Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 7.djvu/489

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10 s. vii. MAY 25, ago?.] NOTES AND QUERIES.


401


LONDON, SATURDAY, MAY 25, 1907.


CONTENTS. No. 178.

INOTES : Hock : Hog: Hoga, 46l Obsolete English Games, 402 Dodsley's Famous Collection of Poetry, 404 "Prince" Boothby, 405 Dickens and Furnival's Inn- Dickens and Euripides The Great Wheel at Earl's Court, 406 Akenside's Birth "Ramsammy" Two Old Proverbs, 407.

QUERIES : Daniel Orme's Portrait' The Wrong Man ' Admiral Bedford Cowper's John Gilpin, 407 Mrs. Anne Wright and Votes for Women Ordinaries of Newgate, 408 George I. : the Nightingale and Death' A Short Ex- plication' of Musical Terms Teniers and Miniatures Newman Portraits Payne at the Mews Gate Edward de Vere Sir Thos. Bloodworth, 409.

KEPLIES : The Page Family and their Middlesex Estates, 410 _ " Matross" : " Topass," 411 Authors Wanted Virginia and the Eastern Counties, 412 Brothers with same Christian Name' The Hebrew Maiden's Answer ' Windmills Houses of Historical Interest, 413 Ivy Lane, Strand Charles I. 's Physical Characteristics Sir J. Suckling, 414 "The Pedlars' Rest "Religious Houses of Sussex Moke : Nicknames of Army Service Corps Poll- Books, 415 Palseologus in the West Indies 1 ' Idle Dick Norton "-"Grimly," 416 Preston Jubilee B.V.M. and Birth of Children Imperial Phrases Worple Way, 417 Isham Family "Bulkmaster" Cathay St. Devereux : St. Dubricius Rump of a Goose and Drinking Bouts- Revet, of Checkers, Bucks Flint and Steel, 418 "For- W hy " " Hail, smiling morn ! " Rocher de Gayette, 419.

NOTES ON BOOKS : Lang's ' New and Old Letters to Dead Authors ' ' The Quarterly Review.'

Notices to Correspondents.


HOCK : HOG : HOGA.

IN going through a large number of early churchwardens' accounts one comes upon two classes of words built respectively upon the bases hock and hog. Among the great variety of forms that these present some approach each other both in spelling and in meaning so closely as, apparently, to blend the two classes and to instil a sus- picion of a common origin.

Thus we have Hock-tide (cf . German Hochzeit, a term said to be applied not only to wedding festivities, but to those of Easter, Whitsun, and Christmas,* and answering to the American idiom " A high old time"); Hock- or Hoke-Tuesday ; hock cart (cf. hoky, hoaky, seed-cake ; see Brand's ' Antiquities ' ; hoky - poky, the street-hawker's name for the ices sold from barrows ; hollyhock, the tall flowering plant); Hockney day ; to hock ; hocker ; hokkyng money ; hoke-, oke-, ooke-, ok-, or hoxce- money ; Hoggeners or Hogners, a class of men, often apparently a parochial guild, who collected " hog money,' which they con- tributed to the fund called the " hogenstore "


  • See 3 S. iii. 42 ; 4 S. ii. 275; 9 S. v. 287 ; vi. 56;

xi. 139.


for the benefit of the church ; hoglinge money ; " Hoggells at the time of Christ- mas " (in Surrey); " Hogelers light"; " Hokelyng lyghte " ; Hogmaney or Cake Day (Scotland) ; hogman, bran bread for horses (see 'N.E.D.'); hogenale, hognayle, hogneylle, hognell, hogney, &c.

The old notion that the Hocktide festivities commemorated the massacre of the Danes in 1002 seems to have been abandoned. It has been pointed out* as perhaps significant that the season of the celebration, i.e., the Tuesday following the second Sunday after Easter, coincided with that of the opening of the High Courts of Justice. At Hungerford, we are told, the borough officers constable, bailiff, port- reeve, &c. were elected at Hocktide, and sworn in at the Court Baron on the Friday of that week. Was it as a sort of burlesque of the polling practice of " chairing " the candidate (so vividly illustrated in Hogarth's series of electioneering pictures at the Soane Museum) that at Hungerford the Tithing men on Hock Monday were wont to carry through the streets a gaily bedecked chair, in which they " hocked " (i.e., uplifted) any woman who, on being captured by them, refused to give a penny for her release ?

I am under the impression that the terms " hock day," " hock money." are not to be met with in the same accounts with those of "'Hoggeners," "Hogen store"; nor, I fancy, in the same counties : Somerset and Devon yield examples of the latter words.

In the South Tawton accounts I find among receipts in 1525 " vli. xvcZ., de custod' S'uisie " (ale- wardens ): in 1525-6 about the same sum "rec. de .... custod' de le hoggenre store " ; in 1526-7, " vjli. iiijd. de. ...custod S'uisie," and so on; the word " hoggenre " not occurring again ; while later under the accounts of the warden of the " Young men," comes such an entry as that of 1564. " We made of our Alle and gathering xlK. viijs. viijd."

The term " Hoggener " or " Hoggler," which the ' N.E.D.' states to be of obscure origin, has been much discussed most thoroughly, perhaps, by the late Bishop Hobhouse, from whose notes on some ' Somerset Churchwardens' Accounts 'f it appears that at Croscombe, Somerset, the "Hogglers" were a guild who paid con- tributions to the head churchwarden. At


  • 10 S. i. 496. The writer, 0. 0. H., says the

second Tuesday after Easter, but Jacob's 'Law Diet.' says "the Wednesday fortnight after Easter."

t Som. Rec. Soc., vol. iv. pp. 229, 251.