on some twenty pounds a-year as teacher of an adventure school in Liddesdale. I have met several persons who were acquainted with him— all of whom spoke most kindly of his talents and amiable disposition. Yet with the single exception of his dear friend, Mr. Robert White of Newcastle, a man of large-hearted benevolence, I believe few persons sought to mitigate to him the pressure of poverty. About ten years ago I originated an association in Scotland for the relief of literary Scotsmen in circumstances of indigence. Lord Chancellor Campbell became our president. Lord Brougham and the present Lord Bishop of London gave their hearty encouragement to the scheme; and Sir Archibald Alison, Bart., became one of our vice-presidents. There were about two hundred members, and our

fund was fully 2001. per annum. But some petty differences occurred. I thought of allowing one of the dissentient parties to rule the institution in their own way, by retiring from the management. After rescinding the original purpose of the institution, they allowed it to fall to pieces. The remaining funds and the books of the society, which was termed the Scottish Literary Institute, are, I believe, in the hands of a lawyer or accountant in Glasgow. I have never ceased to regret the downfall of this institution. I do so now, when I think of the indigent condition of James Telfer. CHARLES ROGERS, LL.D. 2, Heath Terrace, Lewisham, S.E.

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LADY NAIRN (3rd S. xii. 451.)-MR. SIDNEY GILPIN refers to Lady Nairn. Beside the "Land o' the Leal," she was the author of "Caller Herrin'," "The Laird o' Cockpen," "My ain kind dearie O," "O weel's me on my ain man,' "Kind Robin lo'es me," "Saw ye nae my Peggy," "Gude nicht and joy be wi' ye a'," "Cauld kail in Aberdeen," "He's owre the hills that I lo'e weel," "The Lass o' Gowrie," "There grows a bonnie brier bush," "John Tod," "Will ye no come back again?" "Jamie the Laird," "The Hundred Pipers," and other popular songs. I had the satisfaction of publishing a memoir of Lady Nairn in the Modern Scottish Minstrel (vol. i. 1855), from information supplied by her ladyship's relations and surviving friends. She was a gentlewoman of remarkable diffidence, and to the last refused be known as a song-writer. She died in 1845, at the age of seventy-nine. CHARLES ROGERS, LL.D. 2, Heath Terrace, Lewisham, S.E.

LINKUMDODDIE (3rd S. xi. 77, 491; xii. 361.)-The communication of V. S. V. is an instance of how statements are intensified in the process of being repeated by one person after another, like the old story of the three black crows. V. S. V. asserts positively that the place is situated so and

so. The learned historian of the county of Peebles most carefully guards himself by an "are said."

No one, however, has brought forward an inhabitant of the place as the prototype of Willie Wastle, which, considering the date when Burns wrote, is hardly conceivable if the poet referred to a real person and a real place.

The records are entirely silent as to the existence of such a place. It at the same time must not be passed without notice, that the succession to the lands of Polmood, to which it appears to belong. was an exciting subject some fifty years ago, when the idea of being sib to Polmood sent many a one to consult the lawyers.

I suppose that the source of the lines is the epitaph which Johnson quoted to Boswell from Camden's Remains. (Vide Croker's Boswell's Life of Johnson, c. lxxvi. p. 729):

"Boswell. When a man is the aggressor, and by ill usage forces on a duel in which he is killed, have we not little ground to hope that he is gone to a state of happiness?

"Johnson. Sir, we are not to judge determinately of the state in which a man leaves this life. He may in a moment have repented effectually, and, it is possible, may have been accepted of God. There is in Camden's Remains an epitaph upon a very wicked man, who was killed by a fall from his horse, in which he is supposed to

say

"For hapnyt ony to slyd and fall, He suld sone be to-fruschyt all.”

Barbour's Brus, ed. Jamieson, p. 207.

That is, "For, if any one had happened to slide and fall, he would soon have been broken-in-pieces utterly." WALTER W. SKEAT. Cambridge. YEMANRIE (3rd S. xii. 462.)-This question turns on the etymology of yeoman. In opposition to the theory that derives it from young man, a better idea is to explain the root yeo by the German gau, Moso-Gothic gawi, Anglo-Saxon ga, a province or shire. What the Anglo-Saxon ga was, and, by way of consequence, what a yeoman was, will be found explained at great length in Turner's History of the Anglo-Saxons.

WALTER W. SKEAT.

"PERISH COMMERCE! LET THE CONSTITUTION LIVE" (3rd S. ix. 453.)-These memorable words, long ascribed to Wm. Windham, but first pronounced by George Hardinge, the Welsh judge, sound very like the often-quoted "Périssent les colonies plutôt qu'un principe," and "Périsse l'univers, pourvu que je me venge," in Cyrano's Agrippine (1653); who may very possibly have taken the idea from Corneille's Rodogune (1648): "Tombe sur moi le ciel, pourvu que je me venge." P. A. L.

