"To MUG." (See 9th S. xi. 278.)- Is not MR. DIBDIN in error when he says "the verb 'to mug' is employed in reference to drinking, as I mugged him ""? In Yorkshire it has quite a different meaning, and "I mugged him" signifies I punched his mug or slapped his mug-"mug" being face. A "mug" is often the equivalent of a muff," or one who will tamely submit to be punched or slapped. H. SNOWDEN WARD. a "OUT OF RODEX."-Mr. F. W. Raymond, of Yeovil, told me that "out of rodex" was commonly used at the end of the nineteenth century in Somerset to describe a cartwheel that is out of repair. Dr. J. Wright does not in his 'E.D.D.' mention the phrase as used in Somerset. He says that rodex means state of good repair" in Cornwall, and that roddick or roddeck or roddock means 66 'the groove of the axle of a wheel" in Somerset. The two expressions seem to be related. From a cartwheel that is out of gear the term has been transferred to anything else that has broken down. Would Latin rota axis-axle of a wheel, or rupta axis=broken axle, have passed through Anglo-Norman, by popular caprice, into roddocks, or roddicks, or rodex? Radachse, the German feminine noun for axle-tree, wheelshaft, is, of course, a cognate word, formed from Rad-wheel and Achse axle, axle-tree. Does any German dialect possess any expression formed from this word meaning the same thing as "out of rodex" ? Oxford. E. S. DODGSON. HAMMERSMITH.-The serious London antiquary will not turn for information to the little volumes which are now being issued under the general title of "The Fascination of London." Not only do they abound with errors which may be charitably classed under the heading of misprints, but statements are deliberately made in them which a little inquiry would show to be unfounded. The latest issued volume, 'Hammersmith, Fulham, and Putney,' opens with an assertion of this kind. "The parish of Hammersmith," we are told, "is mentioned in Doomsday Book under the name of Hermoder wode, and in ancient deeds of the Exchequer as Hermoderworth." There is no such place as Hermoderwode" in the Middlesex Doomsday. The place in the mind of the writer is "Hermodesworde"; but this, so far from being Hammersmith, is Harmondsworth, a village in the western part of Middlesex. The writer then goes on to say that the name is "undoubtedly derived from Ham, meaning in Saxon a town or dwelling, and Hythe or Hyde, a haven or harbour, 'therefore,' says Faulkner, Hamhythe, a town with a harbour or creek.' The defect of this derivation is that it leaves unexplained the middle portion of the word. It is not likely that in the course of time Hamhythe would become lengthened into Hammersmith. The process, to use a colloquialism, is usually the other way. Brighthelmstone is shortened into Brighton, plausible etymology, for which, however, I do to give an every-day example. A more not vouch, may be found. The earliest recorded form seems to be 'Hamersmyth," which, split up into its constituents, would be "Hamer's myth." The A.-S. myða is a derivative of mud, a mouth, and signifies the place where a small stream joins a larger one-i.e., a creek, such as that inlet of the Thames that divides the parish of Chelsea from that of Hammersmith. The shortening of mithe to mith is permissible and regular. The proper name Hamer does not so far Hæmar for Heahmær is recorded (Searle's appear to be found in Anglo-Saxon, but Onomasticon Anglo-Saxonicum,' p. 283). This appellation probably accounts for other forms a constituent, such as Hamar-loda in place-names in which Hamer or Hammer Kemble, Hammer - den, Hammer - wick, in Staffordshire, and the family name of Hamer ton or Hammerton. W. F. PRIDEAUX. ORANGE BLOSSOMS AS EMBLEMS OF PURITY. -In an allusion, under 'Notes on Books' (9th S. xi. 440), to L'Intermédiaire a correspondent of the French 'N. & Q' is quoted as mentioning an ancient mourning custom apparently not generally known. He says: "In Perche, formerly, if the daughter of a farmer had yielded to seduction, her family wore mourning for her honour during two years. Has this noble and touching custom disappeared, or does it still exist; and, if so, in what cantons? It may be of interest to state here that fifty years ago, and possibly even to-day, in what was formerly the province of Franche Comté, an act of imprudence, implying even a suspicion of taint upon the chastity of a maiden, was punished by the use of the orange blossom at her wedding being sternly