392
NOTES AND QUERIES. no s. x. NOV. H, 1908.
Saint-Jean ou dans les fetes publiques ; de la derive
le nom de feux d?os que donne le peuple d'Abbeville
aux petits feux de paille que les enfants de cette
ville allument pour se jouer au milieu des rues."
ST. SWITHIN.
To any one who consults the first edition of my larger * Etymological Dictionary * and the note in the same at p. 78 J, it will be apparent that the credit of discovering the right etymology of bon-fire, viz., that it is a shortened form of bone-fire, is certainly due to myself, the date being in 1882, five years before the article in ' N.E.D.'
Just after my book was published, I received a letter from Belgium, from a gentleman who kindly informed me that he had himself seen such fires, in which actual bones of animals were burnt.
WALTER W. SKEAT.
In Letter-Book I of the City's records a Calendar of which is passing through the press I find a proclamation forbidding (inter alia) night-walking and the making of fires called " bonefyres " in any high street or lane by night, for church festivals or dedications. The proclamation is in French, and is not dated, but it is almost certainly of the year 1410. If this be so, it appears to be an earlier instance of the word than any mentioned in the ' New English Dictionary.' R. R. SHARPS.
CLERGY IN WIGS (10 S. viii. 149, 214; ix. 497; x. 16, 78, 158, 356). If Arch- bishop Sumner wore a wig in 1856, it was certainly not his custom to do so on all occasions.
I was confirmed by him in the spring of 1854, and shall always remember the little shock of concerned surprise with which I saw him mount the pulpit of Eastry Church without a wig, to give his preliminary address to the candidates. I had been accus- tomed in my childhood constantly to see Archbishop Howley in a wig, which largely contributed to the feeling of awed respect with which I regarded that kindly old pre- late, and his successor seemed to suffer by the omission or loss of dignity which painfully impressed my still youthful imagination. F. B.
THE BONASSUS (10 S. ix. 365, 451 ; x. 90, 138, 318). This beast appears under the name " Monops," " a kind of beast of Peonia, by some called a Bonasus, as big as a Bull ; being narrowly pursued, it voided a kind of sharp ordure, deadly to such as it lights upon." The above extract is
of an earlier date than that at the last
reference, and is from Blount's * Glosso-
graphia,' London, 1681.
ALFRED CHAS. JONAS. Thornton Heath.
MIDDAY AT BALE (10 S. x. 310). Whether or not Casanova was correct in saying that in his day midday in the town of Bale was at eleven o'clock, a different account is given by Fynes Moryson in his ' Itinerary.' He visited the town in 1592, and says in relation to the above subject :
" In this City a stone is shewed, called the hot stone, vulgarly Heisteine, upon which the Consuls and divers others were beheaded, who had conspired to betray the Citie, if the clocke striking false had not prevented, and deceived both them and the enemies, lying in ambush without the City, and expecting a signe to be given them at the houre appointed. And for this cause (or as others say, to hasten the Councell held in the Senate House) the clocke to this day strikes one when it should strike twelve"
In ' The Imperial Gazetteer ' the writer of the article on Bale states, corroborating Moryson, that in that town down to 1795 the clocks were kept an hour in advance of those in other places of Europe a singular custom, the origin of which is unknown.
J. B. P.
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY (10 S. x. 289). I should think that at the end of the eighteenth century the death punishment reached its maximum, but I can give no figures in support of this opinion.
In Porter's ' Progress of the Nation,' ed. 1847, the figures are given at p. 642 for the years 1805 to 1845. In the editions of Blackstone from 1770 to 1800, Book IV. chap, i., it is stated that there were no fewer than 160 offences which had been declared by Act of Parliament to be felonies without benefit of clergy ; or, in other words, to be worthy of instant death. Walpole says in his ' History of England,' vol. ii. p. 58, that " during the earlier years of the present century [nineteenth] the punishment of death could legally be inflicted for more than 200 offences ; and at vol. i. p. 191, he says that " in 1819 about 180 crimes were capital."
So late as 1795, 36 Geo. III. cap. 7, new treasonable and seditious offences were created for which the offenders were to " suffer pains of death." Capital offences were increased during the eighteenth century, and it was not until early in the nineteenth that the number of them was reduced. See also Porter, 646 ; Walpole, vol. iii. p. 55 ; and Pike's ' History of Crime,' vol. ii. p. 452.
