Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 9.djvu/321

 9*8. IX. APRIL 19, 1902.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

313

trading to the East Indies up to the Act of Parliament which terminated the existence of that company in 1858-60. It also appeared upon the penknives, scissors, &c., supplied by that company to their servants in their home establishment in Leadenhall Street, but the reversed 4 stood on the centre of the superior (upper) part of a heart which was divided by two lines (one perpendicular and one horizontal) into four equal parts, the first having U in it, the second E, the third I, and the fourth C, which letters stood for United East India Company, but which were jestingly interpreted by those servants, from a very early period, as four idle, eating, cheating villains, the origin of which I know not. C. MASON.

29, Emperor's Gate, S.W.

CHARLES WESLEY, GEORGE LILLO, AND JOHN HOME (9 fch S. viii. 402, 492 ; ix. 51). Carlyle, in his * French Revolution,' de- scribing the death of Marat, says : " His life, with a groan, gushes out indignant to the shades below." The same author in the same work also transfers a phrase from Horace : "Strike the stars with sublime head," which in English seems mere nonsense.

EEGINALD HAINES.

Uppingham.

"THE COCK AND CRYER" (9 th S. ix. 248). For an explanation of this phrase see Cham- bers's ' Book of Days,' i. 240, from which it appears that there was an official so named in the Lord Steward's Department of the Royal Household so lately as 1822.

H. P. L.

ITALIAN SUNDIAL INSCRIPTION (9 fch S. ix 127). MR. HEMS says this inscription was "half obliterated," and it is evident that many letters are missing from the end oi each line. It seems to be Italian, and to run thus :

OMBRA ONDE L

ME FECE M

(A shadow whence

M made me.)

The last letter but two must be c, not G, anc the last line must state the name of the man who made the sundial.

JOHN HOBSON MATTHEWS. Town Hall, Cardiff.

FILBERT (9 th S. ix. 125, 177). MR. LYN> says that Syme's ' English Botany ' gives pre ference to the derivation^ beard. As second ing that judgment may one call attention t( the fact that a kindred people (the German calls this fruit the Bard-misz (or beard-nut) An old dictionary at my side does not spel

he word " filbert," but " filberd." This brings s nearer still to the Bard and beard. If we How for the old name-sound in the e of berd, ve have the beard (sound) of to-day pretty losely (" beard-nut" Compare "the bearded >arley "). W. H. B.

WARREN AND CLEGG (9 th S. ix. 187). It may safely be assumed that Esther Clegg was riot a descendant of Benulf de Clegg who was living in the time of Stephen, and who certainly was not the founder of Clegg Hall. ?he men who took their name from the mmlet of Clegg in the thirteenth century 3onveyed their lands there to Adam de Bel- ield by charters dated in 10 Edward I. and
 * Edward II., and consequently in the Sub-

id y Roll of 1332 not one of the family is named. The Belfield family lived in Clegg 'or several generations, until the estates Dassed by marriage to the Assheton family it the end of the sixteenth century. The louse in which they lived in 1618 was de- scribed as ''Clegg Hall," and probably it stood on the site of the ancestral home of the Beifields. For long after the Belfields acquired their lands in Clegg, people living there would be described as of Clegg, and consequently in the seventeenth century Jlegg was one of the most common names in Rocndale, and in parish registers from 1582 to 1616 the name occurs no less than 470 times, whilst in the neighbouring parish of Bury there are only five entries of the name in the registers from 1590 to 1616.

HENRY FISHWICK.

" HIGH-FALUTING " (9 th S. viii. 505 ; ix. 176, 217). It is probable that Dr. Brewer adopted verlooten from Hotten's assertion that this "Dutch" word had produced highfaluten (' Slang Dictionary '). Mr. John S. Farmer, compiler of 'Americanisms,' inclines to the opinion that highfalutin is from high-flight- ing or -floating. * ST. SWITHIN.

CELER'S guess seems as good as Dr. Brewer's was bad; but is it necessary .to go so far afield as Holland for the explanation of the word ? It is, I believe, of American growth, and I do not remember meeting with it before the days of Sam Slick. My guess is that it is a pompous or intensive pronuncia- tion of "high fluting" i.e., pitching ones pretensions, or boasting, or patriotic utter- ances in a high key. The transition is not difficult from the sound of the flute to the vox humana. ALDENHAM.

St. Dunstan's.

[The 'H.E.D.' suggests: "Perhaps a whimsical pronunciation of fluting, or a grandiose equivalent of flying or flown. ]