forbidden. Should any one attempt to wear it upon the occasion of marriage, she would be encountered at the church door by the village lads, violently seized, and the emblem of purity, no less than of generosity and fecundity, degradingly torn from her hair, nor would the ceremony be suffered to proceed until all trace of the flower thus profaned had disappeared from her person. Not only was it the orange-blossom crown that the mother of a natural child dare not assume on her wedding day, but also the white dress and veil habiliments appropriated exclusively to the chaste. On the other hand the orange blossoms were a testi monial, not only to the purity of the bride herself, but to the integrity and morality of her relatives. In almost every village or small town in France the bride entitled to wear the crown of orange blossoms had this beautiful certificate of her purity either framed or placed under a glass shade, and it was religiously preserved, if possible, even through generations, as an indisputable testimonial of character. One may ask, with the correspondent of L'Intermédiaire, to what extent the observance of this striking custom has ceased. J. HOLDEN MACMICHAEL. [DR. MURRAY at 9th S. x. 6 stated that a French scholar had informed him that orange blossoms "have nothing to do with female purity, but merely indicate the attainment of matrimony." See also the references given in the replies at 9th S. x. 94.] "BRACELET."-I find this term is applied by London nursemaids to the deep wrinkle which lies between the arm and hand of a fat baby. I have never found the word used in this sense in Ulster; there we call a fat baby's wrinkles its lerks, or lurks. It was in Lincoln's Inn Fields, a few days ago, that I heard the "the bracelet" used in the above sense. W. H. PATTERSON. term THE HÔTEL LAUZUN, OTHERWISE PIMODAN, PARIS.-The Municipal Council of Paris has purchased the Hôtel Lauzun, latterly known as the Hôtel Pimodan, from the heirs of Baron Pichon. It is situated on the Quai d'Anjou on the Ile St. Louis, and it is intended to convert the building into a Museum of Decorative Art, after the model of our South Kensington Museum. The building, which has had a somewhat chequered career, was originally erected by a certain Charles Gruyn, the son of a fashionable cabaretier, who, having amassed a fortune in business, gave his son a good education and launched him on the world. By dint of successful speculations, he was enabled to purchase a site in the Ile St. Louis, on which he built himself a lordly pleasure house, which was completed in 1658. Gruyn married well, and changed his name to Des Bordes, the name of a property he had acquired near Loigny; but, having been convicted of malpractices, he ended his days in prison in 1661. In 1681 the dashing Duc de Lauzun, who had secretly married Mlle. Montpensier, the cousin of Louis XIV., in spite of the opposition of the Court of Versailles, purchased the hotel from Gruyn's heirs and considerably enlarged it. From Lauzun the hotel passed into the possession of the Marquis de Richelieu, who had married Mlle. de Mazarin, grand-niece of Cardinal Mazarin and daughter of Hortense Mancini. The next occupant was Ogier-Christian name not knownreceiver to the clergy, who spent large sums in decorating the building; after him came the Marquis de Tessé; and then the Marquis de Pimodan, who was arrested as a suspected person, but managed to escape to Trieste, where he supported himself by giving lessons in drawing. The Marquis de Pimodan's son, Georges de la Vallée de Rarécourt, followed his grandfather, Baron de Frénilly (who was devoted to the elder branch of the Bourbons, and shared their exile), to Styria, in Austria. He was educated at the Jesuits' College, Friburg, where he was fellow-student with Count Raousset de Boulbon, who was shot in South America. The marquis entered the Austrian army, and served in the campaigns of Italy and Hungary in 1848-9, and des Deux Mondes. He was taken prisoner at contributed articles on the war to the Revue Peterwardein, and on the collapse of the Hungarian revolution in 1855 he resigned his commission and volunteered for the Papal reconnaissance near Castelfidardo, 18 Septemarmy under Lamoricière, and was killed at a ber, 1860. After the restoration of the Bourbons the Hôtel Lauzun, which came to be known as the Hôtel Pimodan, was tenanted by a succession of unknown persons until 1842, when it was purchased by Baron Jérôme