392 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



C2°d S. X. Nov. 17, '60. 



In Timmins v. Rowlinson, 3 Burr, 1603, the 

 tenant, after giving verbal notice to quit, held over; 

 the landlord distrained for double value; the ques- 

 tion was whether the tenant's notice must be in 

 writing. 



Mr. Justice Wilmot, in commenting upon the 

 two acts, said : — 



"The act of the 11th year of the late king is penned 

 differently from tiiat of the 4th, and seems to have been 

 designed to lay a less restraint upon the notice to be 

 given by the tenant, of his intention to quit, than the 

 lormer act had laid upon the landlord, in obliging him to 

 give notice in writing to his tenant ' to deliver posses- 

 sion.' 



•<The former is worded, — 'after demand made, and 

 notice in writing given.' And the reason is much stronger 

 for obliging.the landlord to give notice in writing, than 

 for obliging the tenant to do so ; for landlords generally/ 

 can write ; tenants in the country very seldom can" 



This was in 1765. 



I never heard of the practice of stripping to 

 execute a search-warrant in England. I think 

 the writer of the pamphlet must have been read- 

 ing some book ou Greek or Roman law, and have 

 confounded it with ours. 



The old manner of searching, per lancem et li- 

 cium, is mentioned by Justinian, Inst. iv. 1, as 

 obsolete ; and 1 do not believe that it was ever 

 revived. The searchers entered the suspected 

 house with nothing on but a mask and girdle. 

 Allusions to it are to be found in the comic wri- 

 ters, but I will not quote them, as all the learning 

 on the subject is collected and beautifully ar- 

 ranged in a very accessible book, Heineccii Ariti- 

 quitates Romance Jurisprudentice, ad Inst. iv. 1 . 



Strange errors have obtained as to the laws 

 affecting the Jews. Some are to be found in Bar- 

 rington's Observations on the Statutes, Lond. 1766. 

 Though generally cleared away some remain, and 

 I was surprised to see the following in the Corti- 

 Mll Magazine, Sept. 1860, p. 368 : — 



"Three fellows called Dual, Morice, and Hague were 

 the most notorious catchpoles, bailiffs, or sheriffs' officers 

 in 1730-40. The bailiffs were Christians after a sort; 

 the Jews, who were as j'et not legally tolerated in Eng- 

 land, could not officiate even as the lowest myrmidons of 

 the law ; and it was not until late in George the Third's 

 time that the Israelites took to executing ca. sas. and 

 fi. fas." 



H. B. C. 



U. U. Club. 



"How ARE YOU OFF FOB SoAP?" (2"'^ S. X.328.) 



— I am afraid the investigation of the origin and 

 precise signification of such phrases as the above 

 is likely to lead the inquirers only upon a wild- 

 goose chace, or to give rise to trivial conjectures 

 quite unworthy a place in " N. & Q." To me " it 

 is a pleasure to think that those who lived before 

 us " did often talk nonsense, as often at least as they 

 could find harmless amusement in so doing, " dulce 

 est desipere in loco : " to me the nonsense seems 



to consist in the endeavour to find out a serious 

 origin for every jocose saying which has chanced 

 to obtain currency. I can testify that the phrase 

 in question was in common use among sailors 

 more than forty years ago in the simple sense of 

 " How goes it with you ? " One of Capt. Mar- 

 ry att's jokes in Peter Simple, published nearly 

 thirty years ago, turns upon the hero, then a green- 

 horn, taking the old familiar slang, and replying 

 to it " au pied de la lettre," when addressed to 

 him by a young lady whom he met on the Boint 

 at Portsmouth: "Hullo, Reefer!" said she, "How 

 are you off for soap ? " " Thank you. Ma'am, 

 pretty well," was the modest reply. " I have six 

 packets of the best Windsor soap, and two bars of 

 salt water ! " I think, therefore, that the same 

 chaff could hardly, so recently as twenty years 

 ago, have been seriously understood on board a 

 " British 74," as having reference to the expedi- 

 ency of actually laying in a stock of that necessary 

 article preparatory to a cruise. There was some 

 joke contained in it probably, applicable only to 

 the individual addressed, perhaps an officer of 

 Marines who may have been in the habit of boring 

 his messmates by vaunting the merits of some par- 

 ticular soap of his as being superior to all other 

 kinds for use at sea ; and so the inquiry addressed 

 to him specially may have served the double pur- 

 pose of chaffing him for the hundredth time, and 

 also of conveying the welcome intelligence that 

 the ship was going to sea. It is a pity the per- 

 son who heard the joke did not inquire into the 

 application of it at the time. I certainly never 

 should have dreamt of concluding that we were 

 under sailing-orders if the first lieutenant had 

 suddenly asked me " how I was off for soap ? " 



S. H. M. 



" Scottish Dictionauy " (2''<* S. x. 267.) — 

 The author of this dictionai-y inquired for by Mr. 

 Cromek was, I have no doubt, Ebenezer Picken, 

 a Scottish poet of considerable merit. I have not 

 a copy of the dictionary, but from a note of it 

 which I made long since, it bears the following 

 title : — 



" A Dictionary of the Scottish Language containing an 

 Explanation of the Words used by the most celebrated 

 Ancient and Modern Scottish Authors, Edinburgh, 

 Printed for James Sawers, Calton Street, 1818," small 

 sized, pp. 251. 



In an advertisement at the end of " Miscella- 

 neous Poems, Songs, &c., partly in the Scottish 

 Dialect, with a copious Glossary, by Ebenezer 

 Picken, Edinburgh, 1813, 2 vols. 12mo.," he an- 

 nounces : — 



" In the press and speedily will be published a Pocket 

 Dictionary of the Scottish Dialect by Ebenezer Picken, 

 Teacher of Languages, Edinburgh. The foregoing Glos- 

 sary is merely intended as a translation of the Scottish 

 words made use of by the author in the course of the 

 present volumes. The Pocket Dictionary now to be pub- 

 lished has been the labour of a number of years, and as 



