Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 11.djvu/166

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. XL FEB. 21,


object for many miles round, and the view from it extends into seven counties. Some four miles to the north-west of this, near to the Nottingham and Melton Mowbray turn- pike, is Folly Hall, built, I believe, by a man named Brett, and certainly occupied by one of that name in my young days. It is close to the boundary of the parishes of Hickling and Upper Broughton, but I am not sure which parish it actually stands in.

C. C. B.

Stow, in his * Survey of London/ alludes to a house in the ward of Bishopsgate built by Jasper Fisher, and known as "Fisher's Follie." Associated with it in a couplet, as follows, are three others :

Kirkebyes Castell, and Fishers Follie, Spinilas pleasure, and Megses glorie.

About a mile and a half from here along the road to Northampton is a farmhouse known as " Buckby Folly." I have often wondered why it was" so designated, as there is nothing in its architecture betokening folly that I am aware of. JOHN T. PAGE.

West Haddon, Northamptonshire.

CARLYLE'S 'PAST AND PRESENT' (9 th S. xi 108). The quotation in question 19 is meant for Old English, a language which is seldom quoted without being, as here, most absurdly caricatured. The ridiculous eu is for A.-S. ge E. ye. The phrase meant would be, in true A -S., "Ge Seaxan, nimath eowre [or eower seaxas " ; but the first two words are a super fluous addition. The story is not found in the oldest English, but occurs in Layamon's

  • Brut,' ed. Madden, vol. ii. p. 214, where

Hengist's signal to his men to slaughter the Britons is nimeth eoure sexes, take (or draw out) your knives. In Kobert of Gloucester, ed. Hearne, p. 125, it appears as nymethyoure saxes. Very much later, in Fabyan's * History,' ed. Ellis, p. 66, it is nempnith your sexis.

WALTER W. SKEAT.

PORTRAIT BY ZURBARAN (9 th S. x. 207, 352, 514). COL. PRIDE AUX may like to know that I think the ' Catalogue of the Hampton Court Pictures,' just published, solves the enigma about Lady Whitmore. The 'Catalogue' expressly states that the ' Lady Whitmore ' at Hampton Court, sister of Lady Denham, was engraved under another name about 1780

think as ' Lady Southesk'). Miss Brooks the Lady Whitmore supposed to be repre- sented in the Hampton Court picture was however, a niece of Digby, Earl of Bristol long representative in Spain of Charles I and Charles II.

Now my friend's collection contains a


good deal which is derived from a very

lose connexion with both those Courts, and,

as far as dates go, if the picture at Hampton Court is really incorrectly named, there is no reason why his should not be an original by Zurbaran, painted whilst Miss Brooks was in Spain with her uncle before the Restoration. I have to thank COL. PRIDEAUX for the great interest he has taken in my query.

Z.

PICTURE BY MARTINEATJ (9 th S. xi. 109). W. B. H. will find ' The Last Day in the Old Home,' by Robert Braithwaite Martineau, in the Tate Picture Gallery, Vauxhall Embank- ment. There is a short sketch of the artist's life in the ' Dictionary of National Biography,' and I believe the above picture is referred to. HERBERT W. SOTHERN.

Twickenham.

The admirable and thoroughly origina Last Day in the Old Home,' by the late


Robert Braithwaite Martineau,


to


by W. B. H., is now in the Millbank Gallery, a gift by the painter's brother Edward. There is a photographic (not engraved) re- production of it, good specimens of which are excellent, bad ones of little value.

F. G. STEPHENS.

"CoRROBOREE" (9 th S. xi. 69). The origin of this word is explained in the work of my lamented friend the late Prof. Morris, 'Aus- tral English': "The word comes from the Botany Bay dialect. The aboriginal word is korobra, to dance. In the same locality boroya or beria means 'to sing': probably koro is from a common Australian word for emu." HERBERT A. STRONG.

University College, Liverpool.

This is one of many rough-and-ready ex- periments in the Anglicizing of Australian aboriginal names. According to the Rev. William Ridley, M.A., one of the highest authorities on the language of the Australian blacks, the proper spelling of the original word is korobra, and its meaning is to dance. A dozen different renderings in English may be culled from the Australian books of the nineteenth century. Prof. Morris, in his 'Austral English,' p. 99, gives the best history of the word with its uses and variations.


Royal Colonial Institute.


J. F. HOGAN.


"Sms'N" AND "Tms'N" (9 th S. xi. 89). There is no doubt that the 'n in this'n is all that is left of the Mid. Eng. kin, which was freely added to many similar words. See kin in the 'H.E.D.,' II. 6 b, where we find