Pichon, a celebrated bibliophile, who, before taking possession, let it to a group of authors and artists, many of whom afterwards achieved celebrity, and who lived together in a free-and-easy manner, much to the scandal of the graver inhabitants of the quarter. On the death of Pichon in 1896 his library was dispersed, and the hotel was acquired by the city of Paris. It was in a house in the Impasse du Doyenée, since demolished, and not in the Hôtel Pimodan, that the celebrated supper took place which was the talk of tout Paris, and for which Adolphe Leleux, Célestin Nanteuil, Corot, Chasseriau, Camille Rogier, Lorentz, Marilhat, and Gautier himself undertook the task of decorating the walls, greatly to the indignation of the landlord of the house, as related by Théophile Gautier in his biographical sketch prefixed to the complete edition of Gérard de Nerval's works, JOHN HEBB. SHAKESPEARE'S BOOKS. (See 9th S. v. 329; vi. 144, 283, 464; vii. 163, 423; viii. 78, 180, 321; xi. 64, 203.)— Pistol. He hears with ears. Erans. The tevil and his tam! what phrase is this, "He hears with ear"? Why, it is affectations. 'Merry Wives,' I. i. Nurse. I saw the wound, I saw it with mine eyes. 'Romeo and Juliet,' III. ii. Shakespeare in these passages refers to "pleonasmus," the vice of surplusage, thus described by Puttenham :- "The Poet or makers speech becomes vicious and unpleasant by nothing more than by using too much surplusage: and this lieth not only in a word or two more than ordinary, but in whole clauses, and peradventure large sentences unpertinently spoken, or with more labour and curiositie than is requisite. The first surplusage the Greeks call Pleonasmus, I call him too full speech, and is no great fault, as if one should say, I heard it with mine eares and saw it with mine eyes, as if a man could heare with his heels, or see with his nose.' The words which Evans and the Nurse use, "He hears with ears " and I " saw it with mine eyes," are the words which Puttenham uses in illustrating this ornament. I think Evans also refers to cacozelia (see 9th S. viii. 79). W. L. RUSHTON. (To be continued.) "CABINET" IN A CONSTITUTIONAL SENSE.Historians have often explained that the Cabinet is not an officially recognized part of our Constitution. That, however, can no longer be considered to be entirely the case, for the account of their Majesties' Court, held at Buckingham Palace on 28 May, officially supplied to the newspapers, contains the subjoined : "The following members of His Majesty's Government in the Cabinet attended the Court:-The Marquis of Londonderry (President of the Board of Education), the Earl of Onslow (President of the Board of Agriculture), Lord George Hamilton (Secretary of State for India)." Queries. POLITICIAN. We must request correspondents desiring information on family matters of only private interest to affix their names and addresses to their queries, in order that the answers may be addressed to them direct. LUSHINGTON.-It is commonly stated in slang dictionaries that lush, meaning drink, is an abbreviation of lushington, and that this is a use of the surname of " a once wellknown London brewer." What evidence is there of the existence of a London brewer of this name, and when did he live? In 9th S. iv. 522 MR. J. HOLDEN MACMICHAEL gives some account of a tavern club called the "City of Lushington," of which, he says, the Prince Regent, Sheridan, and Kean were members. Unfortunately he gives no authority for his statements. I should be glad to have references to any contemporary mention of this club. The date 1741 in MR. MACMICHAEL'S article is (as I learn from 4th S. ix. 381) a misprint for 1841. The error has caused me some loss of time. The name of an Alderman Lushington appears in some of the jocular phrases at one time proverbially current with reference to strong drink. This is presumably merely a pun. But what is the date of Alderman Lushington's tenure of office, and had he any particular celebrity or notoriety? HENRY BRADLEY. Clarendon Press, Oxford. CRABBE'S MSS.-Can any of your readers Newspaper, Parish Register. tell me if the MSS. of Crabbe's Village,' Borough,' sold for 17. 6s. in 1846) are still in existence? 'Tales,' and 'Tales of the Hall' (these last Does any surviving member of the family of Mr. Samuel Hoare, the banker of Bath and Hampstead Heath, still possess Crabbe's letters to Miss Hoare? R. HUCHON. 