SHELLEY'S "TALL FLOWER" (3rd S. xii. 466.)I think the foxglove is not the flower alluded to. It blossoms in summer, and he enumerates only spring flowers. I should rather suppose him to mean the daffodil, or its congeners, the jonquil and narcissus. The daffodil is remarkable for holding wet, and scattering it when agitated by the wind. F. C. H.

LITERARY PSEUDONYMS (3rd S. viii. 498.)-Has not your correspondent, W. CAREW HAZLITT, made a mistake in saying "Prefixed to Richard Grenaway's (which, by the way, is spelled Grenewey) translation of the Annales of Tacitus, 1598, edition of the Annales in my library. It is dedithere is an epistle signed 'A. B.'"? I have this cated in sufficiently laudatory terms "To the Right Honorable Robert Earle of Essex and Ewe." There is a short address to the reader by Grenewey, but no epistle. Bound up in the same volume with the Annales, there is "The Ende of Nero and Beginning of Galba. Fower Bookes of the Histories of Cornelius Tacitus. The Life of Agricola. The Second Edition, MDXCVIII." This translation was written by Sir Henry Saville, and first appeared in 1591. Sir Henry dedicates his work to Queen Elizabeth, and following the dedication is "A. B. to the Reader." This is no doubt the epistle referred to by your correspondent. Its energy and boldness of language quite prepare me to believe that "A. B." was the Earl of Essex. The importance of minute accuracy in "N. & Q." forms my excuse for this note. Dalkeith.

J. S. G.

"HISTORY OF HADDINGTON

This work appeared in 1844, in 8vo, with the fol(3rd S. x. 168.) lowing title-page:

being of the Christian era; and if not, from what corresponding Indian era has it been taken?

2. Does the work referred to contain any other dates, and can it be made use of for verifying upwards of sixty historical dates given separately in the Bâl and Âdhbhutya, or the Adhyatma Râmâyana, both purporting to be derived from the great original work by Vâlmiki ?

3. Are the births of the brothers Lava, the founder of the Bargujar dynasty of Lahor, and Kusa of Kussoor, that of the Kachchwâhâs of Kachchwâgâr and Jaipur, separately accounted for, or are they described in it as being twins?

4. What account does it give of the name, parentage, and tribe, of the chief to whom it is dedicated, or of the writer by whom it was R. R. W. ELLIS. transcribed ?

the late Thomas Crofton Croker's branch, are deduced from Edward, a younger son of Thomas Croker of Trevellas, in Cornwall, and his wife Margery Gyll. Now, the visitation of Cornwall of 1620 allows only two sons of this Thomas and Margery-John and Hugh; so that if they had a brother Edward, he must have been born after 1620. But Edward, said to have come to Ireland, had a son born about 1624, and a grandson born in 1653; so that he (Edward) could not have been born after 1620, the date of the visitation, which may be seen in the Harleian MS. 1142. The visitations are particular in containing all of the existing generation. It therefore will require strong evidence to support the above extraction of the family.

It is so easy to set a graft on an old stock, that the point of divergence of branches is peculiarly open to suspicion. Many families who migrated to Ireland have been tacked to old English pedigrees without, I fear, any warrant. The Bernards, now represented by the Earl of Bandon, have been lately deduced by Sir Bernard Burke from a supposed very ancient and important and knightly family of Bernard of Acornbank, in Westmoreland, who, I verily believe, never existed. At least they are not noticed in Nicholson and Burns' History of that county, nor in any of the manuscripts in the British Museum which have been indexed by Mr. Sims,-nor, I may add, in Sir Bernard Burke's Armory. Acornbank was the C. D. seat of the Dalston family.

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SEEING IN THE DARK (3rd S. xii. 106, 471.)— HARFRA says, that in the case of the lady he mentioned, he "said nothing about her having congestion of the brain." Certainly he did not use this precise form of words, but he told us (3rd S. xii. 178) that she was troubled with blood to the head." Now really this is a distinction without a difference; for one knows it was not an irregularity in the circulation of blood through the bones, or other parts composing the human head, that could influence this lady's sight. It could be affected only by the blood-supply to the brain and eyes, and therefore HARFRA's "blood to the head" and my "congestion of the brain” are really synonymous terms.

MR. WETHERELL quotes Isidore as if he were an authority on this subject of seeing in the dark. Now all that Isidore of Seville in his Origines had to do, was to give definitions of various words; and in the course of his work he explains the meaning of the word Nyctalopia, as used by writers on eye-diseases. He does not pretend to give any medical opinion of his own. The physiological views of ophthalmic writers anterior to the seventh century, when Isidore of Seville flourished, have of course no value whatOPHTHALMOSOPHOS. ever at the present day.

