Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 3.djvu/122

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NOTES AND QUERIES. o* s. in. FEB. n, '99.


to have been fairly common in France before November, 1898, the date given by MR. HOPE. I have before me a , book of very "sketchy" essays, 'Coups d'Epingle' (Paris, 1886), the airy, mocking character of which exactly answers to their title. When England is mentioned, the tone, always at concert pitch, becomes needlessly " screamy," though here and there in ' Chaste Albion,' for in- stance ' the main point is well put, and, it might be added, well deserved.

GEORGE MARSHALL. Sefton Park, Liverpool.

THEATRE TICKETS AND PASSES (9 th S. ii. 348, 416 ; iii. 58). Eight representations of tickets of admission to the Koyal Gardens of Vauxhall will be found in Robert Wilkinson's 'Londina Illustrata,' vol. i., 1819.

EVERARD HOME COLEMAN. 71, Brecknock Road.

CARKEET AND ANDREWS FAMILIES (9 th S. ii. 508 ; iii. 56). In reference to the above note, which I had overlooked, Car is the Cor- nish caer, castle, and keet Cornish for cat. The Carlyons have a castle as part of their arms, and the Keets three cats. Neither the castle nor the cat, however, has any place in the arms granted to Carkike in 1530. Nathaniel Carkeet, of Truro, married Edith Andrew (not Andrews) on 25 August, 1760. I have several notes of the ancestors of this Nathaniel, which I shall be pleased to place at the disposal of the KEY. DR. GIBBINS if he will communicate with me. RITA Fox.

64, Watling Street, E.G.

HOUSES WITHOUT STAIRCASES (9 fch S. i. 166, 210, 356, 418 ; ii. 89). I am told that in the new buildings at King's College, Cambridge, some rooms that ought to have been served by one staircase were, by an oversight, planned without any, until the neglectful architect pierced an outer wall and con- structed a covered ascent to supply the omission. The story looks to me like an invention to account for what is, in this country, an unusual excrescence on the exterior of a house. ST. SWITHIN.

A SAYING OF JOHN BRIGHT (9 th S. iii. 49). Speech delivered at Rochdale for the purpose of passing a resolution of thanks to the mer- chants of New York for their generous con- tributions to the relief of the suffering population of the cotton districts, 3 Feb., 1863. The following is the passage :

"The other day a member of the present

Government he is not a statesman, he is the son of a great statesman, and occupies the position of Secretary for Ireland he dared to say to an English


audience that he wished the Republic to be divided and that the South should become an independent State. If that island which I suppose in punish- ment for some of its offences has been committed to his care, if that island were to attempt to secede, not to set up a slave kingdom, but a kingdom more free than it has ever yet been, the Government of which he is a member would sack its cities and drench its soil with blood before they would allow such a kingdom to be established."

The allusion is to Sir Robert Peel, who was then Irish Secretary.

GEORGE T. KENYON.

ORIEL = HALL ROYAL (9 th S. i. 288, 436). In a review of Mr. T. F. Henderson's ' Scotch Vernacular Literature,' by Mr. Andrew Lang, in the Daily News of 4 January, I find the following passage, which appears to relate to this reference :

" Even very old Scots is easy to handle, as

Leavte to luff is gretumly

in Barbour's 'Bruce.' 'The reader will gradually become reconciled by practice,' as Mr. Henderson says, and will luff old Scottish literature gretumly. Alas ! the reader is apt to shy away from it ; he is not ' curyws in his style,' as Wyntoun says of Huchown of the Awle Ryale, whatever the Awle Ryale may have been, a point in which uncertainty clouds the inquirer's view."

Who was Huchown of the Awle Ryale ?

JOHN HEBB. Canonbury Mansions, N.

ROUNDS OR RUNGS (9 th S. ii. 386, 430, 492, 530; iii. 75). I do not think my remarks have been misleading, or that they have misled any one but your correspondent who complains. I repeat that rung as com- pared with round is the older word.* English did not begin in A.D. 1600 ; neither is rung in any sense a "corruption," seeing that the cognate form occurs in Gothic. There were rounds to ladders before 1600, and the whole question turns upon the inquiry as to what they were called in the fourteenth and fif- teenth centuries. To speak of the word ronges as being obsolete is obviously absurd. The spelling with on corresponds to the modern un, as I have often explained. The use of on for un is common enough still, as in son, money, monk, monkey, honey, &c. ; so that the M.E. rong, so far from being obso- lete, is admittedly in common use still by extremely vulgar persons, such as myself. The notion that in Chaucer's day English was " unformed " is new to me. At any rate, the spelling was phonetic and intelligible, which is more than can be said of the modern " formed " language.

The statement that I had "never considered


  • In fact round is merely borrowed from French.