296
NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. x. OCT. n, 1902.
sentence will be found : " The Iron Duke
rides down the grammar of our language
with the same daring with which he rode
down the Old Guard at Waterloo."
E. YARDLEY.
CRADLE CHIMNEY (9 t41 S. x. 208). This was the oblong cottage grate, suggesting a cradle in shape, and used in " a roundabout fireside." It was open on all sides, and the members of the household sat around it, and not merely in front as with the ordinary fireplace. Chimney, " chimlay," or " chimla " was for- merly in common use in Scotland for the grate, fireplace, or fireside, as well as for " the turret raised for conveyance of the smoke." The mantelpiece was known as the " chimla- brace," and Burns, in the first ' Epistle to Davie,' adverts to the " chimla-lug " : While frosty winds blaw in the drift,
Ben to the chimla-lug, I grudge a wee the great folk's gift
That live sae bien and snug.
This is a parallel to the " chimney corner " of Sir Philip Sidney, and the " chimley nuik " of Ben Jonson's ' Sad Shepherd,' I. ii.
Jamieson, in the ' Scottish Dictionary,' quotes the following account of the round- about fireside from Pennecuik's ' Description of Tweeddale,' ed. 1815 :
" A circular grate placed upon the floor about the middle of the kitchen, with a frame of lath and plaster, or spars and matts [sic], suspended over it, and reaching within about five feet of the floor, like an inverted funnel, for conveying the smoke ; the whole family sitting round the fire within the cir- cumference of the inverted funnel."
Jamieson adds from his own observation :
" I do not recollect having seen the grate carried so far out as the middle of the kitchen : it is usually on one of the gable ends, the wall forming a back to the seat which is immediately behind the fire. In many instances the roundabout is formed by a square projection from the gable."
THOMAS BAYNE.
FLINT : FERREY (9 th S. x. 87, 177). Between fifty and sixty years ago a small steel imple- ment, similar to the "ferrey" described by MR. GODSAL, was used by the Aberdeenshire ploughmen and other agricultural labourers when they wished to strike a light on a flint for their pipes. It was designated a "fleerish," and every one who smoked was supposed to carry in his pocket a " flint and fleerish," with a supply of "match" or touch paper. The latter was brown paper which had been dipped in a strong solution of salt- petre and then dried. The back of a pocket- knife was sometimes made to serve as a sub- stitute for the " fleerish " when the latter was u fc a ]f a i laDle - I never heard any opinion hazarded as to the derivation of the word
" fleerish," and am not in a position to say
whether it had or had not a common origin
with "ferrey." I may add that the tinder-box
was not known in those parts ; that the peat
fires were kept alive over nights ; and that
tucifer matches did not make their appear-
ance until the early forties.
ALEXANDER PATERSON. Barnsley.
CROLLY FAMILY (9 th S. viii. 484 ; ix. 152). I am now able to throw some light on my own query, for in the recently published ' Stuart Papers ' (p. 105) it is stated that permission was granted, from St. Germains, 24 August, 1695, for Lady Ann Gordon, wife of Sir Miles Crouly, to be naturalized in France. Her father was married about 1640 and died in 1653. As Stanislas Leszczynski was born in 1677, it is very difficult (if not impossible) to understand how the Countess de Crolly can have been his grandmother. I should still like to know whether the Countess had issue. J. M. BULLOCH.
118, Pall Mall.
"OFTEN HAVE I SEEN" (9 th S. x. 208). I cannot tell J. A. R. who wrote these lines, but I sincerely hope it was not Keble. There must needs be young trees, or some day there will be no old ones ; and, charming as it may be to be protected by the shadow of some ancient monarch of the glade, the shadow of a sapling is not unwelcome, while the fact of its being " all foliage and all green " is creditable to it now, and augurs well for the future. In a thunderstorm the stripling would give us safer shelter than the veteran : let no man despise its youth.
ST. SWITHIN.
CARLYLE, COLERIDGE, AND SWINBURNE (9 th S. x. 189). Mr. Swinburne handles Carlyle severely in three sonnets included in 1 Tristram of Lyonesse, and other Poems,' 1882. In the first two, entitled 'After looking into Carlyle's Reminiscences,' he disparages the philosopher's views of Cole- ridge, Wordsworth, and Charles Lamb, dwelling particularly in the second on the phenomenal gentleness of "our life-unspotted Lamb." The third sonnet of the group is called 'A Last Look,' and is uncommonly frank and caustic in its estimate of Carlyle's transcendentalism. Apart from their key- note all three sonnets have strength and grace of form, and the passage in the first of them devoted to Coleridge, Whose eyes grew dim with straining toward the sun, is a brilliant and memorable tribute.
THOMAS BAYNE.
