Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 8.djvu/526

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436


NOTES AND QUERIES, no s. vm. NOV. so, 1907.


the time mentioned by MB. BLEACKLEY (i.e., 1765 to 1775), unaccounted for. In Dr. Rees's ' Address,' printed as an appendix to the second volume of his ' Practical Sermons,' 1812, 2nd ed., vol. ii. p. 4, he says :

"Of its ministers I shall only mention Mr. Simon Brown, whose singular case is well known, and Dr. Samuel Chandler, one of the most learned of the period in which he lived."

J. HOLDEN MACMlCHAEL.

HAMLET FAIRCHILD (10 S. viii. 329). The name Fairchild occurs in the registers of the parish of Goodleigh, N. Devon, being written Vercheill (1543) and Ffairchild (1677). An Edward Fairchild was rector of the parish from 1685 to 1711. Not many weeks ago an American lady bearing this name visited me, seeking information con- cerning her ancestors. She told me that she had found the name in the registers of several parishes near Barnstaple.

F. JARBATT.

Goodleigh Rectory, Barnstaple.

EARLY EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY QUERIES (10 S. viii. 369). 3. Steele (Spectator, No. 32) says :

"If we look further back into history, we shall find that Alexander the Great wore his head a little over the left shoulder ; and then not a soul stirred out till he had adjusted his neck-bone ; the whole nobility addressed the prince and each other obliquely, and all matters of importance were con- certed and carried on in the Macedonian Court with their polls on one side."

This was written in 1712. The latter part appears to be mythical, for all Plutarch says is :

"The inclination of his head, which leaned a little

to one side, was very accurately expressed by

the artist."

5. This query, though not answered, is paralleled by Cowper's fable entitled ' Pair- ing-Time Anticipated,' and beginning :

I shall not ask John Jacques Rousseau

If birds confabulate or no : a passage which he annotates as follows :

" It was one of the whimsical speculations of this philosopher that all fables which ascribe reason and speech to animals should be withheld from children as being only vehicles of deception. But what child was ever deceived by them, or can be, against the evidence of his senses ? "

Birds, it is true, are not fairies, and Rousseau was not born till 1712, two years after the approximate date ; but the similarity of ideas is so striking that it may perhaps be referred to by way of comparison.

J. FOSTER PALMER. 8, Royal Avenue, S.W.


6. A similar plot is that of ' The Wife's- Secret,' a three-act play by George William Lovell (1804-78), produced at the Hay- market Theatre 17 Jan., 1848, with Mr. and Mrs. Chas. Kean in the principal charac- ters, turning on the jealousy of Sir Walter Aymott (Charles Kean), which is aroused by his wife's sheltering her brother, a pro- scribed Royalist, without her husband's knowledge. JOHN HEBB.

14. Washington Irvine uses the phrase " rubbed down with an oaken towel " in his ' Tales of a Traveller,' ' The Adventure of my Aunt,' though, of course, his date is- long subsequent to that quoted.

J. WlLLCOCK.

" CHASE " (10 S. viii. 366). I think your correspondent is mistaken in regarding the " chase down a field," to which he refers, in the sense of a "line, groove, or furrow." Where I lived, far away in Essex, many years ago, there was a narrow lane between two fields, closed by a field gate, and then a bridle track to a remote farm-house. " Win- sey Chess " it was always called, though I have never seen the name written, and, so far as I can recall, there was no place called Winsey. Probably " Winsey," like " Chess," was a linguistic corruption. The explanation in the ' E.D.D.' of a chase exactly accords with the above : " a green lane or road leading up to a farm-house or into fields : a by -road." Possibly such a lane may originally have led to a so-called chase or unenclosed land reserved for the breeding of wild animals. Vide ' N.E.D.'

A friend mentioned to me only the other day that the road to a house (in a little park) at which he had been visiting was called the Chase. It was, I think, not in Essex. Probably in this case the house had been built across or near an ancient chase, and the chase was made the road to the house. DOUGLAS OWEN.

LEE alias TYSON (10 S. viii. 390). Mat- thew Lee may have married twice, and the later children have been distinguished by the mother's name, of Tyson. A marriage is recorded at Chapel-en-le-Frith, in October, 1709, of "Robert Tyson of Shefeild with Ellin Eyre " ; and another at Youlgreave, September, 1724, between William Tyson and Elizabeth Meriman. Possibly a further search of the registers of Sheffield and Youlgreave may elucidate the matter.

At Chapel-en-le-Frith, 23 Feb., 1773, Matthew Lee married Mary Watton. He