Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 7.djvu/63

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9* s. vii. JAN. 19, IDOL] NOTES AND QUERIES.


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1770, a group of statues as large as life repr sen ting Lord Audley and these four eel brated warriors. I cannot recall where I reac that the Button who distinguished himself a Poictiers was Sir Hugh Button, but he raus I think, have been either a son or a nephew o the Sir Thomas Button referred to by LOR SHERBORNE. Sir Thomas was born in 131 and died in 1381. He had six sons viz., Pete Thomas, Lawrence, Edmund, Henry, anc William the first three of whom died s.p. and Edmund was the ancestor of the presen LORD SHERBORNE'S and many other illustriou families. The present representative of th Button family is my cousin, John Row Button, of Chester, born 1881, who, accordin to the pedigree in my possession, is twenty eighth in direct lineal descent from Hollo, anc heir male of Odard (or Huddard), Lord o Button, who came to England with William the Conqueror. CHARLES STEWART.

22, Gloucester Road, Stoke Newington, N.

MARGARET OF BAVARIA (9 th S. vi. 369, 453 495). A memorandum in my copy of Ander son's ' Royal Genealogies ' (1736), which som former owner has annotated, may interes MEGAN. Over against Margaret's death 19 April, 1483 (Table 384), is written " set. 23, but no authority for the statement is in dicated. If correct, it would yield 1459 or 1460 as her birth-year, which is not incon sistent with other dates given in * L'Art de Verifier.' Thus, although Margaret woulc be but a child at the time of her marriage 6 January, 1472, N.S., the birth of Louise, the eldest of her children, 11 September, 1476 would not be remarkable. Child -marriages were common enough, and this Louise was early married and early a mother. She was contracted to Charles of Orleans 16 February, 1487, 0.S., and their eldest child Margaret was born in 1491 (Anderson), when Louise was, at most, little more than fifteen the age of the widow-mother of our Henry VII.

C. S. WARD. Wootton St. Lawrence, Basingstoke.

"TRUNK" OR "Box" (9 th S. vi. 503). My experience as a little boy going to boarding- school for the first time by no means confirms the correspondents who think that these names are synonymous. At that woeful hour I was accompanied by a large trunk covered with cowhide having the hair outside, and filled with underclothing and similar matters. This was called a " hair-trunk," and considered more or less sacred to myself and the nurse of that group of the boys to which I belonged. L had likewise what -was named a " box " or " playbox," of which I had the key, and which


my mother had filled with toys, play -books, fruit, new-laid eggs, and cakes. Immediately on my arrival the difference in my accom- paniments and the turpitude of big - boy nature were borne in upon me in a manner which is indelible : my " hair- trunk " was respected, but of my "box" the key was captured in a twinkling, my cakes and other delicacies were eaten, my oranges were peeled, and my eggs (without the ceremony of cook- ing) were sucked before my eyes. Only one egg and the shells of the others were left for me. Both " trunk " and " box " are still in my possession, arid everybody known to me recog- nizes the difference implied by their respective names ; so that while every trunk made of wood, but not otherwise, is a box, it is by no means right to call every box a trunk. O.

WALLER (9 th S. iii. 165, 352 ; iv. 11, 57, 97). At 9 th S. iv. 11, in reference to a misapprehen- sion of Br. Johnson's as to Waller's meaning, I ventured to maintain that "the centre," both in the lines quoted and in certain pas- sages of other poets, means not the centre of the earth, but the earth itself, con- sidered in the old astronomy as the centre of the universe. I am glad to find this interpre- tation confirmed by Prof. Masson in a note (which I had not seen when I wrote my explanation) on Milton's * P. L.,' i. 686 : "'Ransacked the centre.' The centre or in- terior of the earth, say the commentators unanimously. Not so. Centre here is the earth itself as a whole, not its interior merely, [n old literature the earth, as the supposed centre of the universe, was frequently called

the centre' par excellence." Reference is made, in illustration, to ' Troilus and Cressida,' ". iii., one of the passages quoted in my note on Waller, as an example of this usage.

C. LAWRENCE FORD, B.A.

Bath.

" GONE TO JERICHO " (9 th S. vi. 405). The uggested explanation of this familiar phrase, as quoted from the Property Market Review )y your correspondent, had already appeared n Brewer's 'Bict. of Phrase and Fable,' 1895, ogether with another explanation, a trifle more plausible, based upon 2 Sam. x. 5 and Chron. xix. 5. These would-be expositions, s well as the (almost trivial) one put forward n Chatto & Windus's 'Slang Dictionary,' 874, appear to me to be "all abroad." The xpletive " Go to [not Gone to] Jericho ! " has Iways been used as a mild form of " Go to

! " a place said to be paved with good

ntentions. There are many persons who are shamed to "go the whole hog" in respect f using bad language, who yet indulge in