2nd s. No 59., Feu. U. '57.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



139 



freshall, Essex. It is built of red brick through- 

 out, without any stone, in the Early English or 

 first Pointed style; the date is about 1150, per- 

 haps a little earlier. When I saw it last, and 

 made some plans of it, it was used as a barn, but 

 it is now, I hear, either about to be or actually 

 restored. J. C. J. 



The Welsh " Ap " (2"'' S. iii. 90.) — It appears 

 from the case of Doe d. Griffith v. Pritchard, 5 

 Barnewall and Adolphus's Reports, 765, that the 

 patronymic system of names prevailed in North 

 Wales within the last ninety years. The question 

 in that case arose upon a lease of lands in Merion- 

 ethshire, granted in 1775 to one Evan Griffith for 

 his own life and the lives of his son and daughter 

 Humphrey Evans and Elizabeth Evans. In the 

 vernacular tongue Humphrey was most probably 

 spoken of as Humphrey ap Evan. David Gam. 



" Thomas ap Richard ap Howel ap Jevan Vj'chan, 

 Lord of Mostyn, and his brother Piers, founder of the 

 family of Trelacre, were the first who abridged their 

 names, and that on the following occasion. Kowland 

 Lee, Bishop of Lichfield, and President of the Marches of 

 Wales in the reign of Henry VIII., sat at one of the 

 courts on a Welsh cause, and wearied with the quantit3' 

 of Aps in the jury, directed that the panel should assume 

 their last name, or that of their residence, and that 

 Thomas ap Richard ap Howe! ap Jevan Vychan should 

 for the future be reduced to the poor dissyllable Mostyn, 

 to the mortification no doubt of many an ancient line." — 

 Pennant's Wales, p. 12. ed. 1778. 



F. R. I. 



Soft Sawde?' (2'"' S. iii. 108.) — This term had 

 its origin nearer home than either Canada or the 

 United States, as supposed by your correspondent 

 W. W. Coppersmiths and brass workers, as well 

 as goldsmiths, have two descriptions of solder : one 

 of hard metal, which is the genuine article ; one of 

 the soft amalgam, which only holds together for 

 the moment, but yields to the first strain. Flat- 

 tery, like " soft solder," or as it is vulgarly pro- 

 nounced, satvder, is the mere deception meant to 

 be implied by the figure, which has pressed this 

 term into its service. J. E. T. 



Flayers Carted (2"'' S. iii. 91.) — Carting was a 

 punishment formerly inflicted for petty larceny ; 

 the culprit was tied to the cart tail and whipped 

 by the common executioner, to whose discretion 

 the amount of punishment to be inflicted was left. 



A carted bawd meant one who had been placed 

 in a cart or tumbril and led through the town, to 

 make her person known to the inhabitants. liyS. 



A Tailor's Gravestone (2"*^ S. iii. 66.) — The 

 headstone about which G. N. writes is still in the 

 Paisley Abbey churchyard. There is little doubt 

 when it was shown to G. N. that the rude carving 

 represented the tailor's shears in the act of cutting 

 a louse, he was the subject of a joke which has 



often been perpetrated by garrulous gravediggers 

 on visitors to the auld kirkyard here. The same 

 joke was attempted on Mr. Charles Mackie, from 

 whose History of the Abbey of Paisley 1 beg to 

 quote as follows : 



" There is a curious tombstone in the churchyard, 

 having an open scissors carved on it, between the blades 

 of which is what had once been a fleur-de-lis ; below is a 

 'tailor's goose,' date 1704. On the other side is an in- 

 scription bearing that it is erected to ' George Matthy, 

 Taylzeour.' This stone having attracted my notice, I 

 was gravely told by my attendant that the extended 

 scissors Avas represented in the act of clipping a louse. By 

 this uncouth, though very natural idea, which has been 

 assisted by the almost obliterated figure on the stone-part 

 of the escutcheon of the worthy tailor, and in which 

 vulgar prejudice may have had its share, the exalted 

 emblem of Faith, Hope, and Charit3', has been converted 

 into a creeping thing." 



Jamis J. Lamb. 



Underwood Cottage, Paisley. 



If G. N. will consult a paper in the fifth volume 

 of the Archceological Journal, p. 253., " On Sepul- 

 chral Slabs in the Counties of Northumberland 

 and Durham," he will find much on the subject of 

 shears being cut on gravestones, and an argument 

 to prove that they are not meant to point out the 

 employment, but the sex of those whose remains 

 they cover. I should much like to see the sub- 

 ject of the marks on these ancient incised stones 

 discussed by some well-informed antiquary in 

 " N. & Q." The animal mentioned by G, N. has 

 no doubt been added as a joke long after the 

 original sculpture was executed. C, de D. 



NOTES ON BOOKS, ETC. 



Mr. Murray seems determined to do his part to keep 

 alive a love for the poetry of Byron. To the many 

 handsome and' portable editions of the Poet which have 

 issued from Albemarle Street, another has just been 

 added, which, in compactness of size, and clearness and 

 beauty of type, is a model of a book for a Traveller's 

 Library. Mr. Murray's object has been to produce an 

 edition of Tlie Poetical Works of Lord Byron, Complete, in 

 a form which should not encumber the portmanteau or 

 carpet-bag of the Tourist — and certainly he has accom- 

 plished that object in an admirable manner. A more 

 beautiful specimen of typography we have never seen. 



We have received a 'little book entiled William Shak- 

 speare not an Impostor, by An English Critic, in which " the 

 Author has endeavoured to collect, within the compass 

 of a small volume, the historical documents and the 

 testimonies of the Poet's contemporaries, by which the 

 claim of William Shakspeare to the authorship of the 

 six-and-thirty plays published in the folio edition of 

 1623 is clearly established." We should have thought, 

 despite the ingenuity of the Baconian theory, such a 

 work uncalled tor ; but we are verj' glad that it has ap- 

 peared, as it enables us to correct the impression that we 

 are believers in the theory put forth by Mr. Smith. If 

 there be one article of literary faith for which more than 

 another we should be prepared to encounter fire and 



