2'«« S. No 51, Dec. S7. *56.^ 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



517 



meraet, a.d. 1533, seems to have been a very 

 difl'erent person from the ex-Lord Chancellor. 

 According to Hutchins, he was descended from 

 the second son of a family who took their name of 

 More, or Attemore, from a manor in the parish of 

 Marnhull, co. Dorset, still called More, or More- 

 side. His ancestor obtained the estate of Mel- 

 plaish, in the same county, by marrying an heiress 

 of that name. It is just possible that the docu- 

 ment to which Mb. Gairdneb refers may have 

 some connexion with a somewhat remarkable 

 frolic of which the sheriflf was himself guilty, viz. 

 setting open the prison doors at Dorchester, by 

 which the prisoners escaped. For this misde- 

 meanour, we are told, he was obliged to solicit a 

 pardon, which was obtained by means of Wm. 

 Lord Paulet, afterwards Marquess of Winton, then 

 Lord Treasurer, on condition that he should 

 marry one of his daughters and co-heiresses to his 

 second son. Lord Thomas Paulet, of Corsington, 

 CO. Somerset ; by which the estates of Melplaish 

 came to that family. 



It is just possible that there may have been 

 some kindred between the frolicsome sheriff and 

 his far more famous namesake. Both of their 

 families bore three moor cocks, it would appear, 

 though with a difference in their arms ; and, as is 

 well known, the chancellor was bred up in the 

 household of a Dorsetshire Archbishop of Canter- 

 bury, Cardinal Morton. I fear, however, that his 

 origin has been too long unascertained to make 

 this inquiry a very hopeful one. 



C. W. Bingham. 



Furious Cocks (2"* S. ii. 411.) — Some game 

 cocks have a fancy for attacking human beings ; 

 such birds are said to be " man keen." I have 

 known a game cork attack a child just in the way 

 Mr. Bingham describes. 



A still more curious case was that of a cock 

 pheasant, wild in a game cover. Females were 

 his especial aversion, and as the plantation he fre- 

 quented was skirted by a footpath, he was much 

 dreaded by them. Surely this must be a species 

 of insanity in birds. P. P. 



Spiders' Webs (2"^ S. ii. 450.) — Akachne will 

 find, in the Penny Magazine (vol. iii. p. 131.), a 

 very interesting article on " Spiders and their 

 Webs;" and in the volume, Insect Architecture, 

 there are some curious details relating to the con- 

 trivances of Mason Spiders. Rennie's Alphabet of 

 Insects also contains some valuable information. 



Job. 



Horse Chestnut and Chestnut Horse (2"^ S. ii. 

 370.) — Not Queen Anne, but George III., unless 

 Colonel Mattliew was quoting an old joke. Co- 

 lonel Matfliew was a Foxite, and Mr. Matthew 

 Montague was a friend of Hannah More and 

 \Vilber(orce. See the whole anecdote in Roberts's 

 Life of Hannah More. P. P. 



The Cuckoo (2'"« S. i. 386. 523.) — Some time 

 ago, I copied the following from a Dublin news- 

 paper (Saunders, Aug. 23, 1839), which perhaps 

 you may consider worthy of a nook in " N. & Q. :" 



" Natural sounds have seldom been so felicitous, and so 

 generally imitated, as the word ' cuckoo." In the Greek 

 language, the bird is called k6kkv^. 



The Latin cuculus. 



The Italian cuculo. 



The French coucou. 



The English ..... cuckoo. 



The German ..... kukkuk. 



The S^'andal-Sclavonic . . . kukuliza, kukoviza. 



The Polish kukutha. 



The Illyrian kukutha, kukuvacsa." 



It appears to be an extract from Morgenblatt, 

 and winds up with an apparent contradiction : 



" The Poles and the lUyrians have, however, quite 

 different names for the bird ; and the Swedish abbrevia- 

 tion of ^gock" is very infelicitous." 



The analogy of sound is very apparent ; but in 

 turning to my Greek Lexicon, I find — 



« KoKKv^, -V70?, -6, a cuckoo ; a sort of fish ; a green 

 fig ; a bone at the bottom of the os sacrum ; a tuft, crest ; 

 a hill or cliflf 1 " 



Olfioi I 



Geo. Lloyd. 



Pre-Existence (2"-^ S. ii. 329. 453.) — Akin to 

 this opinion, if not an argument in favour of it, is 

 the feeling which many persons have at some 

 moment experienced, that what they are then 

 seeing or hearing, apparently for the first time, 

 has been seen or heard by them before, though 

 their reason assures them of the contrary. 



This kind of day-dream is noticed in one of Sir 

 E. B. Lytton's novels : — 



" How strange it is, that at times a feeling comes over 

 us, as we gaze upon certain places, which associates the 

 scene either with some dim-remembered and dream-like 

 images of the Past, or with a prophetic and fearful omen 



of the Future Every one has known a similar 



strange, indistinct feeling at certain times and places, and 

 with a similar inability to trace the cause." — Godolphin, 

 chap. XV. 



My own experience, and that of some of my 

 friends, confirm this last assertion. 



Sir Walter Scott, a man of sound mind, if ever 

 man was so, made the following entry in his diary, 

 under date of Feb. 17, 1828 : — 



" I cannot, I am sure, tell if it is worth marking down, 

 that yesterday, at dinner time, I was strangely haunted 

 by what I would call the sense of pre-existence, viz. a 

 confused idea, that nothing that passed was said for the 

 first time; that the same topics had been discussed, and 

 the same persons had stated the same opinions on them. 

 .... The sensation was so strong as to re.semble what is 

 called a mirage in the desert, or a calenture on board of 

 ship. ... It was very distressing yesterday, and brought 

 to my mind the fancies of Bishop Berkeley about an ideal 

 world. There was a vile sense of want of reality in all I 

 did and said." — Lockhart's Life of Scott (1st edit.), vol. 

 vii. p. 114. 



F. 



