24 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2°d S. No IOC, Jan. 9. '58. 



confidential secretary ? and is not she generally cloathed 

 in black petticoats made out of your weeds ? 



" ' So mourn'd the dame of Ephesus her love.' 

 " I fancy your grace took the hint when you last re- 

 sided at Rome ; j'ou heard there, I suppose, of a certain 

 Joan, who was once elected a pope, and in humble imi- 

 tation have converted a pious parson into a chambermaid. 

 The scheme is new in this country, and has doubtless its 

 particular pleasures. That you may never want the Be- 

 nefit of the Clergy, in every emergence, is the sincere wish 

 of your grace's most devoted and obliged humble servant, 



" Samuel Foote." 



Let me add one or two uotes : — 1st. In the 

 Gent. Mag., xlv. 391., it is positively stated that 

 to invalidate |he fact of the Duchess having 

 offered Foote a bribe for its suppression, the Rev. 

 John Forster has made an affidavit before Sir 

 John Fielding, importing that in some conversa- 

 tion with Mr. Foote on the impropriety of pub- 

 lishing the piece in question, Mr. Foote said, 

 " that unless the Duchess of Kingston would give 

 him 2000^, he would publish the Trip to Calais, 

 with a Preface and Dedication to her Grace." 



In the second place, it may be well to explain 



Foote's allusion to J n, the Secretary " cloathed 



in black petticoats made out of your weeds." The 

 writer of the Duchess's letter was the Rev. Wil- 

 liam Jackson, an Irish clergyman, who, in the 

 early part of his life, filled the office of chaplain 

 and secretary to the Duchess. He resided some 

 years in France in her service ; where he even- 

 tually engaged in intrigues against the English 

 government, and, on his return to Ireland in 1794, 

 he was convicted of carrying on a treasonable cor- 

 respondence with persons in France. On being 

 brought up for judgment on April 23, 1795, he 

 died in court from the effect of poison, while his 

 advocates were about to move an arrest of judg- 

 ment. 



Finally, let me add that on August 19, 1776, 

 this comedy, under the new title of The Capuchin, 

 was performed at Foote's theatre in the Hay- 

 market for the first time, and was favourably re* 

 ceived. Foote introduced it by a prologue, 

 spoken by himself, but written by George Col- 

 man, which commenced : — 



" Critics whene'er I write, in every scene 

 Discover meanings that I never mean ; 

 Whatever character I bring to view, 

 I am the father of the child, 'tis true. 

 But every babe his christening owes to y 



Now can any correspondent of " N. & Q." give 

 me in return a copy of the Letter of the Duchess 

 which Walpole forwai-ded to the Countess of Os- 

 sory on June 25, 1776 ? Walpole characterised it 

 as " not much inferior to her epistle to Foote ; " 

 but unfortunately it is described by Mr. Vernon 

 Smith as " not with the Papers." (See Cunning- 

 ham's Walpole, vol. vi. pp. 252. 351.) 



PuiLO Walpole. 



;an ; 



I 



16, > 



js to you," J &c. 



THE DIFFICULTIES OP CUAUCEB. — NO. IV. 



" WhipuUre." — 



" But how the fire was maked up on highte, 

 As oke, fir, birch, aspe, alder, holm, poplere, 

 Wilow, elm, plane, ash, box, chestein, lind, laurere. 

 Maple, thorn, beehe, hasel, ew, whipuUre, 

 How they were feld, shall not be told for me." 



Cant. Tales, 2922—6. 



The interpretation of whipuUre has been deemed 

 so hopeless, that we do not even find the word 

 mentioned, either in Tyrwhitt's Glossari/, or in 

 that attached to Urry's edition of Chaucer's 

 Works. 



WhipuUre might be whip-pole-tree, some tree 

 from which whipping-posts were made; the timber 

 for such a purpose, however, might be procured 

 from several of the trees previously mentioned by 

 the poet. 



Or we might refer whipuUre to " Whipple -tree." 

 The whipple-tree, according to Halliwell, is the 

 bar on which the traces of a drawing horse are 

 hooked. But we shall see reasons for suspecting 

 that whipple-tree is derived from whipuUre. 



May not whipuUre be the " willow-palm " tree, 

 or palm-sallow ? True, we find willow among 

 the trees previously enumerated. But the poet 

 mentions both " poplere " and " aspe," though the 

 aspen-tree is only a peculiar species of poplar 

 {Populus tremula L.). And we shall find, if 

 our conjecture respecting the whipuUre be deemed 

 admissible, that its distinguishing character as a 

 salix connected with mediaeval observances en- 

 titled it to be named, even after the mention of 

 the " willow," which is a general term including 

 many varieties (160 in the Duke of Bedford's 

 Salictum Wobumense). 



The catkins of the willow are in German called 

 weiden-palme (willow-palms). Drop the latter 

 syllables of the two words, weiden and palmc — 

 a liberty which our language often takes with 

 foreigners — and weiden-palme becomes weipal, 

 whence whipul. To wbipul add the word tree, 

 and we have whipul-tree, or whipuUre (i.e. willow- 

 palm tree). 



The i in whipuUre, standing as it does before a 

 single p, was probably pronounced long, as in 

 viper. This agrees with the sound of the German 

 ei in weiden-palme. 



"Palm," both in Scottish and English, as well 

 as the German "palme," is used for expressing 

 catkins. " Palms, the blossoms of the willow, Te- 



viotd." — Jamieson. "Palm Among our 



rustics it means the catkins of a delicate species of 

 willow, gathered by them on Palm Sunday." — 

 Halliicell. 



If Chaucer's whipuUre really belongs, then, to 

 the numerous family of the willows, let us see 

 whether we cannot a little more clearly and fully 

 identify the particular species intended by the 

 poet. 



