Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 3.djvu/143

This page needs to be proofread.

9 th S. III. FEB. 18, '99.]


NOTES AND QUERIES.


137


Devon,' which Mr. Page quotes at length The date of the occurrence was Sunday, 2" October, 1638, during afternoon service ; s< bhat Baxter, whose 'Saints' Everlasting Best was first published in 1649-50, was alluding to in event well known to many of his readers.

0. S. WARD. Wootton St. Lawrence, Basingstoke.

The parish church was struck by lightning on Sunday, 21 October, 1638, during the time of service. MR. LYNN will find an account of it both in verse and prose, in Lysons's 'Magna Britannia ' (vol. vi. part ii. pp. 557-9). There is a reprint of "A Second and most exact Relation of those sad and lamentable Acci- dents, which happened about the Church o1 Wydecombe, near the Dartmoors in Devon- shire, on Sunday the 21st of October last, 1638," &c., in the third volume of ' The Har- leian Miscellany ' (pp. 220-8).

G. F. R. B.

"RUMMER" (8 th S. x. 452 ; xi. 270, 395 ; xii 17, 198; 9 th S. iii. 36, 77). In Gerspach's

  • L'Art de la Verrerie ' the principal kinds of

German glasses are named, and we find among them, " Romer : verre de la forme classique des verres a vin du Rhin " (p. 274) ; and Klugesuggests('EtymologischesWorterbuch') that the word may mean " Roman glass." He says I expand his abbreviations "Rb'mer, 'grimes bauchiges Weinglas,' erst neuhoch- deutsch ; entsprechend niederlandisch roemer, English rummer, ' romisches Glas ' ? "

There is a German ballad entitled 'Das romische Glas.' It tells of a young knight drinking with his comrades in a barge upon the Rhine, and holding up his "romisches Glas " to pledge a maiden whom he sees upon a hill. That night the youth had troubled dreams about her

Als ob sein herzallerliebster Schatz

Ins Kloster gangen war ;

and he takes horse, rides to the convent door, and summons his love, who comes in white attire, with close-cropped hair, and bids him farewell for evermore.

Er vor dem Kloster niedersass, Und sah in's tiefe tiefe Thai : Versprang ihm wohl sein romisch Glas, Versprang ihm wohl sein Herz.

Evidently there was something uncannily sympathetic about this particular rummer. One is strongly tempted to make a vulgar pun, unworthy of ' N. & Q.' !

A year or two ago I came on some lines (in what I think was an eighteenth-century hand) in a book of scraps and "elegant ex- tracts " belonging to the library of the Dean and Chapter of York, which I will try to


remember for the sake of their humour and because they have the rhyme rummer and summer referred to by PROF. SKEAT. They ran something like this :

He complained that he was cold, And drank rummer after rummer, Until swallow after swallow Made him think that it was summer.

ST. SWITHIN.

SILVER LADLE (9 th S. iii. 28). It is, I think, not uncommon to find coins inserted at the bottom of silver ladles of the last century, sometimes of gold, sometimes of the same metal as the ladle itself. I think also that on crown pieces of the older description the year of the reign and the motto " Decus et tuta- men" are always to be found. If the coin referred to by MR. SHERRING bears the date 1787, " tricesimo" must surely be a mistake.

H. R. J.

I am the possessor of one answering the description, with a George III. guinea at the bottom (date 1787), which has no inscription on the edge. D. R. DOSSETOR.

My "brother has a silver ladle which be- longed to our grandfather. It is two inches and a quarter in diameter and one inch deep, ornamented all round with roses and other flowers in repousse work. The bottom is formed by a Spanish silver coin a trifle larger than a shilling " Carolus . III. Dei . Gratia . 1773 " " Hispan. et . Ind. Rex. M. 2 R. F.M." There is no hall-mark. W. C. B.

These punch ladles are frequently to be met with, many of them being, like this specimen inquired about by MR. SHERRING, beaten out of crown pieces, on the milling edge of which appears this motto.

HAROLD MALET, Col,

These articles are hardly rare, for an ex- ample may easily be obtained from a dealer in old silver ; but a good specimen is always pretty and interesting. A punch ladle which belonged to my great-great-great-grandfather is in the possession of a relative. In it is nserted a shilling of 1742, and there are the lall-mark and the initials T. W. M. Half of the original twisted ebony handle, with silver joints, is attached to the ladle. I believe this is a rather early example.

JOHN HOBSON MATTHEWS.

Town Hall, Cardiff.

The coin referred to is a crown piece of Greorge III., and the inscription round the rim of the bowl is the usual inscription around

he rim of crown pieces. Irom the descrip-

tion of the ladle it does not appear where the join was placed, most probably at the bottom ;