2°* S. No 100., Jan. 30. '58.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



99 



ever prevailed in this country. The Dominicale was 

 not the linen cloth on which women received the 

 Holy Eucharist, but the veil which they were re- 

 quired to wear on their heads in the church. It is 

 true that the Council of Auxcrre (a.d. 585.) de- 

 creed : " Ut unaquceque mulier quando communicat, 

 dominicale siium habeat ;" but this means only the 

 covering of the head, for in the previous canon 

 (36.) the council had already ordered : " Ut omnes 

 midie?-es exhihent linteamina, uhi corpus CJmsti acci- 

 piaiit,'' and it would have been superfluous to 

 enact the same a second time in canon 42. More- 

 over the old MS. Penitential settles the question, 

 where it enacts that " Si mulier communicans do- 

 minicale suum super caput suum non hahierit, usque 

 ad alium diem non comraunicet." F. C. II. 



Mild Winter of 1857 (2"'> S. v. 30.) — As your 

 correspondent has remarked on the extraordi- 

 nary mildness of the winter season, I may be 

 aH(>wed to offer the following phenomena in illus- 

 tration of this fact, which may be considered worth 

 recording. In a village in Sussex a v}ren's nest 

 was discovered with two eggs in it, and this in 

 the month of December of 1857. The next is a 

 cutting from the Morning Herald of the same 

 month: — 



" Last evening Mr. Harris, the proprietor of the Eques- 

 trian Tavern, in the Blackfriars Road, presented in his 

 coffee-room, for the inspection of the gentlemen there, 

 two bunches of perfectly ripe raspberries, which he cut 

 in the garden of his cottage at Cheam on that day. Tlie 

 fruit M'as as ripe and in as luxuriant a state as those ga- 

 thered on the bushes in the month of August. Quarts of 

 the same fruit may be gathered in a perfectly ripe state, 

 and growing in the open air, in many of the gardens in 

 the neighbourhood of Pcckham Rye — a phenomenon 

 never recollected by the 'oldest inhabitant' to have oc- 

 curred in Christmas week." 



Mild Winter of 1748. — In a letter to Sir 

 Horace Mann, dated Strawberry Hill, December 

 26, 1748, Walpole writes — 



" Here am I come down to what you call keeping Christ- 

 mas ! the weather is excessively stormy, but 



has been so warm, and so entirelj' free from frosts the 

 whole winter, that not only several of my hom^ysuckles are 

 come out, but I liave literally a blossom upon a 7Z6ctar/«e- 

 trcc, which I believe was never seen in this climate before 

 on the 2Clh of December." 



F. PaiLLOTT. 



Tlovellers : Broadstairs Life Boatmen (P' S. vi. 

 412.588.; 2'"^ S. v. 10.)— A correspondent suggests 

 that this word may come from the Danish overlcver, 

 deliverer. It may perhaps be the old English word 

 hohbler. Bailey interprets Jiohhlcrs, "men who 

 by their tenure were obliged to maintain a little 

 light nag for the certifying any invasion towards 

 the sea-side ; certain Irish knights who served as 

 light-horsemen upon Jiobhles." Cowel (Law Diet.) 

 derives hohlers, or hovders (Jiobelarii), from hobbij, 

 a sort of horse ; or from French hobille, a tunic ; 

 but it may come from '/TTTrvs, thu:=, — 'i-n-iroi, hippy. 



hoppy, hobby, hobbylers, hohblers, hovlers, hovellers. 

 These hobblers, having doubtless plenty of time 

 on their hands, may have also occupied themselves 

 in saving the lives of their fellow-creatures from 

 shipwreck ; and when, in consequence of there 

 being no further fear of invasion, their office was 

 abolished, they may have had nothing else to 

 fall back upon but their secondary occupation. 

 Query, Are not these hovellers found on other 

 parts of the coast as well as Broadstairs ? and if 

 so, how are they designated ? R. S. Cuarnock. 

 Gray's Inn. 



""iTTTros" (2''^ S. v. 10.) — Your correspondent 

 J. P. is ingenious, but I cannot quite agree with 

 him. The Greek "Ittttos is equivalent to the Latin 

 equus and the Gaelic each — a word lost in the 

 Welsh, but preserved in the Breton ep. The 

 Gaelic capid and Welsh cefyl, answering to the 

 Latin caballus and the Greek Ka^dWTjs, like those 

 epithets, are not always complimentary, and are 

 something equivalent to the French ross, " a jade" 

 — a word, by the way, that means " a gallant steed" 

 in German. The each and the capul, the 'Iwiros 

 and Ka^dw-qs, must I think be traced to difTerent 

 origins. The old word for horse, carried by the 

 Gauls into Galatia two thousand years ago, still 

 survives in the Gaelic mare and the AVelsh march, 

 showing no affinity with either Greek or Latin ; 

 but closely connected with that Teutonic word 

 which has left Its impress on our language in the 

 words mare and marshall. 



Hobby is certainly not an Irish word, but it 

 was applied by the English to the Irish or Scottish 

 garron, and most probably derived from the 

 French hobin. Signet. 



Goloshes (P' S. ix. 304. 470.) — Add to the 

 etymologies already given the folloviring from the 

 Lexicon Balatronicum (ed. 1811): — 



. " Goloshes, i. e. Goliah's shoes, large leathefn clogs, 

 worn by invalids over their ordinary shoes." 



Also the modern wit's etymology, " Go, loose 

 shoes!" Cdthbekt Bede. 



" Grammar Schools, their Usages and Tradi' 

 tions^' (2""^ S. i. 145.) — I know not whether any 

 one has anticipated me, and completed the prayer 

 in use at Blundell's School for Y. B. N. J. ; if not, 

 I can do so for him. The verba desiderata are : 

 " beat re rcsurrectionis, ajternaeque felicitatis pra3- 

 mia consequamur, per Jesum Christum, Domi- 

 num nostrum." J. B. S. 



Clock of Tinnity College, Dublin. — My Query 

 in P' S. X. 46. having fiiiled to elicit the reason 

 of the curious custom of keeping the clock of 

 Trinity College, Dublin, a quarter of an hour 

 slow (by wlilch time, called " College time," as 

 distinguished from "town time," all University 

 proceedings are regulated), may I now modify 



