512 NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 S.VIII.JUXE 25,1921. SILVER MEDAL : IDENTIFICATION SOUGHT. I have a small silver coin, or medal, of which the following is a brief description : - Ob. A shield of arms, quarterly 1 and 4, gules, a wheel ; 2 and 3, sable a key bendwise. On a shield of pretence, a wyvern. EMERIC JOSEPH DG SS ED MOG ABEP SKIP GEB AR CAN PR ELEP WO. Behind the shield, in saltire, a sword and crozier. Crest, a coronet of unusual shape surmounted by a cross-crosslet. Re. NATUS 11 NOVEMB 1707 EL ARCHI EP ET ELECT 1 JULY 1763 EPISC WORM 1 MAR 1768 DENAT 11 JUNY 1774 MTAT 66 ANN 7 MENS. The coin is about the size of a florin but somewhat thinner and practically in mint state. Any information as to whom it commemorates will be esteemed. CHARLES DRURY. MAXIMILIAN WILLIAM, BROTHER OF GEORGE I. ; died at Vienna, July 16, 1726, in the sixtieth year of his age. With his mother and the rest of her issue he was naturalized by 4 and 5 Anne, c. 16. Is any account of him in English easily accessible ? JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT. BISHOP OF OXFORD'S COINAGE. A lately published book of " ana " has the following relating to the period 1865-1868 : "... the Right Rev. Samuel Wilberforce, the then Bishop of Oxford, sometimes in pay- ment gave me the odd money after shillings in silver pennies and twopenny-pieces which the Lord Bishop of Oxford had then the privilege of coining ; these I naturally prized." Did such a privilege exist at the time named, and when and how was it abrogated ? W. B. H. " To CURRY FAVOUR. What is the origin of this expression ? Routledge's * English Dictionary,' second edition, refers to " M.E. favdla, chestnut horse ; from a proverb, and O.F. beast-tale a roman defauvel" but what is the proverb or the tale ? Ap- parently " curry-combing " a horse is the idea. J. V. F. STARESMORE OF FROLESWORTH. Has a pedigree of this family ever been compiled ? They seem to have settled at Frolesworth at the end of the fifteenth century and remained there for 200 years at least. Francis Stares- more sat in Parliament and was Deputy - Lieutenant of the county. There is a fine altar tomb in the church at Frolesworth to his memory. Any information about the family would be esteemed. JAMES SETON- ANDERSON. HEBREW AND ENGLISH IDIOMS. Mr. T. H. Weir, in his Alexander Robertson Lectures for 1917 on ' The Variants in the Gospel Reports,' gives the following among others as examples of Hebraisms in our English Bible, adding, however, that the same forms of speech are common to many languages : " He went and traded "(Matt. i xxv. 16) ; "he went and joined himself to a citizen " (Luke xv. 15) ; " David took and ate the shewbread " (Luke vi. 4) ; ! " Absalom had taken and reared up to
himself a pillar " (2 Sam. xviii. 18) ; " leaven
| which a woman took and hid " (Matt. xiii. 1 33). Such instances of " the insertion of i an auxiliary verb, such as ' to go,' in state- ments in which it is purely otiose," are, he says, very common in the Hebrew Bible,
- and he regards their occurrence in the
- Gospels as a proof that the Greek in which
they are written is largely diluted with Hebrew. The object of this note, however, is simply to ask whether our common colloquial phrases (common, that is, in dialect), " he went and did," 4i he took and said," and such like, are traceable to appa- jrently equivalent Biblical phrases, and not native to our speech ? It seems extremely unlikely, but the question naturally arises if, as Mr. Weir appears to imply, the phrases quoted are literal translations and the 1 " auxiliary verb " is really otiose. C. C. B. &eplie*. WRINGING THE HANDS. (12 S. xiii. 470.) THIS practice is illustrated by Shakespeare* ' 2 Henry VI.,' Act I., sc. i., 223 : While as the silly owner of the goods Weeps over them, and wrings his hapless hands, And shakes his head, and trembling stands aloof. . . ." Darwin, ' The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals,' popular edition, chap, iii., pp. 79 and 80, deals with the subject : When a mother suddenly loses her child, sometimes she is frantic with grief, and must be considered in an excited state ; she walks wildly about, tears her hair or clothes, and wrings her hands. This latter [last -mentioned ?] action is perhaps due to the sense of antithesis, betraying an inward sense of helplessness and that nothing can be done. The other wild and