67, Rue Jeanne d'Arc, Nancy. MOTTOES. - What is the meaning of the mottoes "From Caf to Caf" and " Sohou, Sohou"? The former is given as the motto of General W. M. Cafe, V.C., the latter of George Cawston, Esq., of Cawston, Norfolk. I quote from Mr. A. C. Fox-Davies's 'Armorial Families.' JAMES HOOPER. [Nightrail is a loose robe worn over the other dress, also a nightgown, and, yet again, a species of headgear in use in the seventeenth century.] MARAT IN LONDON.-Marat, as he himself relates, resided in London ten years and in Dublin one year. In 1776 he was living in Church Street, Soho, the dedication to the Royal Society of his treatise 'On a Singular Affection of the Eyes caused by the Use of Mercurial Preparations,' dated 1 January, 1776, bearing that address, as is duly noted in London, Past and Present' (i. 400). The house in which Marat lived has not been identified, and I should be glad if any reader could assist me in discovering Marat's place of abode. It is possible that when he lived in Church Street the houses were not numbered, the practice of numbering not having obtained before 1760, and it was a long time before it became general; but there were various ways by which houses were distinguished. Dr. Cabanès, in his interesting brochure Marat Inconnu,' draws the inference that Marat's address in Soho, un des quartiers élégants de la Cité," testifies that the medical practitioner Marat must have enjoyed a certain reputation among our neighbours on the other side of the Channel. JOHN HEBB. seize quartiers," ie., set out as such? for pedigrees almost invariably concern themselves with exhibiting a long line of descent in one family, not extending far from those of the family who come in the direct line of descent. Has any one information as to what became of MR. BOYLE's genealogical collections after his death; or could you assist me in any way to learn the titles of those books or tables of pedigrees in which the seize quartiers of the latest descendant of the family were made such a prominent feature? I should be specially interested in learning something more about the pedigree "attempting to show 4,056 [or 4 096]" direct ancestors. Any further information about these tables of seize quartiers will greatly oblige. In this remote part of the world one's only hope for sort is in knowing exactly all possible parsecuring copies of literary curiosities of this ticulars of what is sought for before instructing any dealer or collector to endeavour to procure it. JOSEPH COLEMAN. MACLBAN-Can any of your readers kindly say if the Alexander Maclean mentioned in Bancroft's History of the United States' as the active agent of Governor Martin, of Caroina, in raising a regiment among the Highlanders settled in that colony during the American War of 1775, is identical with an Hampton Street, Goodwood, South Australia. officer of that name who married a Margaret Dubois in New York or Wilmington? Can GRAHAM APPELBEY.-Extract from Regisany reader say where a copy of a book canter of Marriages at St. Peter's Church, Cornbe seen entitled Record of the Family of hill, London :Louis Dubois, who emigrated from France in 1660' (Philadelphia, privately printed, 1860)? ALASDAIR MACGILLEAN. "THAT POWER THAT KINDLY SPREAD THE CLOUDS."--Who is the author of the following lines ? That power that kindly spread the clouds, QUARTERINGS.-At 5th S. vi. 312 a reply from the late MR. EDMUND M. BOYLE respecting a query about 'Seize Quartiers' appears, in which he writes, in answer to a correspondent styling himself INQUIRER, thus: If INQUIRER cared, I could show him many pedigrees exhibiting seize quartiers and a book attempting 4,056 [sic]." This wonderful number, I take it, must be a slip of the pen for 4,096, the number of a person's direct ancestors in the twelfth generation. Can any one give me an idea where I could gain particulars now of these "many pedigrees exhibiting = 1706, 1 September, John Graham, of Sunbury, co. Middlesex, and Ruth Appelbey, of St. Stephen's, Coleman Street, London." Can any reader give me, by letter, informa- 67, Gipsy Hill, S.E. "LIMERICKS" OR "LEARICKS"-The May number of Pearson's Magazine ends with a short paper by Miss Carolyn Wells, entitled 'Limericks.' She begins by asking how that name has been given to a five-line stanza, which (as some one has said) has been made immortal by a young lady who rode on a tiger. But where has this playful little poem been called a "limerick"? The first and only time that I saw this term before reading