Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 9.djvu/323

 9 s. ix. APRIL 19, 1902.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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tainly somewhere seen the expression so used. It is, however, I think, more generally employed in the sense of departing suddenly without notice, as a bird from the twig in eluding the fowler, and is said of one who runs away from his creditors :

" I have lost my ticker ; and all my toggery has been boned, I am nearly as naked as when I was born-^ind the cause the lady bird has hopped the twig." Pierce Egan's ' Finish to Life in Lon- don,' 1830, p. 217.

J. HOLDEN MACMlCHAEL.

An exact equivalent for this expression occurs in Scott's 'Pirate,' chap. xl. When Fletcher unexpectedly dies in the presence of Cleveland and Jack Bunce, the effect on the latter is given thus :

"'I always thought him a d d fool,' said Bunce, as he wiped a tear from his eye, ' but never such a consummate idiot as to hop the perch so sillily. I have lost the best follower ' and he again wiped his eye."

The metaphor is thus used as suited to the quarter-deck of a pirate vessel.

THOMAS BAYNE.

May I refer to my note (9 th S. v. 346, to this slang term 1 It is still very common, expressing unusual speed in driving, or dramming, or dying. GEORGE MARSHALL.
 * Hopping the Wag ') for a local reference

Sefton Park, Liverpool.

BIBLE : AUTHORIZED VERSION (9 th S. ix. 147, 237). The ' Encyclopaedia Britannica,' under the heading of l English Bible,' gives us the list of committees engaged in this translation, and states that they were employed four or five years, "some parts being brought back to the anvil to be hammered as much as fourteen, and some as much as seventeen times." Notwith- standing the great number of scholars who thus worked, the ordinary reader finds the result homogeneous ; nor would he, I think, suspect, from the translation itself, that all had not been done by one man. I trust I shall not seem foolish if I ask whether one part of the work is at all distinguishable from another by mannerisms, archaisms, or dialectic peculiarities. If not, the amount of collaboration and of mutual correction, as between the separate committees, must have been very great.

RICHARD H. THORNTON.

Portland, Oregon.

SLEEPING GARMENTS (3 rd S. iv. 246, 332, 439 ; vi. 316 ; xi. 51 ; xii. 175 ; 9 th S. ix. 213). In one of the windows in Eton College Chapel, given by the Rev. John Wilder, one of the Fellows, soine forty to fifty years ago, is a

figure lying on a bed Isaac, if I remember rightly. This window is, I think, the second from entrance of the choir on the north side. I used to sit opposite it and to think it a strange thing that Isaac should be repre- sented stark naked. However, having re- turned to Eton after an interval of holidays, I discovered that a brilliant nightgown had been substituted for the naked body. My impression is that it was of a ruby colour. This must have been in or about 1862.

ROBERT PIERPOINT. St. Austin's, Warrington.

In a book about Malta I find a sketch of the hospital of the Knights Hospitallers, 1676. The patients are in bed, and physicians and attendants are waiting upon tnem. Some are sitting up in bed, and there is no appearance of nightdresses. Men and women are naked, and covered from the waist downwards by the bedclothes. GEORGE ANGUS.

St. Andrews, N.B.

"TOLPATCHERY" (9 th S. vii. 170). This word, with its plural form " tolpatcheries,' 1 occurs frequently in Carlyle's ' History of Fried rich II. of Prussia.' See, amongst other places, book xiii. ch. xii. and xiv., book xv. ch. vii., book xviii. ch. i. In book xv. ch. ix. Uhlans are defined as "the Saxon species of Tolpatchery." With "Tolpatchery " may be compared "Croateries" (book xxi. ch. vi.), " Pandour doggery " (book xv. ch. ix.\ "Pandour Tolpatch tagraggery " (book xiii. ch. xiv.). For "tol patch" see Kluge, 'Ety- mologisches Worterbuch der deutschen Sprache' (sixth edition, 1899), and Morjtz Heyne, 'Deutsches Worterbuch,' vol. iii. '1895). The latter connects it with the Hungarian talpas. In that case, if Carlyle's liberal employment of the word could be said bo have endenized (or endenizened, with C. L.J " tolpatchery "in our own language, it would oe one of the very few English words of Hungarian origin. EDWARD BENSLY.

The University, Adelaide, South Australia.

"BAR SINISTER" (9 th S. ix. 64, 152, 215). I am much obliged to H. for conveying a warning that any looseness of expression in historical or genealogical matters will not be tolerated in the columns of ' N. & Q.' Cathe- rine Sedley died childless only in a heraldo- legal sense, and the descendants of the first Baron Waldegrave and Henrietta FitzJames still sit in the House of Lords. I may, how- ever, observe in defence that my statement that no descendant of James II. sits in that House was made in reference to the assertion of the Daily Chronicle that that monarch "contributed a good many bars sinister to