Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 5.djvu/463

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s. V.JUNE 9, im] NOTES AND QUERIES.


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the town by Suwarrow, goes on to relate of the conqueror :

With bloody hands he wrote his first dispatch ;

And here exactly follows what he said : Glory to God and to the Empress (" Powers Eternal, such names mingled ! "), Ismail 's ours.

In a note to this stanza Byron remarks : " In the original Russian

Slava bogu ! slava vam

Krepost Vzala, y i'a tarn. A kind of couplet, for he was a poet."

The resemblance between Lord Eoberts's and Suwarrow's composition is remarkable.

JOHN HEBB.

ST. MARY WOOLNOTH. The KEV. JOHN PICKFORD writes (ante, p. 418) that vandalism is now to turn this church into a railway station. It is worth while to record that no such sad fate awaits this City church. So much has been justly said of the terrible utilitarianism which has spared so few build- ings or spots sacred by association, valuable for artistic merit, or of antiquarian interest, that it is only just to record an instance in which a railway company has (possibly per- force) spared a church by building its station far below in such a manner as to destroy none of the features of the ecclesiastical edifice. 1. C. GOULD.


WE must request correspondents desiring infor- mation on family matters of only private interest to affix their names and addresses to their queries, in order that the answers may be addressed to them direct.

"BLOATED ARMAMENTS." In an article in the Fortnightly Mr. W. S. Lilly ascribes this phrase to Bright. It is usually ascribed to Disraeli, who certainly employed it at the time when he and the Tory party sup- ported Cobderi against Palmerston and the Liberals. Who was the inventor 1

B. A. I.

"LATA." From the material accumulated for the 'E.D.D.' it may be inferred that this word only occurs in the Scottish proverb

Lata is lang and tedious. Ray, ' Scottish Proverbs,' ed. 1678, p. 383.

Or, as it appears in Kelly's ' Scottish Proverbs,' 1721, p. 230, "Lata (honesty) is long. and dwigh."

What is the etymology of the word " lata " ? A. L. MAYHEW.

Oxford.

"REREDOS": "LARDOSE." The word "rere- dos" is generally assumed to be the repre-


sentative of an O, Fr. reredos (so the 'Century Diet.'). But is " reredos " to be found in any French text 1

Brockett gives "lardose" as a term formerly used for " reredos " in the Cathedral Church of Durham, and says that it is " a corruption of the Fr. I'arriere dos" But was Varriere dos ever used in France in the sense of an altar- screen 1 A. L. MAYHEW.

Oxford.

COSTUME, 1569 : PORTRAIT OF QUEEN MARY I. AT BERKELEY CASTLE. Being engaged in the representation, on canvas, of a family group in 1569, I have been looking up the costume of the period, and have been disappointed to find few or no dated examples of a satisfactory nature earlier than 1577 or so. I crave for my lady such distinctively Elizabethan extravagances as the wide-circling wheel farthingale, the tall and spreading ruff, the lofty dressing of the hair, the elaborately decorated sleeve distended at the shoulder, but from the elbow tapering to the wrist, and the deep-peaked stomacher ; but I fear to be a little " pre- vious " in bestowing them on her.

Finding them in the engraving generally known as the ' Wedding Procession at Huns- don House, 1571,' and interpreted as such by Agnes Strickland (who, by the way, makes the slip of attributing the original painting " probably " to Gheerharrlt, though he did not arrive in England till 1580), I thought I might be tolerably safe in taking this for my guide ; but the illusion was dispelled by an article in the Archaeological Journal (vol. xxiii.) by Sir Geo. Scharf, pronouncing the subject to be, instead, a procession to Black- friars, on the marriage of Lord Herbert and Anne Russell in 1600.

The same fashion, or very nearly so, is shown in Racinet's work, as of the " epoque de Henri III." (1574-1589), and, in a slightly milder form (without the flat-topped far- thingale), of the "epoque de Charles IX." (1560-1574). The ' Armada Portrait ' of Queen Elizabeth is another familiar instance. I had wondered whether this could have been the style introduced in 1566, when, as Agnes Strickland tells us, Elizabeth intrigued to entice away one of Catherine de' Medici's tailors, who " had skill to make her apparel both after the Italian and French manner." However, I resigned myself to the simplicity of the frontispiece of Queen Elizabeth's prayer-book (pub. 1569), and of the neat little figures in the plan of London, 1572, from Braun's 'Civitatis Orbes Terrarum' (Grace Collection, port. i. No. 12). By the way, I