the article in question, I thought it was a mere misprint for learick-bad writers and rash compositors have between them achieved learick, or rather learic, I think I am the greater changes than ea into ime. inventor of the term. I used it in print in Museum can see at p. 87 of the twenty-sixth February, 1898, as a visitor to the British volume of the Irish Monthly: As for "A learic is not a lyric as pronounced by one of that nation who joke with deefficulty, but it is a name we have invented for a single-stanza poem modelled on the form of the Book of Nonsense,' for which Mr. Edward Lear has got perhaps more fame than he deserved." The Academy (29 July, 1899) and Truth put Replies. "UNRAM." (9th S. xi. 188, 230, 277.) will not allow of each word being defined." The Delegates of the Oxford Press, as DR. FURNIVALL believes, are too generous to grudge 100l., if need be, to give the dates (and authors) he proposes. In looking at the compounds of un-in Shakespeare, where, thanks to Schmidt and concordances, they are open to observation, one is inclined to side with DR. FURNIVALL rather than with DR. MURRAY. Few Shakespearian students will not confess that the German's explanations of words having the un- prefix something, occasionally something not clear --and there are hundreds-have taught them in translation, and so given in the original. See words which Schmidt pronounces "difficult," or where he marks his definitions with an interrogation as conjectural or probable; thus, unbonneted, uncoined, undetermined, unkind, unstanched, unadvised, uncomprehensive, &c. Shakespeare's formations beginning with un- must approach a thousand. How far did he make them, and how far copy earlier writers? How far did he enrich the language? Many of his un- compounds have been adopted by followers, as "unsphere" by Milton, &c.; and more of them will be resurgent, as other vocables have risen again. But no helps for forming opinion on these points exist, or will exist, comparable to the unprinted cards in the custody of DR. MURRAY. Many a single word among the class of innocents the Doctor would dismiss may give us pause; for instance, we read (Romeo,' III. iii. 112), "Unseemly woman in a seeming man! And illbeseeming beast in seeming both!" DR. MURRAY, in answer to a question whether "unram" and similar compounds of un- should be found in 'N.E.D.,' inclines to a negative reply. He says they are too multitudinous, and may grow out of any present participle, out of several classes of adjective, and out of all abstract nouns derived from them. The haul swept in by the net of How did Shakespeare come by "unseemly"? lexicography which caught all vocables with He makes a fourfold play on "seem." Did the un- prefix would become "double its he make up unseemly for the nonce? or have existing mass," and the endeavour would beN.E.D.'s' searchers found it earlier? How alike impossible and useless, &c. No wonder DR. MURRAY, after an embarrassment of riches for three decades, pants for the goal where he can spend the Sabbath of his years in golden uncontrolled enfranchisement, and hence must now prefer contraction to expansion. But DR. F. J. FURNIVALL (9th S. xi. 277) sees a use in what DR. MURRAY would reject as refuse. He holds that the locutions where the prefix un- has been actually found are much fewer than the enormous host it can be set before in theory. Nothing also has surprised him more than the early date at which many of these finds are used. Early dates are the old wine of language. Accordingly, he would have N.E.D.'"contain a dated list of all the un- words sent in" by all its army of readers (a noble army), "even if space did James's translators get it in 1611? They only of the Hexaplists use it at all (1 Cor. xiii. 5; Rom. i. 27). Did they contract it from the Geneva "unbeseming" (sic) of 1557, or did they copy it from the dramatist of 1592? The golden grain we here crave may lurk in DR. MURRAY'S rejected materials. I am surprised DR. MURRAY can dream of holding an army of dates imprisoned. He would thus throw away the dearest thing he owns as 'twere a careless trifle. What page of his 7,000 could he have written unaided by verbal dates! What is it but dates which, differentiating his word-book from all predecessors, entitle it to be called by way of eminence New and Historical? Nor can any editor foresee what verbal dates will be linguistically epoch-making, or which, if any, will prove of no significance. |