Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 1.djvu/143

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9 th S. I. FEB. 12, '98.]


NOTES AND QUERIES.


135


under the window, and that she thus appeared at his descendants' deaths. The Fanshawes left "suddenly."

Lady Fanshawe relates also a case she heard of when at Canterbury. Near that city there lived Col. Colepeper with his sister, Mrs. Porter. He was a man of talent and erudition, and his voluminous MSS. may be seen in the Harleian Collection, British Museum. These two went into the vault of heir ancestors, and took away with them some of their father's and mother's hair. Within a few days Mrs. Porter died. The colonel kept her body in a coffin set up in his buttery, saying he would soon follow her, and they would both be buried together.

"But from the night after her death, until the time that we were told the story, which was three months [N. H. N. says two years], they say that a head, as cold as death, with curled hair like his sister's, did ever lie by him wherever he slept, not- withstanding he removed to several places and countries to avoid it ; and several persons told us they had felt this apparition."

These accounts may be seen in 'Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe,' by herself, edited by N. H. K, 1830, pp. 10, 92, 156. A. B. G.

" HOITY-TOITY" (8 th S. xii. 429). Halliwell's 'Diet, of Archaic and Prov. Words,' fourth edition, gives, quoting from Webster, " Hoit, to indulge in riotous and noisy mirth." Dr. Brewer, ' Diet, of Phrase and Fable,' s.v., has " To hoit=to assume, to be elated in spirits." For the form of the whole word cf. to cite only a few parallels hinch-pinch, hippety- hoppety, hirdum-durdum, hab-nab, hitty- missy, hivy-skyvy, helter-skelter, hobble- bobble, hod-me-dod, harum-scarum. Halliwell gives, as of eastern county usage, " Hoit-a- poit, assuming airs unsuitable to age or station." ARTHUR MAYALL.

I was about to ask the same question as H. T. I find it in Conybeare's ' History of Cambridgeshire,' 1897, p. 32: "The wild Scots crossed from Ireland in their wicker boats, with their war-cry of ' Hoity-toity ! ' " I remember my old nurse, in the early forties, using the word to reprove us when, as children in the nursery, we had a bit of a tiff.

WM. GRAHAM F. PIGOTT.

Abington Pigotts.

A correspondent in ' N. & Q.' (3 rd S. vii. 417) asks whether the following paragraph in John Selden's 'Table-Talk' might not have been the origin of this expression :

"In Queen Elizabeth's time gravity and state were kept up. In King James's time things were pretty well. But in King Charles's time there has be,en nothing but French-more and the cushion


dance, omnium gatherum, tolly-polly, hoite-come-

toite."

This phrase, in modern French, is haut comme

toit.

The late Dr. Brewer, in his ' Dictionary of Phrase and Fable,' says :

" The most probable derivation I know is this : What we call ' see-saw ' used to be called ' hoity- toity,' hoity being connected with hoit (to leap up), our 'high,' 'height,' and toity being ' t'other noit,' . e., first one side hoits, then the other side."

EVERARD HOME COLEMAN. 71, Brecknock Road.

Does H. T. not confuse " Hoity-toity " with " Hey tuttie taittie," the original name of the tune now known as "Scots, wha hae"? Burns, writing to Thomson, September, 1793, says :

" the old air 'Hey tuttie taittie.' There is

a tradition, which I have met with in many places of Scotland, that it was Robert Bruce's march at the battle of Bannockburn. This thought, in my solitary wanderings, warmed me to a pitch of enthusiasm on the theme of liberty and indepen- dence, which I threw into a kind of Scottish ode, fitted to the air, that one might suppose to be the gallant royal Scot's address to his heroic followers on that eventful morning."' The Letters of Robert Burns,' Camelot Series, p. 333.

What is the English of "Hey tuttie taittie"?

J. MONTEATH. 63, Elm Park, Brixton Hill, S.W.

SIR PHILIP HOWARD, KNT. (8 th S. xii. 507). The above-mentioned knight probably is Sir Philip Howard, sometime of St. Martin's- in-the-Fields, co. Middlesex, third son of William Howard, of Naworth Castle, co. Cumberland, and younger brother of Charles, first Earl of Carlisle, knighted at Canterbury 26 May, 1660 ; admitted to Gray's Inn 7 August, 1662; married at St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, 23 April, 1668, Elizabeth, daughter and heir of Sir Robert Newton, of London, baronet, and widow of Sir John Barker, third baronet, of Sissington, Kent ; buried in Exeter Chapel. Westminster Abbey, 15 April, 1686 ; will dated 7 April, and proved 3 June, 1686. Sir Kobert Holmes, Rear -Admiral of the Red, de- stroyed two Dutch men-of-war and about one hundred and fifty sail of merchant ships in the Vlie, and afterwards landed in the island of Ter Schelling, and burnt and plundered the town Bandaris, consisting of about one thousand houses. JOHN RADCLIFFE.

CROMWELL (8 th S. xii. 408, 491). Burke's ' Extinct Peerage,' 1846, says Thomas, fourth Baron Cromwell (created Earl of Ardglass, &c., in 1625), died in 1653, leaving "surviving issue Wingfield, Vere-Essex, and Oliver, with a daughter Mary." Is not this probably the