MR. GAY'S FABLES, WITH BEWICK'S WOODCUTS (3rd S. xii. 461.)-I have not the least doubt that the wood-cuts in the small volume of Gay's Fables, printed in 1806, are by Bewick, having been familiar with them at that date, when we used to read Gay's Fables as a school-book. The wood-blocks have, moreover, been wonderfully preserved, and done service in various editions, even so recently as 1834. For I have a small copy printed in that year for Longman and Co., and from early recollections I am sure of the identity of each one of the wood-cuts. I have also an edition of that favourite old book, The Looking-glass of the Mind, taken from Berquin's Ami des Enfans, which has also the original wood-cuts by Bewick. The engravings in both these works are very valuable, not only for their originality and spirited, though rude, execution, but for their exhibiting accurate delineations of the dress and habits of the latter part of the last century.

F. C. II.

INSCRIPTION AT BAKEWELL (3rd S. xii. 461.) The passage of Juvenal referred to (x. 172, 3) is

"Mors sola fatetur Quantula sint nominum corpuscula," and the words "sola fatetur" are probably those wanting to complete the first line of the inscription. The second line requires such a word as "perit," "death is swallowed up in piety," or perhaps "minor;" as, however small our mortal bodies may be, yet death, though subject to none, is yet overcome by, and so becomes less than piety. The writer having quoted one classical author, may have had in his mind another, and the "Victor jacet pietas" of Ovid (M. i. 149), would supply an ending to the epitaph in the word "jacet." Adopting Gifford's version of the passage from Juvenal, the whole may be paraphrased

thus:

"Death, the great teacher, Death alone proclaims
The true dimensions of our puny frames;
Yet death, that now obedience yields to none,
His conqueror in piety shall own," &c.

W. E. BUCKLEY.

THE NAME OF SHEFFIELD (3rd S. ix. 409.) I think W., the friend of your correspondent H. J., is likely to be correct in his assumption that the name of Sheffield is a corruption of the Danish "Skjev-Fjeld," signifying a "sloping hill or mountain." At Leeds, just on the outskirt of the town, there is, leading down from the locality of Woodhouse to Woodhouse Carr, a piece of ground which has been known as "Shay Field," for "time out of mind," as the saying runs. There are buildings there now, which may have given another. name to the place, but they are only of recent erection, and "Shay Field" is in everybody's mouth yet thereabouts. The field was a

very long one, was an easy even slope from top to bottom, and was, in short, a smooth hill-side, needing more breath to get up than old people could well spare. The peculiar character of the ground is continued on both sides, and will be above a quarter of a mile in extent, forming a high knoll at one and another point, for a good deal of it remains grass land. "Shay Field" was the only enclosure about that was not strictly private property, as the congregation of pig-sties at the bottom sufficiently evidenced; hence the limited application of the local name.

C. C. R.

PRAYING FOR HUSBANDS (3rd S. viii. 205.) —

At least the tradition of this as an old custom

may be inferred from the talk in some of the villages of North Yorkshire. The servant-girls will tell you how that once one of their number stipulated with a bargaining mistress at a statutehiring, that she should be allowed ten minutes every day at noon to go pray for a husband in. The following story is current in one quarter "Mrs. S-, who had lived as housekeeper with a Catholic family near York (names and places being specified) for many years, had engaged one servant who became an object of curiosity to the rest of the maids; for as regularly as noon came, she would leave off work and go to her chamber. By-and-by it was whispered about that their fellow-servant spent the time in praying for a husband. One day one of the men hid himself in a closet adjoining the devotee's room, and waited her arrival. At the usual time she came, and kneeling before her little framed picture of the Virgin and Child, began, and continued for a length of time: A husband! a husband! sweet Mary, a husband! Send him soon, an' he may be owt but a tailor'-ought but a tailor. 'Nowt [nothing] but a tailor!" the man at last shouted. She responded at once: 'Ho'd thee noise, little Jesus, an' let thee mother speak.'Nowt but a tailor!' as sharply replied the man again. Nay, owt but a tailor, owt but a tailor, but a tailor rather than nowt, good Lord.'" I beg to share responsibility here with somebody-I don't care who. C. C. R.

JEAN ETIENNE LIOTARD (3rd S. ix. 473.)-In reply to J.'s query, I cannot say "whether Liotard painted life-size portraits in oil while in England"; but I saw in his family in Amsterdam, a few years ago, a large room hung round with a considerable number of life-size crayons (pastel) by him, which were full of life: one amongst others in a Turkish costume-a portrait of himself.

P. A. L. DORKING, SURREY (3rd S. xii. 461.) I have the second edition of this work, published 1823, by John Timbs. D. D. H.