Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 9.djvu/180

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. ix. MARCH i, im

pression on the mind of his wife that on the birth of her daughter Augusta (who after- wards married Sir William Murray, Bart., of Ochtertyre) she was found to have on one side of her neck the mark of an axe with three drops of blood. J. B P.

Miss Mary Bagot made a slight slip, as George Mackenzie, Earl of Cromartie, was not executed, but, at the earnest intercession of his wife, received a respite, and in 1749 was pardoned and allowed five hundred pounds a year out of his forfeited estates. His attainder was not removed. The story of his daughter, Lady Augusta Mackenzie, who subsequently became the wife of Sir William Murray, of Ochtertyre, is well known. Lady Cromartie was enceinte when sentence was pronounced upon her husband, and in the words of Jesse in his ' Memoirs of the Pretenders and their Adherents,' the little girl, who was born shortly afterwards, was " said to have borne on her neck the evident mark of an axe, which had been impressed there by the imagination of her mother, while labouring under the terrors of suspense on account of her unhappy lord."

Lord Cromartie was captured by a body of Lord Sutherland's militia in the dining-room of Dunrobin Castle on the eve of the battle of Culloden. In 1849 the title of Countess of Cromartie was revived in favour of Anne Mackenzie, wife of the third Duke of Suther- land, and is now borne by her granddaughter. In consequence of the Act of Union it was necessary to make it a peerage of the United Kingdom. W. F. PEIDEAUX.

THE SPLIT INFINITIVE (8 th S. xii. 205, 375, 491). In the bedrooms of the Charing Cross Hotel may be found one of the most striking " splits " in the following :

"Notice. This Room is protected by Pearson's Automatic Fire Alarm Indicator, which upon an undue rise of temperature causes the fire bells situated throughout the Hotel to instantaneously and continuously ring until attended to by the fireman on duty."

The splitting has in this case a distinct rhetorical effect, as it seems to me.

O. O. H.

"STREAM OF TENDENCY" (9 th S. ix. 68). This now common phrase may be traced further back than Matthew Arnold, Emerson or Hazlitt. In Wordsworth's 'Excursion,' ix. 87-90, we find what is, perhaps, its true source :

And hear the mighty stream of tendency Uttering, for elevation of our thought, A clear sonorous voice, inaudible To the vast multitude.

Here Dr. W. Knight has this note: "A phrase familiarized to English ears by Mr. Arnold's use of it." Does the word "Eng- lish " suggest in any way a possible foreign origin ? It is for others to say whether the phrase was original with Wordsworth. An instance of its use without marks of quota- tionone, no doubt, among very many may be found in Dr. W. B. Pope's 'Higher Catechism of Theology ' (1883), p. 269. 'The Excursion' was published in 1814. Hazlitt is obviously quoting Wordsworth.

C. LAWRENCE FORD, B.A. Bath.

DlCKENSIANA : PHRASE OF MRS. GAMP

(9 th S. viii. 324, 426 ; ix. 12). I am not nearly so old as Mrs. Gamp would be were she alive now, but I remember very well a sort of "gambling machine" that was one of the chief attractions of the "stalls" that used to visit our village on the occasion of the annual feast. It consisted of a round board divided into compartments, with a revolving pillar and index finger in the centre. Each of the compartments held an article of greater or less value as a packet of sweets, a small toy, a bootlace, or what-not some of them being very fair pennyworths and others very bad ones. We used to pay a penny for a spin, and I dare say the excitement round the tables at Monte Carlo is not greater than ours was while the finger was revolving. I do not know whether those machines are still allowed. C. C. B.

In ' London Labour and the London Poor,' by Henry May hew, vol. i. p. 204, is a whole- page engraving called ' The Coster Boy and Girl tossing the Pieman,' from a daguerreo- type by Beard. At p. 196 is a description of the process, indulged in chiefly, it is said, by boys, though the pieman observes, " Gentle- men out on the spree at the late public- houses will frequently toss when they don't want the pies ; and when they win they will amuse themselves by throwing the pies at one another, or at me." There is a descrip- tion given of the not very appetizing materials of which the pies were made. The date of my copy is 1861 ; but I fancy there is a much earlier edition of the work. Times have in- deed altered since its issue.

JOHN PICKFORD, M.A.

Newbourne Rectory, Woodbridge.

I remember, as a small boy in the early sixties, seeing an apparatus on a dial with a pointer, where you paid your penny and took

four chance of getting any article (not a pie, think) opposite which the pointer rested, in the booths which came in those days to the