Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 8.djvu/26

18 NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s. vin. JAN. i, 1921. port, sherry, and sweet biscuits. This was the custom, certainly, about 1866, for I generally took toll of the biscuits during transit. Perhaps this was a custom in what was then called a middle-class family, and did not apply to those higher up in life ; who were called by the general term of "the Gentry," whatever that may have meant. HERBERT SOUTHAM. LONDON POST-MARKS (12 S. vii. 290,355). Would MR. WILLIAM GILBERT kindly give further particulars of John G. Hendy's ' Post-marks of the British Isles from 1840 to 1876 '? I have Hendy's work dealing with post-marks down to 1840 ; but the publishers of it know nothing of the con- tination, nor can I find any mention of the continuation in the ordinary books of reference. ERNEST S. GLADSTONE. Woolton Vale, Liverpool. FOLK-LORE OF THE ELDER (12 S. vi. 259, 301 ; vii. 37, 59). According to Mr. Yoshi- wara's ' A Bundle of Magical Cures ' in the Kotyo Kenkyo, vol. i., no. 9, p. 563, Tokyo, 1913, some folks in the southern part of the province Hidachi in Japan have the follow- ing formula for curing the toothache : " Bake as many beans as the mimber of years of the patient's age till they are quite black, bury them under a living elder, and ask it, ' Please take your food with deaf ears and rotting teeth until these beans begin to grow.' " Needless it is to say baked beans shall never bud and the toothache will never recur. The Japanese elder is Sambucus racemosa L.. which also grows in Southern Europe. KUMAGUSU MlNAKATA. Tanabe, Kii, Japan. OXFORD (ORFORD) HOUSE, WALTHAMSTOW (12 S. vii. 469). This should read Orford House. The owl cameo denotes the crest of the family of Kemp, former residents of the premises, otherwise I believe the pro- perty is without historj^. WILLIAM R. POWER. 157 Stamford Hill, N.16 DR. ALEXANDER KEITH (12 S. vii. 406, 478). As Dr. Keith did not understand the language spoken by the natives, it is quite possible that he got hold of the wrong version of the tale. On the other hand it is quite possible he was deliberately deceived. It is doubtful that a special law was enacted to meet our differential treatment to dead aliens. Probably the facts were that the hotel-keeper was anxious to get rid of the body as an undesirable object to give house- room to in his hostelry, and the mythical law was given as an excuse for his haste. The yarn about the two men watching for Dr. Keith's last breath is also ridiculous,, because they would not be allowed to touch a body until the " corpse- viewer " had seen it and given permission to remove it. As it was Miss Pardoe who came to the divine's rescue, perhaps she has related the incident in her ' The City of the Magyar ' (London, 1840). L. L. K. PICTURE BY SIR LESLIE WARD (12 S. vii. 470). The. picture, about which L. Q. inquires, is not improbably a full-length oil- painting, life size, of the first wife of the late Col. Harry McCalmont who died in 1902. He married in 1885 Amy, daughter of Major General Miller, and she died in 1889. The portrait was an admirable, like- ness of the poor lady, and one of the gifted artist's happiest efforts. If I am correct in this conjecture, though Sir Leslie may have painted portraits of other ladies, the picture is now at Syston Court near Bristol, the residence of Mrs. Rawlins, a sister of the late Col. McCalmont WlLLOUGHBY MAYCOCK. MISSING WORDS WANTED (12 S. vii. 232, 296 J. " Come not when I am dead." May I say in answer to a supplementary question that this poem has been very beautifully set to music, I forget by whom, but I remember the air well. The song with its setting was included in a volume of Songs from Tennyson published some forty years ago. I should be very glad to know whether this is still obtainable. Unf ortun ately- I remember neither the editor nor the publisher,, but the musical contributors were the most famous English composers of the day, such as Sullivan, Barnby, Macfarren, <fcc. The book was published, I believe, at 21s. C. C. B. AUTHORS OF QUOTATIONS WANTED. (12 S. vii. 491.) The lines which M. P. N. sends are by Tennyson.- They are to be found, under the title The Silent Voices,' on p. 855 of his ' Complete Works,' one vol., (Macmillan, 1894), having first appeared in 1892, in ' The Death of Oenone, and other Poems.' Tennyson's own text is less profuse of capitals, " black " and " starry " in the first and eighth . lines being undistinguished. EDWARD BENSLY. This poem was set to music by Lady Tennyson, arranged for four voices by Sir F. Bridge, and sung at the Laureate's funeral in Westminster Abbey on Oct. 12, 1892. ALICE M. WILLIAMS. Of " When the dumb hour," Palgrave in his ' Golden Treasury of Songs and Lyrics,' Second Series, has this note : " The poet's last lines, dictated on his deathbed. If a friendship of near half a century may allow me to say it ; these