108
NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s. v. APRIL, 1919.
" RAIN CATS AND DOGS " (12 S. iv. 328).
'The expression in the North of England is
"*' raining cats and dogs," and is used during
a heavy downpour of rain. In Northern
mythology a cat is said to be influenced by
the coming storm. Without warning, it
will spring from its cosy sleeping-place and
-commence capering round the house; then
it is said to " have a gale in its tail." Has
the expression an origin with cats and dogs
pattering across a bare boarded floor,
strangely resembling the sound of a heavy
downpour of rain? A. E. OTJGHTRED.
Hartlepool.
PROF. DE MORGAN'S contention, men- tioned in the editorial note, is borne out by the French equivalent of this proverb : pleuvoir des hallebardes or des rasoirs. The former is sometimes extended to pleuvoir des hallebardes la pointe en has. This is no recent invention, for it is found as a well- known expression in Joseph Pankouke's 4 Dictionnaire des Proverbes fransois,' Paris, 1749. DE V. PAYEN-PAYNE.
Is this expression due to anything more than a bold flight of imagination in which a heavy downfall of rain is likened to a shower of dead cats and dogs? J. T. F.
Winterton, Lines.
THE ST. HELENA ' LIFE OF MARLBOROUGH ' (12 S. v. 70). Is the following the work required by SIR LEES KNOWI.ES?
" Histoire de Jean Churchill, Due de Marl- borough [composed principally by Madgett, edited and enlarged by the Abbe J. F. H. Dutems]. 3 tomes. Paris. 1806."
Abbe Dutems was Professor of History at the College de France. It is the only life of Churchill that I can trace as being' pub- lished in Paris in 1806, and a copy may be seen at the British Museum, or at the John Rylands Library, Manchester.
ARCHIBALD SPARKE.
"CAMOUFLAGE" (12 S. v. 42, 70). The Observer of March 2 in an article called ' The Three Grades of Disguise : Camouflage, Dazzle, and Disruption,' after describing the methods of concealment adopted by artists for guns, &c., at the front, had the follow- ing :
" Camouflage was a word coined and used by the Paris Apaches to express their method of making a quick disguise, or an alteration of a disguise, but as practised in the British army it came to mean something more subtle : a conceal- dng of the fact that something was concealed." Can this statement a-3 to the origin of the word be supported? J. R. H.
' THE POOR THRESHER,' SONG ATTRI-
BUTED TO BURNS (12 S. v. 66)'. MR.
STRATTON asks about the song ' The Poor
Thresher, '-attributed to Burns by the com-
piler of a glossary. The ballad is far older
than the time of Burns. It appears in a
seventeen -stanza form on a black -let her
broadside in the Roxburghe Collection, under
the title of ' The Nobleman's generous
Kindness,' &c. Since the seventeenth cen-
tury it has remained a great favourite with
printers of ballad-sheets. Johnson included
a sixteen-stanza broadside version in his
' Scots Musical Museum.' It is there de-
scribed as having been
- transmitted by Burns, in his own handwriting,
to Johnson. In a note accompanying it, the bard says, '/ iis rather too long, but it i very pretty, and never, that I know o/, ivas printed before. ' '
The ballad of ' The Poor Thresher ' is known to most country singers, and is to be found wedded to fine tunes in ' Sussex Songs ' (Broadwood, 1889) and ' English County Songs' (Broadwood and Fuller-Maitland, 1893); also in the Journal of the Folk-Song Society and various other more recent collec- tions. LUCY E. BROADWOOD.
" NABLETTE " : " BONTEFEU " (12 S. v. 66). See the note on Book IV. sect. 198, 1. 3, in the bost edition of Clarendon's ' History ' that of Mr. W. D. Macray, who writes as follows :
" In the recent editions this line is printed, ' laden with nabletts and murderers, and dressed up with waist-clothes.' The word nabletts is a misreading of rablettes, which is the word really but obscurely written in the MSS., and which is another form of rabonets, the name of a small kind of ordnance. And wast-clothes is Clarendon's change of a word found in the King's Declaration of Aug. 12....' ....one hundred lighters and long-boats were set out by water, laden with sacres, murdering peeces, and other ammunition, dressed up with mast-clothes and streamers as ready for fight.' But the alteration was, no doubt, intentional by Clarendon, wast-doths being an obsolete term used for cloths hung round the sides of a ship to hide the crew from enemies; for which possibly mast-cloths was used as synonymous. In the transcript from which the first folio edition was printed,, the words ' small pieces of ordnance ' are substituted for the words ' rabletts and murderers '...." Vol. i. p. 599.
The ' N.E.D.' gives several quotations for this obsolete sense of " murderer," a small cannon or mortar; and from the same work it will be seen that " Rablett," which is a very Proteus in its changing forms, is really the old French " Robinet," a diminutive of the personal name Robin.
" Bontefeu " should be " Boutefeu," an incendiary, firebrand. The * N.E.D.,' while
