin de Conteville. This place is Conte- ille-sur-Mer, near the mouth of the Risle. ^e states that he married Harleve, and had

do and Robert, and a daughter named delaide, who married Eudes de Champagne
 * wo sons. Mr. Cobbe gives him two sons,


 * or her first husband, and secondlj r Lambert,

Jount of Lens. Her daughter Judith married Waltheof, Earl of Northumbria. Planche'

ays there were two daughters Emma, who

Decame wife to Richard, Viscount of the vranchin, whose son was the Earl of Chester ;

nd Muriel, who married Eudo de Capello or Chapel ; but he states in vol. i. (' Con-

ueror and his Companions ') that there was so a sister of Muriel who became the wife the lord of Ferte Mace, who was called