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NOTES- AND QUERIES. [9< s. vm. NOV. 2, 1901.

are those funny little things ?' I ventured to ask. ' I never write a single line of any of my dramas unless that tray and its occupants are before me on the table. 1 could not write without them. It may seem strange perhaps it is but I cannot write without them/ he repeated; 'but why I use them is my own secret.' And he laughed quietly. Are these little toys, these fetishes, and their strange fascination the origin of those much-dis- cussed dolls in 'The Master Builder'? Who can tell? They are Ibsen's secret."

PARLIAMENT SQUARE, FALKLAND. With reference to this picturesque little village, Groorae in the ' Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland ' has the following :

" It [Falkland] once was a place of much resort, the capital of the stewartry of Fife, the residence of the retainers of the earls of Fife, and afterwards the residence of the courtiers of the kings of Scotland ; and it possesses memorials of its ancient consequence in the remains of the royal palace, some curious old houses, and such local names as Parliament Square, College Close, and West Port."

From this it might perhaps be legitimately inferred that the name Parliament Square has some connexion with the time when royalty frequented Falkland. I have it, however, on excellent authority that this is not the case. The name is comparatively modern, and is applied not to the main square, but to an open space in a secluded part of the village, where once upon a time the Radical members of the community used to meet and " spout " away to their hearts' content. T. P. ARMSTRONG.

CURIOUS EPITAPH. The following appeared in the Times of the 25th of October :

"C. W. writes -.While lately strolling through an old Surrey church containing altar - tombs, escutcheons, and memorials of the house of Exeter, the following epitaph on a large marble slab, suspended high in the mortuary chapel, arrested my attention. It is printed in uncials, and I repro- duce the arrangement in facsimile :

DOROTHY CECIL UNMARRIED

AS YP;T."

A. N. Q.

A GRAVE CHARGE. Sir Mountstuart E. Grant Duff, in his 'Notes from a Diary, 1873-81,' vol. ii. p. 350, writes thus under date 30 August, 1881 :

" George Boyle had asked me to obtain for him the correct version of a poem, of which Lord Houghton was the depository, and which was repeated by Sir Walter Scott to Miss Maclean Uephane; Sir Walter declaring, truly or falsely, that he had heard it from an old woman." ' The * Notes' are bright and chatty, if some- what unduly (perhaps unavoidably so) leavened with rl lyt>, abounding in bans mots that deserve to be preserved and shrewd estimates of men and things, but their

worth is considerably discounted by such an unwarrantable breach of noblesse oblige as the above italicized word. And as the slur on Scott's truthfulness has received the permanence of print, let this repudiation of it share a like favour. Had Sir Grant Duff written " mistakenly," I and ' N. & Q.' would have been spared this protest.

J. B. McGovERN. St. Stephen's Rectory, C.-on-M., Manchester.

PRONUNCIATION OF NIETZSCHE. If one were to judge from appearance, a half-stifled sneeze might represent the pronunciation. A literary journal recently referred to the name as " that musical dissyllable." Close students of De Quincey learn in time that he was not infallible, but in such matters as this he was (and knew it) an authority. Now there is a Nitzsch, as it happens, in De Quincey, but without the final e, which, if it add a syllable in German, does not do so in English. De Quincey is always worth quoting :

" Nitzsch's name is against him. It is intolerable to see such a thicket of consonants with but one little bit of a vowel amongst them ; it is like the proportions between Fal staff's bread and his sack. However, after all, the man did not make his own name ; and the name looks worse than it sounds, for it is but our own word niche, barbarously written."

So far De Quincey. The correct pro- nunciation of the English word niche is, according to Sheridan (I quote an antiquated authority as the only one just now at hand), nitsh. Does the final e in the German name make it nitchy ?

THOMAS AULD. [Pronounce as Neetsheh.]

MANORIAL CUSTOM AT HUNMANBY. The following paragraph from the Hull Times for 21 September is, I think, well worth reproducing in ' N. & Q.' :

"Not the least interesting amongst the many quaint methods adopted for the retention of manorial rights is the custom by which the lords of the manors of Hunmanby and Heighten retain their privileges in connexion with the extent of sea-shore stretching from Reighton Gap on the south to Filey Brigg on the north. These 'rights' include the nominal ownership of all flotsam and jetsam, and enable the holders to levy a charge for all sand and gravel carted away from the shore. For the parishes in the immediate vicinity the charge is on a preferential basis. Briefly described, the custom is as follows : An old retainer of the Mitford family, mounted on a trusty steed, rides into the water until it reaches the horse's girth. Then, standing erect in the stirrups, he launches a javelin as far seaward as possible, for the point of impact determines the extreme seaward boundary of the ' rights.' This done, one end of a trawl net, minus the beam, is dragged into the sea, another