Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 8.djvu/337

 9* s. viii. OCT. 19, loci.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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head the uniforms there shown did not exist. In the 'Meeting of Wellington and Blucher on the Field of Waterloo ' all the English are wearing moustaches, when none but Hussars wore them. I saw a painting to-day, in a window in Jermyn Street, in which a Hussar is depicted without a moustache and with his pelisse improperly hung on. Frequently I have seen pistols placed backwards in the holsters. When Boehm was engaged on his figures for the base of the Wellington Monu- ment, now opposite Apsley House, he experi- enced great trouble in the endeavour to be accurate, especially in the matter of the Ennis- killen Dragoon. The regimental records gave a representation of the dress at this period, but it was wrong ; and it was correctly done, owing to the actual dress 1815 was the year required being at the United Service Institu- tion. Appeal to the dress regulations is absolutely necessary before committing to posterity such blunders, only a very few examples of which I have found and made a note of.

Why have we no national dress museum, say in conjunction with the Royal Academy \ No further errors such as I speak of could then occur, and art would certainly be aided.

HAROLD MALET, Col.

USES OF GRINDSTONES (9 th S. viii. 225)..! have never come across grindstones put to the uses indicated by H. J. B., but I have fre- quently seen discarded millstones utilized in a similar manner. There is an illustration of a millstone used as a gravestone in a recent number of the Strand Magazine, Only yesterday I saw a cattle - drinking spring in the side of a hill flanked by two old millstones, and I know of an instance not far from here where one does duty as a stepping-stone. JOHN T. PAGE.

West Haddon, Northamptonshire.

Replying to H. J. B.'s query, I have lately utilized them for bases to sundials ; a flat barley grinder in one instance, and in another the hollowed trench serving as a flower bed with very satisfactory results.

HAROLD MALET, Col.

FLOYD v. LLOYD (9 th S. viii. 141). In reply to G. D., in my opinion, as one of the Lloyds, the name Floyd is not "as distinct from Lloyd as possible " ; in fact, confusion has many times arisen between the two names through careless writing, and through Englishmen trying to give the Welsh double I in Lloyd its proper sound, which they often fail to do, pronouncing Lloyd as Floyd, Llewelyn as Flewelyn, &c. This difficulty with the double I has continued

generation after generation, and I think it may be said century after century ; and I suggest that Floyd is in its origin a corrup- tion of Lloyd, Lloyd being an anglicized form of the older Welsh Llwyd (meaning grey), a form of name incomprehensible to an English eye and ear, and now, I think, dying out, perhaps for that reason.

Undoubtedly no Welsh Lloyds (and what other original Lloyds are there 1) will admit that their surname was ever Floyd, which I suggest is an un-Welsh form, and yet from what other language could it have arisen 1

It may be worth while to note that Bloyd (a rather uncommon surname even in Wales) is a form of Lloyd, being an abbreviation of Ap Lloyd, as Bowen is of Ap Owen.

I regret that absence abroad has prevented my replying to G. D.'s note at an earlier date. LL. LL.

A possible explanation of the interchange of these names appears to me to be this : that the names are identical, the Fl being a Saxon endeavour and a very poor one to repre- sent the peculiar sound of the Welsh LI. So Shakspeare in 'King Henry V.' writes " Fluellen " for Llewelyn.

JEANNIE S. POPHAM.

Llanrwst, North Wales.

' A Dictionary of English and Welsh Sur- names,' compiled with so much modesty by the late Canon Bardsley, of Ulverston, and just issued to the public, deals with this question. Under ' Floyd ' one finds that the word is a variant of Lloyd, arising from the difficulty found by Englishmen in pro- nouncing Fl. This assertion is not fanciful or imaginary, but exists in fact. Bloyd, s.v. ' Blood,' is also given as another form of the name, indicating sonship. It is a con- traction of Ap Lloyd ; cf. Bethell, Benyon, &c. Cf. also Llewellyn and Flewellin. The references under 'Lloyd,' 'Floyd,' and 'Blood' will possibly interest your con- tributor. The point had been dealt with previously by the canon in his smaller work ' English Surnames.' ARTHUR MAYALL.

Surely there is no mystery about this. The Welsh word llwyd (grey) is pronounced, as nearly as can be written, " thlooid." The Fl is simply an attempt to give the Welsh sound of LI. The name Fludd, pronouncing the u in the old manner, was pretty near the original sound of the Welsh word.

JOHN HOBSON MATTHEWS.

Town Hall, Cardiff.

I find a case of interchange in the year 1709, when the second edition of 'The