212
NOTES AND QUERIES.
a. x. ST. is, MOB.
laries,' 651, 19 (" barbitansor [sic], barbur").
The word belongs to mediaeval latinity,* but
its suggested connexion with barbiton is out
of the question. The suffixes -or and -rix
cannot be joined to nouns, but only to
supine-stems, to form agential substantives,
such as amat-or, doct-or, rector, audit-or ;
amat-rix, &c. But enough of the pedant. I
may add, however, that Maigne d'Arnis's
' Lexicon,' already cited, contains " barbitons-
trix, barbiere" i.e., female barber, the t de-
rived, perhaps, from the present-stem of
tondere, tond-, but certainly euphonic. JBar-
bitonsor is of frequent occurrence in the
'Account Rolls of the Abbey of Durham,'
lately edited for the Surtees Society by
Canon Fowler, a valued correspondent of
4 N. & Q.,' who, as the meaning is so well
known, deemed a gloss needless.
F. ADAMS.
115, Albany Road, Camberwell.
" Barbitonsor " is the gloss of " a Barbur " in ' Catholicon Anglicum.' ST. SWITHIN.
BLACK AS A BADGE OF MOURNING (9 th S. x. 87). In this connexion the following may be found useful :
"What St. Cyprian here saith of black garments shews, that the African Christians did not usually wear this colour, as was the custom of some other countries. As to the Romans, with them the men mourned in black, the women in white." Herbert's translation of Fleury's 'Ecclesiastical History,' "vol. i. p. 419.
I have not the French text at hand to refer to. The following references to various colours used as mourning may interest your corre- spondent :
Black, white, yellow. Hazlitt's 'Brand's Anti- quities,' vol. ii. pp. 204-6.
White used in the Byzantine Court. Legg, ' Liturgical Use of Colours,' p. 4.
Yellow, peasants' mourning in Sweden. Horace Marryat, 'Year in Sweden,' vol. i. p. 361.
White. Geo. Musgrave, ' Nooks and Corners of Old France,' vol. i. p. 321.
Unwashed linen. Southey, ' Commonplace Book,' vol. i. p. 547.
Mourning, first, in Scotland. Herkless, ' Life of Cardinal Beaton,' p. 129.
Mourning, excessive. ' Memoirs of the Vernev Family, vol. ii. p. 15.
ASTARTE.
Louis Mercier, in ( Le Deuil, son Observa- tion dans tous les Temps,' on the authority
TT-*-* o s thus . np^ced by Voss in his treatise ' De
Vitus Sermonis,' Amsterdam, 1615, pp. 362 816-
Barbator barbare, pro tonsore, est apud Pet rum
Blesensem emst. xiv. Sed nee Latinum, quod multis
in usu, barbitonsor ; adeo ut nee refugerit per-
doctus vir, Petrus Servius lib. de unguento armario
pag. oy.
of Winckelmann ('Histqire de I'Art'), states
that the custom of wearing black in times of
mourning was practised by early Romans and
existed among the Greeks in Homeric days,
but under the Roman emperors women
adopted a white habit in place of black.
1. C. GOULD.
CHESS PLAYING : A LEGEND (9 th S. ix. 248, 293, 398, 512). It may be worth while to add that one of Doyle's best cartoons was founded on Retzsch's plate. See Punch, 14 November, 1846. It is entitled 'No Match for the Old One,' and represents Louis Philippe playing chess with John Bull. The Gallic cock, the lion, and the unicorn are interested spectators. RICHARD H. THORNTON.
Portland, Oregon.
"ROBERT, D.G. PRISTINENSIS EPISCOPUS" (9 th S. x. 88). Bishop Stubbs, in the second edition of his k Registrum Sacrum Anglica- num' (Oxford, 1897), has in Appendix V., p. 197, the entry, " A.D. 1360, Robert ' Pris- sinensis' [sic] Suffragan of Hereford, 1360; Worcester, 1373-1375 ; Chichester, S.V. [sede yacante] 1362, May 12." He has no further information about this "suffragan in parti- bus." It may be added that under A.D. 1390 there is another "Episcopus Prissinensis," William Egmund, " an Austin friar of Stam- ford, Suffragan of Lincoln," also ' ' Bishop in partibus." C. E. D.
TORTON (9 th S. x. 189). I am sorry to find that the place I inquired after in Sussex is Torton (not Toxton). The writing on the coat of arms (Oriel) was nearly obliterated, hence the mistake. F. PALMER.
Datchet, Windsor.
NEWARK ABBEY, SURREY (9 th S. ix. 248). I have not noticed any reply to my query hereon. In the Ordnance Map of Surrey (1872) I find traces of a moat in two or three places round about. I presume the boundary wall lined it, as it appears to have done at the point stated in my query i.e., due west of the great church. JOHN A. RANDOLPH.
PICTORIAL POSTCARDS (9 th S. ix. 228). From an article in the Picture Postcard for October, 1901, I gather that the first card conveyed by the post with a picture on it was sent in Switzerland and bears the date 1865. It was apparently many years before there were any pictorial cards in this country, the first one being a commemorative picture postcard sent from the post office in the model of the Eddystone Lighthouse at the Royal Naval Exhibition, London, on 16 July, 1891. It was two or three years later that
