316
NOTES AND QUERIES, rio s. vm. OCT. 19, 1007.
to be devoted to doles of bread. In an word, being found in glosses only. Another
interesting fourteenth-century parish church i A.-S. rother is now spelt rudder.
of a town in the south of France I have quite j The phonology of the word for " steer "
recently seen one of the contribution-boxes is a little difficult, as there are three A.-S.
mentioned. It has two slits : one, " Pro- forms ; and the Middle English forms show
messes faites," presumably for payments ! eo, e, i, o, and . But no student of Anglo-
m advance or for " chits " ; the other,
" Promesses acquittees." A printed notice hithe.
attached gives a full account of the special
" graces " in which the saint interests him-
self, notably the finding of lost goods, and
also a form of prayer, ending thus :
"I promise you, as a thank-offering, to give for
the bread of the poor the sum of which I will
pay as soon as I obtain the benefit I ask for. Amen."
EDWAKD NICHOLSON.
Hyeres.
"PASSIVE RESISTEB" (10 S. iv. 508; v. 32, 77 ; viii. 37). The following appears in chap. vi. of ' The Heart of Midlothian ' :
"The passive resistance of the Tolbooth-gate promised to do more to baffle the purpose of the mob than the active interference of the magis-
trates.'
MISTLETOE.
I have just come across ' Passive Resist-
ance to the Payment of Church Rates,'
which is the heading to an article in The
Republican (a periodical edited by Richard
Carlile) for 10 Nov., 1832, p. 110. It was
published by Henry Hetherington.
RALPH THOMAS.
In the report of the Medical Officer of the City of London for 1861 he speaks of certain holders of house-property " nullifying the efforts of sanitary improvement by passive resistance." STANLEY B. ATKINSON.
ROTHEEHITHE (10 S. viii. 166). It is
Saxon could well miss the origin of Rother-
WALTER W. SKEAT.
The interpretation of the ancient place-
name Rotherhithe can only be reached by
the strict application of the historic method.
It is true that the word reSra, a rower, offers
a tempting solution. But from the earliest
known mention of the place (A.D. 898,
Council of CelchyS) it would appear that it
bears the name of an owner : .^ESeredes
Hyd, Eredyshythe, Retheres Hide, Rether
hithe. In the present case the owner
is actually named : " Atheredum quoque
ducem Merciorum," &c. (see Birch, ' Cart. Sax. '
part ii. pp. 220, 221). EDWARD SMITH.
" EBN OSN " (10 S. viii. 248). The iden- tificati on by The Monthly Mirror is correct : the author was Benjamin Stephenson, of White Lion Street, Pentonville. In a copy before me the address on p. 107 is signed by the author, the first and last three letters of the name being emphasized. It will be noticed that these with slight transposition provide the cryptic pen name. The follow- ing MS. notes by the author are of some interest :
"Four verses excepted, these are the first poems of the author, who was born in 1768. They were written in 1806 and 1807. One line only is borrowed,
now suggested that Rother-hithe is derived
from the A.-S. hruther, hryther, hrlther, a steer, h -
a heifer ; but no proof is offered of the fact. ; i:
We could easily settle the question by '
collecting all the old spellings. But it is
hardly necessary ; the ' Calendarium In-
quisitionum post Mortem ' is sufficient
evidence. The index gives Retherhethe,
He also adds at the end of the ballad of
' Sandy,' p. 13 : " For this ballad I have
five ending verses " ; and as ' Joseph : a
Fragment,' is unfinished, he writes :
concluded this poem in 1,200 do not think these additional lines were published ; at least, I hope they were not. ALECK ABRAHAMS.
Retherhithe, Rotherhethe, Rutherhuthe, as
old spellings of Rotherhithe ; and, with a
parallel vocalism, Retherfeld, Rotherfeld,
Rutherfeld, as old spellings of Rotherfield
in Sussex. But the latter appears in
Kemble's Index as Hrytheranfeld, which is
decisive. For rother, a steer, began with
r __ i_ _ _ .1 __, O
hr ; whereas rother or rether, a rower, never
so, being derived from
could have done
rowan, to row.
Besides, oarsmen
are not found in a
field ; neither is rother, a rower, a common
NANA SAHIB AND THE INDIAN MUTINY
(10 S. viii. 248). In April, 1862, I was at
Galle. and saw transhipped from the P.
and O. mail steamer from Bombay to the
steamer going up to Calcutta a native
heavily ironed, who was said to be Nana
Sahib. At Calcutta
for some time, but
he was imprisoned
eventually released,
after due inquiry, as not being the Nana.
The point is that he was supposed to be alive by the authorities in 1862, and that General Harris's supposition, as stated in The Cornhill Magazine of last August, that he had died at Chilari Ghat in 1858, was not
