Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 8.djvu/420

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NOTES- AND QUERIES. [9 th s. VIIL NOV. ie, 1901.

I entirely agree.* His second criticism that the word is technical and general I have not the qualifications to control (in the French sense), but would ask Southern and South-Western readers of ' N. Q.' to do so. The evidence so faj; collected shows that the word is Scotch, Northern, and Midland.

I may perhaps be allowed to add that my personal knowledge of the word is confined to one specific sense, which I have not seen noticed in dictionaries. A man is said to halsh one object to another when he fastens it by a knot which (not being an expert) I must describe as that by which a trunk- maker hangs the key of a box or bag to its handle, passing the bight of the piece of string (already knotted) which runs through the handle of the key through the handle of the box, and the key through this bight. Doubtless many of your readers could describe this process and this knot in a single word ; I only know it as halshing, and opine that my knowledge of it arose in Westmore- land.

My reason for backing the ' N.E.D.' against a criticism that seemed to me unfair is sub- stantially the same as that set forth at 9 th S. vii. 71. It can hardly be called " fetish- worship" to desire that nothing should hinder the Clarendon Press recouping them- selves.

Just now, as your columns bear witness, I am sadly in need of a new and complete Du Cange ; and anything I can do, how- ever indirectly, towards making such an edition a practical possibility, I hope to do.

Q.V.

WALLER FAMILY (9 th S. viii. 265). I observe that MR. W. D. PINK has collected information concerning various members of the Waller family, and I shall be very greatly obligee if he will allow me to communicate with him on the subject. H. M. BATSON.

Hoe Benham, Newbury.

FIRE ON THE HEARTH KEPT BURNING (9 th S. viii. 204). -The quotation from th. Illustrated London News given by G. H. D. is evidently inaccurate as to locality. There i> no such place as Chedzoy in Cornwall although there is one bearing that name neai Bndgwater in the county of Somerset. Fire that have burnt continuously upon the hearth for a great number of years withou being once extinguished are not unknowr

.* Had my copy of the dictionary not been in th binders hands, I would have written much soone to make my amende, but had to await the biblio pegic convenience before I could verify i impression of concurring in MR. MAY ALL'S view.

n the West Country. The following note elative to one then existing at Shaugh Prior,

small village situated upon the western ringe of Dartmoor's rugged wilds, occurs in he Exeter Gazette for 16 May, 1878. It lappens to be from my own pen, and reads :

"It was in the little 'Whitethorn Inn' in this illage [Shaugh Prior] I partook of refreshment, itting by the side of a peat fire that I was assured ,ad never been out for considerably over fifty ears. The landlord's name is Gullet. Next to a ood swallow, there is nothing like a decent gullet or a public-house."

HARRY HEMS.

Fair Park, Exeter.

This is sometimes used as an idiom to xpress the long residence of a family in one lome. A Yorkshire antiquary, long since lead, once said to me, when speaking of an >ld Northern race, " The fire has never died >ut on their hearthstone for six hundred .ears." K. P. D. E.

"ABACUS" (9 th S. viii. 305). It is hardly

ikely that Sir Walter was mistaken in his

use and explanation of this word, because in

Ivanhoe,' published five years before 'The

Talisman,' he mentions it in the same cpn-

lexion as in the latter romance. Speaking

f Lucas Beaumanoir, the Grand Master of

he Templars, in the thirty-fifth chapter,

Scott says :

1 In his hand he bore that singular abacus, or staff of office, with which Templars are usually represented, having at the upper end a round plate, on which was engraved the cross of the Order, inscribed within a circle or orle, as heralds term it."

Had Scott been mistaken in his use of the word in 'Ivanhoe,' one would suppose that he would have found out his error by some means or other in five years, and would not have repeated it in ' The Talisman.'

Annandale, in his very full 'Concise Dictionary,' 1892, although he gives three meanings of "abacus," does not include the Templars' staff of office amongst them.

JONATHAN BOUCHIER.

Ordinary dictionaries do not record that, in architectural phraseology, an abacus is the mould or mouldings surmounting a capital, upon which the springer of the arch above rests. HARRY HEMS.

Fair Park, Exeter.

In chap. xxxv. of 'Ivanhoe' Sir Walter Scott has given a graphic description of this mystic staff wielded oy Lucas Beaumanoir, the stern Grand Master of the Order of the Temple, at the Preceptory at Templestowe. Perhaps it was merely the eight-pointed cross of the order, in form like the black