Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 8.djvu/434

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426


NOTES 'AND QUERIES. [9 th s. vm. NOV. 23, 1901.


the chapter devoted to Morlaix in his work 4 En Bretagne,' p. 261, where we have a sketch of the arms of the town, the supporters of which are a double-headed leopard and a lion of the ordinary heraldic build. Whence came the richly endowed animal attributed to England 1 and, if it be not too much to ask, who invented the punning motto ? I incline to think that the latter had reference to biters in general, and not to the attack of any enemy in particular, although Theodore Botrel in his song 'Les Gas de Morlaix,' concerning

  • Primaguet' and the 'Cordeliere,' has :

A nos enfants n'oublions pas

De parler des douze cents gas

Sombre avec la ' Cordeliere '

En entrainant trois mille Anglais !...

C'est la devise de Morlaix :

'Si Anglais te mordent..., mords-les !!!'"

'Chansons de Chez Nous,' p. 66.

ST. SWITHIN.

The reply at p. 313 states that the date of the earliest example of the lion in heraldry is 1164 A.D. I can point to a very old example Before the siege of Thebes Tydeus and Polymces visited Adrastus. The one had the


a lion ' on yap lirl TMV acnriSwv o


Se Aeoi/ros. Dr. Johnson (Bos well's Life, chap, xix.) said that armorial bearings were as ancient as the siege of Thebes, and he quoted Euripides to prove it. The above passage from Apollodorus shows that they were somewhat older. E. YARDLEY.

DICKENSIANA : PHRASE OF MRS. GAMP (9 th S. vm. 324) I remember well a thick-set dwarf who used to sell pieces of cake, or it may have been pies and stood in Newgate Street on the edge of the pavement by the prison. I used to pass him nearly every schoolday as I went to St. Paul's School, 1848-57. On his stall was a circular dish of wood, of about seven or eight inches in diameter, on which were imbedded twelve or fourteen farthings, alternately head and tail. Round a pivot in the centre there worked a metal arrow which revolved very easily, and when a boy gave a halfpenny this arrow was turned rapidly round. If the point stopped in accordance with what the boy called, heads or tails he got a piece of cake (or a pie) ; but if not, then he got nothing. I do not remember that I ever speculated myself. The farthings and the metal index were always polished to a high degree of brightness.

W. D. SWEETING. Holy Trinity Vicarage, Rotherhithe.

I have seen the pieman at Magdalen Hill -Pair, near Winchester, inviting the people


in a shrill voice to " toss or buy," and have seen the tossing. The fair has been abolished for, I should think, forty years. And I know a country town in which a pieman some hundred years ago got a large fortune un- expectedly, and an old man many years dead told me that he had often "tossed that pieman for a pie." W. BENHAM.

Many a time, consule Planci patre, I used to hear a pieman call out, on Parker's Piece, Cambridge, " All hot ! Toss for a pie ! "

P. J. F. GANTILLON.

BIRTHPLACE OF LORD BEACONSFIELD (9 th S. viii. 317). I have read MR. W. L. RUTTON'S able article with much interest, but I would beg of him to spare the memory of Lord Beaconsfield. Putting up a tablet to him as suggested will not improve the street. It will merely show once more in what now degraded places many great men once lived. It is no use telling the public (even if this was done, but it is not) the place was quite different a hundred years ago ; they can only see it as it is. RALPH THOMAS.

Holden's ' Directory of London,' 1805, has " Israeli D Isaac Esq 6, King's Road, Bedford Row," and also has another "6," viz., "Israeli T D Esq 6, King's Bench Walk, Temple."

H. J. B.

ARCHBISHOP HOWLEY (9 th S. vii. 408 ; viii. 333). I am much obliged to MR. PERRY. From his statements I infer that the Arch- bishop was nephew of Louisa Gauntlett, who was married to the Rev. Lancelot Kerby, "of St. Thomas, Winchester, M.A." (Trinity Coll., Oxf.), by licence dated 24 April, 1763 (see ' Hampshire Marriage Allegations,' Harl. Soc. Publ., xxxv.). Cranley Lancelot Kerby, a son of this marriage, was baptized on 13 September, 1764, at St. Thomas's, Win- chester (parish register). He became a Winchester scholar in 1777, and, having afterwards gained a fellowship at New Col- lege, Oxford, was created B.C.L. in 1791 (cf. Kirby's ' Winchester Scholars ' and Foster's 'Alumni Oxon.'). In May, 1793, he married " Miss Clerke, d. of late Edw. C., esq., of Kings- ton, Oxfordshire." He was vicar of Whaddon, Bucks, 1793-1810 ; rector of Wheatfield, 1807- 1820; of Chinnor, 1810-1816; of Stoke Tal- mage, 1820 ; and vicar of Bampton, first portion, 1824 ; Oxfordshire livings, of which he retained the two last mentioned until his death at Stoke Talmage in September, 1857, at the venerable age of ninety-three (see 'Calendar of Institutions' at Record Office; entries in Gentleman's Magazine; Lipscomb's 'Hist, of Bucks'; Foster's 'A. O.,'