208 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 200. 



lieve I ought to say) reasons or feelings, we hate, 

 or abhor. And lie forms it thus, hay-ed, bay'd, 

 ba'd, bad. Q. 



Bloomsbury. 



Porc-pisee (Vol. vi., p. 579.). — Mr. Warde 

 "will find that this is the old English way of writing 

 porpoise, more nearly to the French and Italian. 

 Spenser writes porcpisces, and Ray porpesse, i. e. 

 porc-pesee. Both are quoted in Richardson. 



" Wheal instead of milk," is tvhei/ or ivhig. " To 

 ^esh in sin," is to indulge in, to accustom to, to 

 inure to, the gratification of the sinful lusts of the 

 jftesh. Johnson has from Hales the same expres- 

 sion " fleshed in sin," which he interprets " har- 

 dened." Q. 

 Bloomsbury. 



Lowbell (Vol.vii., pp. 181. 272.). — Your cor- 

 respondents H. T. W. and M. H. will find suffi- 

 cient reasons from Nares' quotations to convince 

 them that lowbell is so called from its sound ; and 

 the usage by Hammond (in Johnson) that the 

 verb, to lowbell, was used consequentially to sig- 

 nify to frighten into a snare, and thus, to ensnare. 

 And the noun, a snare, allurement, temptation. 



" Now commonly he who desires to be a minister 

 looks not at the work, but at the wages ; and by that 

 lure or lowbell may be toll'd from parish to parish all 

 the town over." — Milton, " Hirelings," &c., Works, 

 vol. i. p. 529. 



Q. 



Bloomsbmy. 



Praying to the West (Vol. viii., p. 102.). — The 

 isles of the West, by which is understood what we 

 term the British Isles, in the ancient Hindoo 

 writings are described as the Sacred Isles, or the 

 abode of religion. The Celtic tribes used the 

 practice of turning to the AVest in their religious 

 rites, having adopted it in a very early age from 

 a reason similar to that which led the Twks in a 

 later age to turn towards Mecca, and other nations 

 towards the East; that is, the superior sanctity 

 attached by each to these several points. This 

 practice^ the Celtic tribes brought with them in 

 their migration from the East to those parts in j 

 which we now find it in the West ; where it has 

 been retained by their descendants after the cir- I 

 cumstances which gave rise to it had been long i 

 forgotten. G. W. 



Stansted, Montfichet. 



Old Dog (Vol. iv., p. 21.).— See The Observer 

 (Cumberland's), No. 131. : — " Uncle Antony was 

 an old dog at a dispute." P. J. F. Gantillon, B.A. 



Contested Elections (Vol. vii., p. 208.). — An 

 account of many of the English contested elec- 

 tions may be found in Oldfield's Representative 

 History of Great Britain and Ireland, 6 vols. : 



London, 1816. I hope that X. Y. Z. does not 

 rank this among the "wretched compilations." 

 Oldfield was a man of much experience as a par- 

 liamentary agent, and his book is entertaining — 

 at least, to us Americans. M. E. 



Philadelphia. 



^^ Rathe" in the Sense of ^^ early" (Vol.vii., 

 p. 634. et alibi.). — See The Antiquary, cap. xxxix. 

 (vol. i. p. 468. People's Edition), where Maggie 

 Mucklebacket says : 



" I havena had the grace yet to come down to thank 

 your honour for the credit ye did puir Steenie, wi' 

 laying his head in a rath grave." 



The Glossary explains the word as ready, quick, 

 early. P. J. F. Gantillon, B. A. 



Chip in Porridge (Vol. L, p. 382.). — Though 

 a long time has elapsed, I see nothing more on the 

 subject of this phrase than Q. D.'s application for 

 information regarding it. 



I take it to mean a nonentity, a thing of no im- 

 portance, and to have no more distinctive origin 

 than the innumerable other cant sayings in daily 

 use. 



In a book recently published. Personal Adven- 

 tures of our own Correspondent, by M. B. Honau, 

 vol. i. p. 151., occurs this passage : 



" It is very easy to stand well with all by being, 

 what is vulgarly called, 'a chip in porridge.' " 



W. T. M. 



Hong Kong. 



" A saint in crape is twice a saint in laivn " 



(Vol. viii., p. 102.) See Pope's Moral Essays, 



Ep. 1. 1. 136. F. B— w. 



Gibbon's Library (Vol. vii., p. 407.) — Wesfs 

 Portrait of Franklin (Vol. vii., p. 409.). — Gibbon's 

 library was sold at Lausanne in 1833. I have a 

 copy of Le Theatre de Marivaux, four volumes 

 12mo. (Amst. et il Leipzig, 1756), which contains 

 the following MS. note on the fly-leaf of the first 

 volume : " Gibbon's copy, bought at the sale of his 

 library at Lausanne, Sept. 1833. — John Worus- 

 woRTH." You will find a reference to this gentle- 

 man, "N. & Q.," Vol. v., p. 604. About four 

 hundred of Gibbon's books were in the library of 

 the late Rev. Samuel Farmar Jarvis, of Con- 

 necticut, who bought them at Lausanne. Among 

 them was Casiri, Bibliotheca Arabico-Hispania. 

 Some of these books had his name, E. Gibbon, 

 printed in them in Roman letters ; others had his 

 coat of arms. Dr. Jarvis's library was sold by 

 Lyman and Rawdon in New York on the 14th 

 of October, 1851, for very good pi-ices. I possess 

 Gibbon's copy of Herrera's America, in English, 

 6 vols. 8vo. 



I think there must be some mistake about the 

 portrait of Dr. Franklin by West, mentioned by 



