Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 10.djvu/260

This page needs to be proofread.

252


NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. x. SEPT. 27, 1002.


Edinburgh, 1884." The portrait is copied in facsimile from a water-colour drawing, made probably by Miss Isabella Keith in 1811, engraved by M. Goupil, Paris.

THOS. WHITE. Liverpool.

WEIGHT OR TOKEN (9 th S. x. 169). The coin is no doubt a weight for gold currency. Seventy or eighty years ago, and I do not know for how long previously, there was a quantity of light gold coin in circulation, and these coins were only accepted at their weight value. Clerks took scales and weights with them when collecting accounts, and this I have heard from those who did so. I have several of these weights, one bearing the head of Charles I., another (thicker and heavier) a mounted figure in armour (very much like the obverse of 5s. gun money) with " C s II., 2.6," on reverse (probably a weight for old silver coins), and many others of different values and patterns. JAMES JOHN BARRETT.

Crosscliffe, Moss Side, Manchester.

The sum of 10s.. 5d. seems to correspond to 2dwt. 16 gr. if this latter numeration of weight be a weight of gold, but I am wholly unable to conjecture for what purpose such a brass weight can have been made. Bankers, we know, use brass weights multiples of one sovereign, and in an ideal coinage the weights of gold and silver coins should be simple integral multiples or submultiples of the standard of weight. I find it is not gener- ally known that the new bronze pennies and halfpennies fulfil this condition. The diameter of one penny piece=ljin., three pennies weigh 1 oz. T. WILSON.

Harpenden.

'N. & Q. 1 ANAGRAM (9 th S. x. 185). A much earlier anagram is to be found in ' N. & Q.' itself (1 st S. iv. 327), that being "Enquires on dates," and both are appro- priate. Six others, but none so good, are to be found ibid., 350.

ALFRED F. BOBBINS.

THE JUBILEE NUMBER (9 th S. iv. 361, 391, 533 ; v. 89, 197). Looking over these lists of early contributors to ' N. & Q.,' I do not observe the name of John Lee, D.D., LL.D., the very able and learned Principal of the University of Edinburgh. But see, for ex- ample, 'Thomas Crawford,' p. 448, vol. v., First Series. W. S.

DANDY-CART (9 th S. x. 129). I observe that MR. W. W. TOMLINSON states that the earliest illustration which the 'N.E.D.' can give of the use of this word dates from 1861. At


this I am surprised, for the word is pretty well known as applied to a low cart, which can bedrawn by hand if required, in Leicester- shire and Staffordshire, at any rate in some of the manufacturing parts. I found re- cently, when taking a proof from an elderly witness, a cratemaker, that the term was fifty years ago well known in his trade, better known, in fact, than it is now. I cannot say how the term "dandy" came to be applied to any particular low truck used on the ancient railroads, but it is certain " dandy meant a low, convenient vehicle on which a couple of men could lift a heavy crate or case. Is MR. TOMLINSON acquainted with the old name " dobbin -cart," a low cart, generally with three wheels, into which manure or any heavy substance could be conveniently loaded and unloaded? term is, or was, well known in Worcester- shire and in Herefordshire.

W. H. QUARRELL. Ashby-de-la-Zouch.

CORNISH MOTTO : " ONE AND ALL " (9 th S. x. 168). I have always supposed this motto to bear reference to the arms of the duchy, which are Sable, fifteen plates, 5 over 1. am of opinion that the motto is of no great antiquity, and very much question its having originated prior to the eighteenth century though it may possibly have come into vogue at the time of the trial of Trelawney and his colleagues. JOHN HOBSON MATTHEWS.

Town Hall, Cardiff.

See also 9 th S. v. 424.

J. HOLDEN MACMICHAEL.

SIR WALTER SCOTT'S 'WOODSTOCK' (9 th S. x. 65, 170). I have not seen the point to which I am about to call attention referred to by either of your correspondents, but if I remember rightly (it is many years since I read ' Woodstock,' and I have not the work by me to refer to), Sir Henry Lee's "long white beard" is accounted for in the novel by the peculiar fashion, indicative of loyal mourning, said to have been adopted by many elderly Cavalier gentlemen, in fulfil- ment of a solemn resolution, of refraining from shaving the chin from the time of the Whitehall tragedy until the hoped-for happy day when the "king should enjoy his own again." At the date of the incident on p. 2 we can see the " elderly man bent more by sorrow and infirmity than by the weight of years," and on p. 27 the same individual with a growth of hair on the chin, which by the time of the "happy Restoration" would accurately be described as "a long white beard." At the royal progress through