Feb. 7. 1852.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



137 



tion of corpse-candles, illuminated church-yards, 

 and other articles of Welsh and English super- 

 stition. Aubrey tells us, that " when any Chris- 

 tian is drowned in the river Dee, there will appear 

 over the water where the corpse is a light, by 

 which means they do find the body." The Welsh 

 also to this day believe that the body of a secretly 

 buried person may be discovered by the lambent 

 blue flame which hovers round the grave at night. 

 I would also refer Dr. Maitland to Baxter's 

 Certainty of the World of Spirits, and the cliapter 

 on " Spectral Lights" in Mrs. Crowe's iV;^Af-«irfe 

 of Nature. T. Sternberg. 



Epigram on Burnet (Vol. v., p. 58.). — Odd 

 enough! — at the moment when your No. 116. 

 reached me, a volume of the State Poems was 

 before me, in which I read the very epigram to 

 which your correspondent alludes, where it thus 

 stands : — 



" ELEGY ON COLEMAN. 



" If heaven be pleased, when sinners cease to sin, 

 Jf hell be pleased, when souls are damned therein. 

 If earth be pleased, when its rid of a knave. 

 Then all are pleased, for Coleman's in his grave." 

 State Poems, vol. iii. 1704. 



Who was Coleman ? James Cornish. 



[We arc indebted to another correspondent, Louisa 

 Julia Norma n-, for pointing out the same epigram on 

 Coleman in The Panorama of Wit (1809). Coleman, 

 on whom the epigram appears to have been originally- 

 written, is obviously the Jesuit of that name executed 

 in the reign of Charles II.] 



" Son of the Morning " (Vol. iv., pp. 209. 330. 

 391.). — As none of your correspondents have been 

 able to explain the meaning of this passage in 

 Childe Harold, I may now tell you that the phi'ase 

 is an orientalism for " traveller," in allusion to 

 their early rising to avoid the heat of the mid-day 

 sun. Lord Byron invites the traveller to visit 

 the ruins of Greece, but not to molest them as 

 some former travellers had done; then he turns 

 upon Lord Elgin, and attacks him for his misdeeds 

 in that way. An old Bengal Civilian. 



Haberdasher (Vol. ii., pp. 167. 253.).— In Todd's 

 edition of Jolmson's Dictionary, the word haber- 

 dasher is derived from berdash, which is said " to 

 have been a name formerly used in England for a 

 certain kind of neck-dress, whence the maker or 

 seller of such clothes was called a berdasher; and 

 tJience comes haberdashers." This etymology is 

 hanlly admissible. Can an early reference be 

 given to the use of the term berdash, as an article 

 of dress ? Minsbeu, Todd remarks, ingeniously 

 deduces it from Habt ihr dass, German, Have you 

 this ? the expression of a shopkeeper offering his 

 wares to sell. But the derivation of the term 

 haberdasher furnished by your correspondent (Vol. 

 ii., p. 253.) is certainly the most satisfactory. 



At the end of the sixteenth century (about 

 1580) the shopkeepers that went under this desig- 

 nation dealt largely in most of the minor articles 

 of foreign manufacture ; and among the "haber- 

 dashery " of that period were " daggers, swords, 

 owches, broaches, aiglets, Spanish girdles, French 

 cloths, Milan caps, glasses, painted cruizes, dials, 

 tables, cards, balls, puppets, ink-horns, tooth-picks, 

 fine earthen pots, pins and points, hawks' bells, 

 salt-cellars, spoons, knives, and tin dishes." A yet 

 more curious list of goods vended by the " millo- 

 ners or haberdashers" who dwelt at the Royal 

 Exchange within two or three years after it had 

 been built, occurs in Stow's Annals by Howe 

 (p. 869.), whei'e we are informed that they " sould 

 mouse-trappes, bird-cages, shooing-hornes, lan- 

 thornes, and Jew's trumpes." 



The author of that curious tract, Maroccus Ex- 

 taticus, 1595 (which I reprinted in the Percy 

 Society) speaks of a " felow " loading his sleeve 

 with " fuel from the haberdashers." 



Tiie more ancient name of these traders was 

 milainers, an appellation derived from their dealing 

 in merchandize chiefly imported from the city of 

 Milan. They were also, 1 believe, called hurrerSy 

 from dealing in hats and caps. 



It is evident, from the above, that " a retailer 

 of goods, a dealer in small wares," is the true 

 meaning of the word haberdasher. 



Edward F. Rimbault. 



Vincent Kidder (Vol. iv., p. 502.). — The ances- 

 tors of this personage resided at a house called the 

 " Hole," in the parish of Maresfield. In the time 

 of Henry VII., and earlier, they held the office of 

 bailiffs of the Forest of Ashdown, otherwise called 

 Lancaster Great Park. I believe that most of the 

 existing families of Kidder are branches of this 

 parent stock. From a branch long settled at 

 Lewes sprang Dr. Kidder, Bishop of Bath and 

 Wells, who lost his life in the great storm of 1703. 

 I believe that the Irish branch had previously been 

 settled in London. A third branch settled in the 

 American colonies in the seventeenth century, and 

 has produced a highly respectable and wealthy 

 progeny still resident in the New England states, 

 and elsewhere. I have at hand materials for a 

 complete pedigree of the Sussex or elder line of 

 the family, down to the time of its extinction. 

 Perhaps your correspondent will communicate 

 with me on this subject by a private letter. 



Mark Antony Lower. 

 Lewes. 



Tripos, What is the Origin of the Term ? 

 (Vol. iv., p. 4S4.). — Tripos, a long piece of white 

 and brown paper, like that on which the com- 

 monest ballads are printed, containing Latin hexa- 

 meter verses, with the authoi-'s name, &c. The 

 Cambridge tripos, it has been conjectured, was 

 probably in ohl time delivered, like the Terree 



