276
NOTES AND QUERIES. [io* s. i. APRIL 2, im
Miscellany." If my memory does not mislead
me, it contains a somewhat fuller account of
the revolting details than is to be found in
the later editions. Bishop Challoner's 'Me-
moirs of Missionary Priests/ and the con-
temporary accounts of the execution of the
regicides, may be consulted with advantage.
K. P. D. E.
" Hanged " speaks for itself ; Hotspur was quartered, and his members distributed among five different towns. " Drawing " is equivocal primarily to disembowel ; but that horrid process died out, and a pretence thereof consisted in drawing the culprit on a hurdle or a cart to the place of execution. One variation was to drag the convict through the streets attached to a horse. A. H.
" KING OF PATTERDALE " (10 th S. i. 149, 193). There are still living in Cumberland and Westmorland descendants of the Kings of Patterdale, though the title long since passed away. The quotation given by DR. FOR- SHAW, at the second reference, from 'Beauties of England and Wales,' was originally written in Nicolson and Burn's ' History of Cumber- land and Westmorland ' (1777). How the title came to be bestowed is the subject of more than one local legend, but the substance may be given in the following extract from a local book written nearly sixty years ago. The only addition needed is the remark that the date of the attack is given approximately by other gossips (it would be wrong to call them historians) as 1648 :
"The origin of this fell-environed kingdom is
wrapped in some obscurity; tradition, however,
affirms that, in the days of Scottish incursion, E
band of marauders from Scotland were proceed
ing up New Church [now WatermillockJ towardb
Patterdale ; that Mr. John Mouusey, who was then
lord of the manor, raised the inhabitants of the
dale, who went forth under his command to the
pass of Stybarrow, where the Scots were defeatec
and driven back. The dalesmen, overjoyed at the
auspicious termination of the enterprise, conferrer
on their leader the honorary title of King, whicl
has been inherited by his descendants to this day.
The " reign " came to an end, so far as th
"Palace" was concerned, in 1824, when Mi
Marshall, of Leeds, purchased the Patterdal
Hall estate. It is somewhat cruel even t
doubt some of the pretty stories told of th
"Kings of Patterdale," and all that neei
here be said is that if readers of ' N. & Q
turn to 'A Fortnight's Ramble at the Lakes
(1792), they will find a complete disillusion
ment. One amusing anecdote, in whic"
another " King " is concerned, is still told b
the dalesfolk. The neighbouring valley c
Mardale, at the head of Haweswater, fo
hundreds of years had as its chiefs th
[olmes, a family now almost extinct in the
irect line. When one of the later Kings of
lardale and his contemporary the King of
'atterdale were boys, they were on one
ccasion staying with a Patterdale 'states-
nan. In the evening the host gave them no
eace, teasing them about their respective
ingdoms in prospect, and dwelt on the high
onour which had befallen him of entertain-
ng two future kings under his roof at once,
ntil the twain were thoroughly tired of the
ubject. Next morning the yeoman was up
etimes and hammered at the door of his
lumbering guests' room, calling out, " Git
p, git up, an' come an' fodder t' yowes"
the ewes]. "Fodder yowes, indeed ! Kings
on't fodder yowes," called out the future
Cing of Mardale, as he composed himself for
nother nap, only too pleased to be able to
urn the tables on his facetious entertainer.
DANIEL SCOTT. Penrith.
"As MERRY AS GRIGGS " (9 th S. xii. 506;
th S. i. 36, 94).^Very little, if anything, ms been added in this discussion to the account of the word grig in the 'N.E.D./ which suggests that the sense "a grasshopper or cricket" is due to an erroneous inference.
- t also deals with the relation of " a merry
rig" to "a merry Greek." Browning, 'Pippa Passes,' II., has :
Oh were but every worm a maggot,
Every fly a grig, Every bough a Christmas faggot,
Every tune a jig !
JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT.
Walton arid Cotton's ' Compleat Angler/ parti, chap, xiii., speaks of "the silver eel, and green or greenish eel, with which the river of Thames abounds, and those are called grigs."
W. H. L.
The surmise that a " grigg " was originally a "cricket," whence also a grasshopper, an eel, or anything of a particularly lively disposition, may be supplemented by what Prof. Skeat has to say upon the word in his ' Concise Dictionarj' ' :
" Gria, a small eel, a cricket (Scand.). Weakened form of crick, still preserved in crick-ct ; cf. Lowl. Sc. crick, a tick, louse. Swed. dial, krik, kr<ik, a creeping creature. .Swed. dial, kraka, to creep ; cf. (J. kri(chci>, to creep. In phr. ' as merry as a (/riff,' grlfj is for Greek ('Troil./I. ii. 118); IMery- greek is a character in Udall's ' Roister Doister' ; from L. gracari, to live like Greeks, i.e., luxu- riously."
Halliwell is not so "very decided " as we are told "in stating that grig is a corruption of Greek" for he says also that its meaning in various dialects is a cricket; in Suffolk, a