Peb. 21. 1852.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



173 



with that good seed? No ; it is iii the keeping of the 

 king of Fai/ries, and fie, I know, will do me no harm, 

 although I should watch it again ; yet had he utterly 

 forgotten this king's name, upon whose kindness he so 

 presumed, until I remembered it unto him out of my 

 reading in Huon of Burdeaux. 



" And having made this answer, he began to pose me 

 fhus : S% you are a scholar, and I am none : Tell me 

 what said the angel to our Lady? or what conference 

 had our Lady with her cousin Elizabeth concerning 

 the birth of St. John the Baptist ? 



" As if his intention had been to make bystanders 

 believe tliat he knew somewhat more on this point 

 than was written in such books as I use to read. 



" Howbeit the meaning of his riddle I quickly con- 

 ceived, and he confessed to be this ; that the angel did 

 foretell Jolin Baptist should be born at that very in- 

 slant, in which the Fernseed, at other times invisible, 

 did fall : intimating further (as far as I could then 

 perceive) that this saint of God had some extraordinary 

 vertue from the time or circumstance of his birth." — 

 JTuckson's Works, book v. cap. xix. 8. vol. i. p. 916. 

 Lond. 1673, fol. 



In the sixth and seventh sections of the same 

 chapter and book I find allusions to a maiden over 

 whom Satan had no power " so long as she had 

 vervine and St. John's grass about her;" to the 

 danger of " robbing a swallow's nest built in a 

 fire-house ; " and to the virtues of " south-running 

 water." Delrius also is referred to as Having col- 

 iccted many similar instances. 



I have not access to Delrius, nor yet to Huon 

 of Burdeaux, and so am compelled deeply to regret 

 that the good doctor did not leave on record the 

 name of the " king of the Fayries." * Rt. 



Cornish Folk Lore. — A recent old cottage 

 tenant at Poliphant, near Launceston, when asked 

 why he allowed a hole in the wall of his house to 

 remain unrepaired, answered that he would not 

 have it stopped up on any account, as he left it on 

 purpose for the pishies (Cornish for pixien) to come 

 in and out as tliey had done for many years. This 

 is only a sample of the current belief and action. 



S.II.P. 



DICTIONARV OF ARCHAIC AND PBOVINCIAL WORDS. 



Will you allow me to suggest that, under the 

 »bove, or some such heading, " N. & Q." should 

 receive any words not to be found in any well- 

 known dictionary ; such, for instance, as Halli- 

 well's or Webster's, which do not by any means 

 contain all the words belonging to the class of 

 wliich they profess to be the repositories. You 

 anay also invite barristers, reporters, professional 

 men generally, and others, to send such waifs of 

 tliis description as they meet with. "N. & Q." 



* [ Oberon is his name, which Mr. Keightley shows 

 to be identical with Elberich. See Fuiry Mythology, 

 p. SOS. (ed. 1850). — Ed.] 



will then soon become in this department of litera- 

 ture, as it is already in many others, a rich mine 

 from which future authors will draw precious store 

 of knowledge. I will begin by giving one or two 

 examples. 



!Earth-burn. An intermittent land-spring, which 

 may not show itself for several years. There is 

 such a spring, and so named, near to Epsom. 



Lavant. A land-spring, according to Halliwell. 

 But this also is an intermittent spring. The word 

 is probably from lava, to flow. 



Pick. (Lancashire.) To push with the hand. 

 " I gen her a pick ; " that is, " I pushed her irom 

 me ; " or, "■ I gave her a violent push forward." 



Pick is also the instrument colliers get coals 

 with ; or an excavator gets earth with ; or a 

 stonemason uses to take the " rough " ofi" a stone. 

 He may also finish the face of ashlar by " fine- 

 picking" it. 



Gere. (Lancashire.) A contraction of the word 

 gave. Robert Kawlinson. 



P.S. — I have seen, in a court of justice in Lan- 

 cashire, judge and counsel fairly set fast with a 

 broad spoken county person ; and many of the 

 words in common use are not to be found in any 

 dictionary or glossary. Again, I have spoken to 

 reporters as to technical words used at such meet- 

 ings, for instance, as those of the mechanical en- 

 gineers in Birmingham, and I have been informed 

 that they are frequently bewildered and surprised 

 at the numbers of words in use having the same 

 meaning, but which are not to be found in any 

 dictionary. It would be of the utiuost value to 

 seize and fix these words. 11. R. 



[The proposal of our correspondent jumps so com- 

 pletely with the object of " N. & Q.," as announced in 

 our original Prospectus, that we not only insert it, but 

 hope that his invitation will be responded to by all who 

 meet with archaisms either in their reading or in tlieir 

 intercourse with natives of those various districts of 

 England which are richest in provincialisms. — Ed.] 



THE LAST OF THE PAL^OLOGL 



In Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, vol. xvii. p. 24., 

 there is a very interesting article, bearing the 

 above heading, in which it is shown that Theo- 

 dore Palajologus, the fourth in direct descent from 

 Thomas, the younger brother of Constantine, the 

 last Christian Emperor of Greece, lies buried in 

 the church of Landulph in Cornwall. This Theo- 

 dore married Mary, the daughter of William Balls, 

 of Hadley in Suffolk, gentleman; by whom he 

 had issue five children, Theodore, John, Ferdi- 

 nando, Maria, and Dorothy. Tlieodore, the first 

 son, died in or about 1693, without issue. Of John 

 and Ferdinando there is no trace in this country. 

 Maria died unmarried ; and Dorothy was married 

 at Landulph to William Arundell in 1636, and 

 died in 1681. 



