Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 9.djvu/117

. ix. FK,, s, 1902.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

109

occurrence of the name, for an account of the family which I am now printing.

ARIBERT GAZLAY. Chamber of Commerce Building, Cincinnati.

TIB'S EVE. The other day I was conversing with a man about a prospective event. "Yes," said he, "it will be on Tib's Eve, neither before nor after Christmas," express- ing thus his incredulity as to the function ever coming off. I see that Miss Baker records the saying, but makes no comment as to its origin. Is it known in other counties ?

JOHN T. PAGE.

West Haddon, Northamptonshire. [See 8 th S. iv. 507 ; v. 58, 132, 193, 298, 438 ; vi. 213.]

MRS. JAMES DENN OR DENNE. Can any reader of *N. & Q.' supply the maiden name and parentage of Mrs. James Demi or Denne (mother of the first Countess Beauchamp), whose portrait by Reynolds is at Madresfield ? It is said that her name was Hippisley, but it is not known upon what evidence. Infor- mation concerning her husband, James Denne, is also desired. ST. GEORGE.

UNCOVERING AT THE NATIONAL ANTHEM. It would be interesting to know when this practice first became a recognized custom. Can any of your correspondents decide this question 1 I have an impression that it was unknown before the accession of the late Queen, and that it became a common observance especially to denote public sym- pathy after the death of the Prince Consort. In country places it has not yet taken root, for many of the most enthusiastically loyal people will neither stand nor uncover at the welt-known sounds. F. T. ELWORTHY.

GWYNETH. This is an old Welsh Christian name. What is the proper form Gwyneth or Gweneth 1 On a tombstone in Monkton Priory Church, Pembroke, it is spelt Geneth. Gwynedd, pronounced Gwyneth, was the old name for a portion of North Wales, but I presume this is a different word.

J. P. LEWIS.

WILLIAM GERARD HAMILTON, 1729-96. In M. E. Cumming Bruce's 'Family Records of the Bruces and the Cumyns ' (1870), p. 366, it is stated that James Bruce of Kinnaird (the African traveller) entered Harrow School on 21 January, 1742, together with the above and other kinsmen. The * D.N.B.' says that "Single-Speech Hamilton" was educated at Winchester and Oriel, where he matriculated, in 1745, at the age of sixteen. Was he also at Harrow under Dr. Cox 1 A. R. BAYLEY.

St. Margaret's, Malvern.

SILVER ORNAMENTS. I nave an old silver necklet (in two parts as bracelets) in ten small plates, with representations of the Annunciation, &c., on them, some worn so that the subject is difficult to distinguish. The plates are three, four, and five sided, and slightly open-worked at the top of each. No hall-mark. Can any one tell me of a work on silver ornaments, or any way in which I could find the probable date and history ? C. F. Y.

" WYRALL."-In Harl. MS. 1419a (a list of the effects of Henry VIII. in 1547) the follow- ing is said (on folio 169) to be "at West- minster " :

" Item three staves, every of theym having a picke with two graynes at the nether end and a ivyrall of Iron tynned."

There are several references to " a virall of golde " in other parts of the same MS. What is the meaning of this word? There is no trace of it in my edition of Halliwell's ' Archaic and Provincial Words ' (1855).

T. CANN HUGHES, M.A., F.S.A. Lancaster.

OBELISK AT ST. PETER'S.

(9 th S. viii. 405, 505.)

MR. PIERPOINT has copied his inscrip- tions well, albeit I note the absence of DE before TRIBV IVDA in his first one. The inscription which he cites from Gorringe is not so illegible as he imagines ; nor is its comparative illegibility due so much to three centuries of rain and dust (called in to account for it by Gorringe) as to its great altitude above the spectator. It is also on the west side, and just at the summit. I was able to make out nearly half of it without the aid of glasses. It may be of interest to remind him that Poggio Bracciolini, who visited and noted well what he saw of the ancient monuments in the Eternal City at the close of the Pon- tificate of Martin V. (1445), refers to the obelisk "qui est in Vaticano a C. Csesare Caligula positus Divo Augusto et Divo Tiberio sacer." It is also mentioned by the Pilgrim of Einsiedeln circa A.D. 800. It was probably the first imported to Rome of the non-Egyptian obelisks, that is to say, of the imitation ones. As Pliny says, "factus in imitatione eius quern fecerat Sesostridis films Nuncoreus" ('H.N.,' lib. xxxvi. c. xi.). The lunacy of Caius, as we know from other evi- dences, was conspicuously megalomaniac. It has been attempted by Middleton, Lanciani, and others to make out that his bridge (pons)