Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 5.djvu/170

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s. v. JUNE, 1919.


-oattle which was continued for some weeks afterwards. (Cf. Russell's ' Vindogladia,' p. 4, Herman Moll's 'New Description of ^England and Wales,' London, 1724, and Hutchins' 'History of Dorset,' iii. p. 180.) JAS. M. J. FLETCHER. The Vicarage, Wiraborne Minster.

The Eve Fair at Grantham, which breaks out, or used to break, as from the smouldering embers of a famous gala held on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday after the fifth Sunday in Lent, is the nearest thing I know of to a Good Friday Fair. Easter Eve is hardly a day on which one would expect to find the "rabble rout" asserting itself. ST. SWITHIN.

MAY (12 S. v. 123). Florentine b. 1732, was probably son of the Rev. Wm. May, B.A., St. John's, Camb., rector of Kingston, Jamaica, by his second wife Bathsua Beokford. He d. at sea June 4, 1747, aged 15, on his passage to Boston for the recovery of his health (Archer, p. 102). The rector left an only surviving son Rose Hearing May, who was at Eton in 1752, but sent his sons to Westminster, viz., Wm. Vassal! May, d. at Bath, Dec;. C, 1811, Florentius May and Rose May.

V. L. OLIVER.

About 1815 there was living at Maidstone

William May, M.D.. described as author of

medical works of 1790 and 1792, and of

various papers in The London Medical

- Journal. W. B. H.

" ROUGH " AS HOUSE-NAME (12 S. v. 97): The ' E.D.D.' gives as the twelfth signi- fication of "rough": "A small \\ood; a rough wooded place ; a moor overgi own with leather ; uncultivated land ; an ^n- closure." It cites as examples the placo- name Great Comberton Ruff, and the quota- tion : " Philipps promised to feed the horse in a rouah or enclosure."

Under " Rowless " (also roughleaze, row- lass, roughless) is the expression " rowless tenement," which denoted apparently land without a house attached to it, or " waste and unprofitable land" (1646). So, too, a " rowless thing." N. W. HILL.

DICKENS' s TOPOGRAPHICAL SLIPS : A PECU- LIARITY OF STYLE (12 S. v. 37, 136). In chap, xxxii. of ' David Copperfield ' a record is made of grant of probate to the will of Barkis, a carrier, who died near Yarmouth, but in the county of Suffolk. The will, as is shown by chap, xxxi., was of personalty, amounting to three thousand


pounds and existing in one diocese. Dickens states that probate was granted at Doctors* Commons. Surely, it would have been granted at a provincial registry.

In the same work, in chap, xlv., Dickens has two instances of a peculiarity of style, used by him in passages purporting to be solemn or pathetio. It consists of a treble protasis with treble repetition of the initial words, the third protasis being disjunctive and the words of desire being contained in a short apodosis.

Thus, that irritating super, TVlrs. Strong, when explaining to her imbecile husband her failure to commit adultery, says :

" If I have any friend here, who can speak one word for me, or etc. ; if I have any friend who can give a voice to any suspicion that, etc. ; if I have any friend here, who honours my husband, or etc., I implore that friend to speak."

Curiously enough, this style is feminine. I have observed it in the addresses of married ladies, who catch their breath at each protasis and repeat themselves to prevent the interjection of remark or remonstrance by their spouses, or possibly to gain time, wherein to formulate a false accusation in a plausible shape. But I have never observed the adaptation of this very artificial form to pathos. A woman, in real sorrow will often, even in the pre- sence of observers, manifest herself naturally, mal(/re novelists.

MARGARET WHITEBROOK.

" PRO PELLE CUTEM " (12 S. v. 93, 132). I have little doubt that the Hudson's Bay motto is a perversion of Juvenal, Sat. X. 192, " pro cute pellem." Cutis is the skin of the living animal, pdlis of the dead. They probably knew more about Juvenal than about Job in the Vulgate in those days.

R. H. B. BOTTOM. Highgate.

ANTHONY TODD, SECRETARY OF THE G.P.O. (12 S. iv. 11, 114; v. 104). The late Rev. C. B. Norcliffe in his privately printed account of ' Robinson of White House, Appleby,' 1874, states that :

" Anthony Todd was, I believe, son of Anthony Todd, Esq. who died 15th November. 1767, and who was sprung from the parish of Wolsingham, co. Durham He had issue Charlotte, Ann (bap- tised 7th April, 1765). who both died young, and Eleanor, who married 15th August, 1782, James, Viscount Maitland, eighth Earl of Lauderdale.' After giving particulars of the family of the latter Mr. Norcliffe proceeds :

" Truth compels us to declare that no reliance whatever can be placed on parts of the account in Sir B. Burke's Peerage of the family of Sir Lionel