224
NOTES AND QUERIES. EH s. i. MAR. 19, 1910.
ANONYMOUS WORKS IDENTIFIED. "A
Walk through Switzerland in September
1816. London, printed for T. Hookham
Jun., Old Bond Street, 1818." is said by Mr
Roger Ingpen (' Shelley Letters, vol. i
p. xxvii) to have been written by the
younger Hookham. An interesting account
of him is given at that reference.
' Eugenia and Adelaide, 4 a novel, 1791 2 vols., is entered in the Catalogue of the British Museum Library under the word
- ' Eugenia. " It was an early work of Mrs
Frances Sheridan, though it was not published until 1791, " after her decease and without the author's name " (Alicia Lefanu, ' Memories of Mrs. Sheridan, pp. 7-9).
' The Recluse of the Pyrenees : a Poem/ was published anonymously in London in 1818. A copy is at the British Museum, press-mark 1465e 40 (4). From a passage on p. 262 of The Monthly Magazine, vol. xlvii., April, 1819, it appears that the poem was written by J. D. Humphreys "a great- grandson of the late Dr. Doddridge.' 1
W. P. COURTNEY.
"RUMBELOW." A. L. O. G. asks under his fifth quotation (ante, p. 50), "What is
- a rumbelow l ? ll
Instances of the word will be found in the Rev. T. L. O. Davies's ' Supplementary Glossary ? under ' Rombelow, or Rumbelow, 2 where it is described as " a burden to an old sea-song."' In Marlowe's ' Edward II., z II. ii., in the " jig ll beginning "Maids of England, sore may you mourn,"' the short line "With a rombelow " corresponds to
- ' with a heave and a ho."
Some years ago I came across a fisherman of the name Rumbelow (I cannot be certain of the exact spelling) at the old whaling station of Encounter Bay, on the South Australian coast. I have an impression that he was of Norfolk descent.
EDWARD BENSLY.
Rumbelow n seems to have been used as a sort of burden, or catchword, in the refrain of songs and ballads from a very early date. In the derisive verses made by the Scots after the battle of Bannockburn it occurs as follows :
Maydens of England, sore may you mourn For your lemans ye have lost at Bannocksburn :
With heave a lowe.
What ! weeneth the King of England So soon to have won Scotland
With rumbylowe ?
It is also used in the old poem ' Peblis to
the Play,* written about 1430 :
Hop, Cailzie, and Cardrona,
Gathered art thick-fald ; With heigh and ho we, rumbelow,
The young folks were full bauld.
A curious use of the word is to be found in ' Hicke Scorner,* a Tudor interlude, called after one of the characters, a jovial roving sailor. On his first entrance Hicke spins his friends a yarn, in which he tells how he has been in many parts of the world, from Biscay Bay to an imaginary country, which he calls "Rumbelow.^ See 'The British Tar in Fact and Fiction/ p. 164 (London and New York, Harper & Brothers, 1909). The author at the same place points out that the verses from the poem on Bannockburn are quoted by Marlowe in his ' Edward II. 1
T. F. D.
" Rumbelow n was a common expression for a loose woman, being doubtless com- pounded of the two slang words ' k rum " (fine, showy) and " blowen " (woman). It was often written * ' rumblow u and ' ; room- below." It plays a part in English history as occurring in the doggerel said to have been sung by the "fleering Scotch after Bannockburn in derision of the dissolute and unwarlike Edward II. Even then it smacked of the sea, being associated with " a heave and a ho. n OLD SARUM.
A correspondent asks, What is a ' ' rum- below n ? He must, I fear, be a little obtuse not to see what is meant, and that it refers to the rum below in the hold, the favourite beverage of sailors at sea.
L. BISHOP.
COFFIN HOUSE. The destruction of the Coffin House at Hatherleigh, Devon, as detailed in The Western Daily Mercury of 19 January last seems worthy of being re- corded in the pages of ' N. & Q.'
" Collapse of a Quaint Old Residence. Inhabi- tants of Hatherleigh had an unusual spectacle yesterday afternoon^ when one of the quaintest louses in the town collapsed. Known as Coffin Souse, because of its peculiar appearance, it was situate in the district known as Fishmarket. It was erected, of cob, with thatched roof, upwards of a hundred years ago, and because of its simi- arity to the shape of a coffin it arrested the attention not only of visitors, but of inhabitants.
- t is stated that the man who built it encroached
slightly on the highway, and that the Lord of the anor, who was the authority at the time, inter- fered, compelling the builder to alter his plans. The result was that the shape of the house assumed a form almost identical with that of a offin. The present owner still pays a fee of
