592 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 138. 



♦' What did he doe with her tongue so rough ? 

 With, &c. 

 Unto the violl it spake enough ; 

 With, &c. 



" What did he doe with her two shinues ? 

 With, &e. 

 Unto the violl they dane'd Moll Syms; 

 With, &c. 



" Then bespake the treble string, 

 With, &c. 

 O yonder is my father the king; 

 With, &c. 



" Then bespake the second string, 

 With, &c, 

 O yonder sitts my mother the queen ; 

 With, &c. 



" And then bespake the strings all three ; 

 With, &c, 

 O yonder is my sister that drowned mee. 

 With, &c. 



" Now pay the miller for his pavne. 

 With, &c. 

 And let him bee gone in the divel's name. 

 With, &c." 



As this old ditty turns upon the making " a viol," 

 it may be as well to add that this instrument was 

 the precursor of the violin : but while the viol was 

 the instrument of the higher classes of society, the 

 " fiddle" served only for the amusement of the 

 lower. The viol was entirely out of use at the 

 beginning of the last century. 



Moll (or Mall) Sjmms (mentioned in the thir- 

 teenth stanza) was a celebrated dance tune of the 

 sixteenth century. The musical notes may be 

 found in Queen Elizabeths Virginal Book, in tlie 

 Pitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; and in the 

 curious Dutch collection, Neder Lantsche Gedenck 

 clank, Haerlem, 1626. Edward F. Rimbault. 



SURNAMES. 



(Vol. v., p. 509.) 



I shall endeavour to answer some of Mr. Lower's 

 Queries. 



1. Names having the prefix Le and ending in 

 er or re. They are undoubtedly Norman or 

 French, and generally relate to personal trade 

 or employment, as Le Mesurier, Le Tellier, Le 

 Ihnneur, Le Fevre. Another class with the prefix 

 ie, but of various terminations, are obviously of 

 French origin, as Leblanc, Lenoir, Lebreton, Le- 

 chaplin, Lemarchant. All these came to us by 

 the French Protestant refugees, or from Jersey 

 and Guernsey. 



2. The meaning of ifTorf A. This word generally 

 implies a military work, and, I think, an earth- 



work ; and I doubt whether worth and earth are 

 not from the same root ; I personally have been 

 able to trace ivorks in many places whose names 

 end in worth. I am 'satisfied all such surnames 

 were local, that Is, derived from places so named 

 from military mounds or earth-vjorks. 



3. The meaning of Le Chaloneur. It is evi- 

 dently the same as our English name Challone7\ 

 which Cole admits into his dictionary as " the 

 name of an ancient family." It means in old 

 French either the boatman, from "chalun," a boat; 

 or a. fisherman, from "chalon," a kind of net. As 

 we have in English Fisher, in modern French 

 Lepecheur, in Italian Piscatory. 



4. Le Cayser. The same as Ccesar, a name 

 now, we believe, extinct amongst us, but pre- 

 served In our literature by Lord Clarendon and 

 Pope. I suspect that It was of a class oi fanctf, 

 names which I shall mention presently. 



5. Baird and AIrd are Scotch names, and probably- 

 local. Jameson (whose authority Is very low with 

 me) derives Baird from bard, and Aird he does 

 not mention. Aird or ard Is Celtic for high, and 

 Is a common local denomination in Scotland and 

 Ireland. 



6. For the rest of the out-of-the-way names 

 Mr. Lower mentions I can give no more explana- 

 tion than of many thousands others which have 

 been probably produced by some peculiarity or 

 Incidents in the first nominee, or some corruption 

 of a belter known name. As to this class of fancy 

 names, I can give Mr. Lower a hint that may be 

 of use to him. It used to be the custom at the old 

 Foundling Hospital and In all parish workhouses, 

 to give the children what I venture to call fancy 

 names. I remember being shocked at the hetero- 

 geneous nomenclature that was outpoured on 

 fifty or a hundred poor babes at the Foundling. 

 I happened once to accompany a noble lady — the 

 daughter of a great sea officer — to one of these 

 Foundling christenings, when the names of Howe, 

 Duncan, Jervis, and Nelson, were in fashion, and 

 they were each given to half-a-dozen children ; 

 and while this was going on, my fair and noble 

 friend whispered me, " What a shame ! all these 

 poor little creatures will grow up to be our 

 cousins." Sometimes the names given were gro- 

 tesque, such as ought not to have been permitted ; 

 and sometimes the children brought into the 

 hospital, pinned to their clothes, names in which I 

 suppose the poor mother may have had a meaning, 

 but which seemed to us fantastical and extra- 

 vagant. 



Illegitimacy is a considerable source of strange 

 names. I could give some droll instances. Cor- 

 ruption is another ; there are half-a-dozen names 

 of labourers In my village which are mere cor- 

 ruptions by vulgar pronunciation of some of the 

 noblest names of the peerage. 



Mr. Lower cannot have failed to observe the 



