190
NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s. i. MAR. 4, me.
I have been told that a road used to exist
from the Palace through what is now the
Old Park, and on through Kew Gardens
to Brentford Ferry, a very old ferry, which
would probably be the way he started.
V. A. F.
GERALD GRIFFIN. Before me lies a volume containing some interesting sonnets and lyrics by Gerald Griffin, Esq., published in Belfast in 1851. Among the best of the lyrics are * Orange and Green,' a touching story in verse ; ' Once I had a True Love,' and * I Love my Love in the Morning,' a very beautiful one this. There are eleven sonnets (four double sonnets), of which the most meritorious are ' To his Native Glens,'
- To a Friend,' ' The Future ' (a fine piece of
self-revelation), and ' In Remembrance of his Sister.' The writer seems to have visited London, and to have been over- whelmed with sorrows and misfortunes. I should like a short account of him.
M. L. R. BRESLAR.
Percy House, South Hackney.
[Gerald Griffin died in 1840. The 1851 volume is a reprint of his poems. See the notice of him in the 'D.N.B.' or 'Chambers's Cyclopaedia of Litera- ture.']
" PARAPET " = FOOTPATH. The word " parapet " is used verbally in Liverpool as a synonym for " footpath," and is even so used in newspapers and books. In Man- chester, thirty miles away, such a use is Unknown. At Earlestown, halfway between the two towns, the word is occasionally heard in this connexion. Is it so used in any other part of England ?
ARTHUR BOWES.
[At 10 S. x. 366 MR. PIERPOINT discussed this use at some length, and gave a quotation showing that the word had been used in French in the same sense in ' Recueil des Villes Ports d'Angle- terre,' &c., 1766. He expressed . the opinion that this English use was confined to Lancashire.]
THE ONION-FLUTE. What is this in- strument, and whence its name ?
ALFRED S. E. ACKERMANN.
SIR CHRISTOPHER COR WEN. Can any information be vouchsafed about Sir Chris- topher Corwen, knighted when Anne Boleyn was crowned ? ANEURIN WILLIAMS.
REV. JOHN GASKIN, M.A. I should be glad of as full particulars as possible of the above person, who was Rector of St. Cuth- bert's, Bedford, from 1850 to 1852.
L. H. CHAMBERS.
Bedford.
STUART, COUNT D'ALBANIE.
(12 S. i. 110, 156.)
THE case of Charles Edward Stuart, Count d'Albanie, and his elder brother, John Stolberg Sobieski Stuart, has always seemed to me one of the most fascinating mysteries of the nineteenth century. They alleged, or suggested, that their father, Thomas Allen, Lieut. R.N., who passed as the second son of Admiral Carter Allen, R.N., was, in fact, the son of Chas. Edward Stuart, " the Young Pretender," by his marriage with Princess Louise of Stolberg, that he was born in 1773, was confided to and adopted by Admiral Allen as his own son. If this were true, they were the legitimate heirs of the House of Stuart; and when they first appeared in the Highlands about 1828, they were warmly received by representatives of the old Jacobite families, including the tenth Earl of Moray, the fourteenth Earl Lovat, the Marquis of Bute, and Sir Thomas Dick Lauder. The Earl of Lovat built a house for them on an island called Eileen Aigas, in the centre of the River Beauly in Ross-shire, and they spent some years here in semi-royal state. An account of this period of their career will be found in Burgon's ' Memoir of Patrick Fraser-Tytler,' p. 284. In Scottish society in Edinburgh many people believed in their claims, and I am informed that they always avoided going down to dinner after any peer when dining out by waiting in an anteroom, and then slipping into their places at table. Their resemblance to the Stuarts is stated by everybody who knew them to have been wonderful, and Mr. Archibald Forbes, who knew them in London after 1868, tells us that it persisted to the end. Mr. Andrew Lang says that it was most striking in a photograph taken of the younger brother after death, when it could not have been affected. He died on Dec. 25, 1880; his brother predeceased him on Feb. 13, 1872.
Although their story has been subjected to destructive criticism which seems to leave it not a leg to stand on, no one seems to be able to explain who they really were, whether they had any Stuart blood, and what was the origin of their romantic pose. Ewald, in his ' Life of Prince Charles Stuart 1 (1875), says, "A clumsier story, delusion, or imposture was never conceived," and he calls it an " improbable fable." 7lyr -
Mr.
