172
NOTES AND QUERIES. tn s. m. MAR. 4, 1911.
was in the habit of putting a silk seton
behind the ears in the cases above men-
tioned, and with the watching and attention
required made large fees by this treatment
so much so that he said " his life was hang-
ing on a thread " ! GEORGE WHERRY.
Cambridge.
I believe it is still a custom among men and women in the South of Europe (Italy and Spain) to wear ear-rings and to have the ears pierced for the purpose. In Hungary, I remember it was the jeweller who performed the operation on baby girls when supplying the first earrings. L. L. K.
MURDERERS REPRIEVED FOR MARRIAGE (11 S. iii. 129). I have never heard of any particular town where murderers were reprieved for marriage, but when a boy I remember hearing these lines :
A murderer mounted in a cart
Was going to be hanged ; Reprieve to him was granted
And the crowd and cart did stand. He was asked if he would marry a wife,
Or otherwise choose to die. " O why should I torment my life ? "
The culprit did reply ; " The bargain's bad in every part,
But a wife's the worst, drive on the cart ! "
JOHN BAVINGTON JONES.
Was this supposed custom confined to any particular town, and was it not essential that the woman should be a virgin ?
MichaeU. Susan, being a maide
May begge me from the gallows of the shriefe.
Alice* Trust not to that, Michaell. MichaelL You cannot tell me, I have seen it.
' Arden of Faversham,' I. i. 167-70.
Here the custom was evidently known at Faversham in Kent. And in Marston's ' Insatiate Countess,' iii. 3 (scene Italy) :
Abigail. Well, we will bring them to the gallows, and then, like kind virgins, beg their lives.
Bullen has a note at p. 190 of the third volume of his edition of Marston in which he refers to Plutarch's life of ' Numa.'
I am not aware that English law was ever cognizant of such customs.
P. A. McELWAINE.
AMERICAN WORDS AND PHRASES (11 S. iii. 48). The unterrified. Though I am unable to answer MR. THORNTON'S question as to who first applied this term to the demo- cratic party, I can at least show that it was in use in 1840. In The Atlas, a Boston paper, of 4 Sept., 1840, a paragraph about
the election in Vermont is headed " The
Unterrified Green Mountain Boys' Respond-
ing " (p. 2/2). And in the same paper of
12 Nov., 1840, p. 2/3, a letter ends as follows :
- And if any of the ' unterrified democrats *
can answer this question it would confer a particular favor on a Real Hard Ciderite."
ALBERT MATTHEWS. Boston, U.S.
"GEORGE INN" AT WOBURN (11 S. iii. 147). Woburn, Bedfordshire, was my home. It consists of four streets, which meet at the Market Place. At the angle of Park Street and George Street, there stands a large inn, which was famous in posting days, and was called immemorially " The George.'* The name was changed to " The Bedford Arms " before 1853, when I was born ; but I remember that, when I was a child, the old inhabitants still called it "The George." G. W. E. R.
"HAD I WIST" (11 S. iii. 129). This phrase cannot possibly have been the name of an Anglo-Saxon bogy, since fchere is nothing Anglo-Saxon about any of its three component parts. It is true that the O.E. adjective gewiss survived in M.E. as iwis sometimes erroneously spelt / wiss, as if it were the pronoun I with a verb wiss, but wist or iwist as a past participle does not occur before the M.E. period, the O.E. past participle being witen. The use of this phrase, which means "if I had known," as a noun not as a proper name seems to have been introduced by Gower in his
- Confessio Amantis ' for it is from this poem
(i. 105) that the ' N.E.D.' quotes the earliest instance.
I do not remember and cannot very well ascertain whether the phrase occurs as a proper name in ' Piers the Plowman,' a most likely place for such an expressive name ; if it does, Gower may have been indebted for it to Langland or whoever else may have been the author of the poem popular in Gower's days. The fact that the ' N.E.D.' does not mention ' Piers ' as the source, makes it very unlikely, though.
To the ' N.E.D.' quotations, which show some variety of spelling had I wist, hadde-y- wyste, had I wyst, hadiwist, may be added the title of a poem in the ' Paradise of Dainty Devices,' Beware of Had-I-Wyst and the following line from the well-known passage describing a " suters state " in Spenser's 'Mother Hubberd's Tale,' "to sue for had ywist, that few have found, and manie one hath mist ! " J- F. BENSE.
