Sept. 3. 1853.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



227 



reigns of Rome ; and it is now conferred on the su- 

 preme governor of all the Russias." 



A Hermit at Hampstead. 



I beg to inform J. S. A. that the right word is 

 Tsar, and that it is the Russian word answering 

 to our king or lord, the Latin Rex, the Persian 

 Shah, &c. There may be terms in other lan- 

 guages that have an affinity with it, but I believe 

 we should seek in vain for a derivation. T. K. 



" LAND OF GREEN GINGER. 



(Vol. viii., p. 160.) 



I wish that R. W. Elliot of Clifton, whom I 

 recognise as a former inhabitant of Hull, had given 

 the authority on which he states, that " It is so 

 called from the sale of ginger having been chiefly 

 carried on there in early times." The name of 

 this street has much puzzled the local antiqua- 

 ries ; and having been for several years engaged 

 on a work relative to the derivations, &c., of the 

 names of the streets of Hull, I have spared no 

 pains to ascertain the history and derivation of 

 the singular name of this street. 



I offer then a conjecture as to its derivation as 

 follows : — The ground on which this street stands 

 was originally the property of De la Pole, Duke 

 of Suffolk, on which he had built his stately manor- 

 house. On the attainder of the family it was 

 seized by the king ; and Henry VIH. several times 

 held his court here, on one of his visits having 

 presented his sword to the corporation. It was 

 then, 1538, called Old Beverley Street, as seen in 

 the survey made of the estates of Sir William 

 Sydney, Kt. In a romance called Piraute el 

 Blanco, it is stated : " The morning collation at 

 the English Court was gi'een ginger with good 

 Malmsey, which was their custom, because of the 

 coldness of the land." And in the Fcedern, vii. 

 233., it is stated that, among other things, the 

 cargo of a Genoese ship, which was driven ashore j 

 at Dunster, in Somersetshire, in 1380, consisted of 

 green ginger (ginger cured with lemon-juice). In 

 Hollar's Map of Hull, 1640, the street is there laid 

 out as built upon, but without any name attached \ 

 to it. No other plans of Hull are at present 

 known to exist from the time of Hollar, 1640, to \ 

 Gent, 1735. In Gent's plan of Hull, it is there ■ 

 called " The Land of Green Ginger ;" so that pro- 

 bably, between the years 1640 and 1735, it re- 

 ceived its peculiar name. 



I therefore conjecture that, as Henry VIII. 

 kept his Court here with his usual regal magni- 

 ficence, green ginger would be one of "the luxu- • 

 ries of his table ; that this portion of his royal 

 property, being laid out as a garden, was pecu- 

 liarly suitable for the growth of ginger — the same 

 as Pontefract was for the growth of the liquorice 



j plant ; and that, upon the property being built 



: upon, the remembrance of this spot being so 

 suitable for the growth of ginger for the Court, 

 would eventually give the peculiar name, in the 

 same way that the adjoining street of Bowl- Alley- 

 Lane received its title from the bowling-green 



j near to it. John Richardson. 



I 13. Savile Street, Hull. 



This has long been a puzzle to the Hull anti- 

 ; quaries. I have often inquired of old persons 

 j likely to know the origin of such names of places 

 I at that sea-port as " The Land of Green Ginger," 

 "PIg_ Alley," "Mucky-south-end," and "Rotten 

 Herring Staith ;" and I have come to the conclu- 

 sion, that "The Land of Green Ginger" was a 

 very dirty place where horses were kept : a mews, 

 in short, which none of the Muses, not even with 

 Homer as an exponent, could exalt ("•'E7r€a 

 Trrepoei'Ta iv adcwdTOKTi &€o7(rt") into the regions of 

 poesy. 



Ginger has been cultivated in this country as a 

 stove exotic for about two hundred and fifty years. 

 In one of the histories of Hull, ginger is supposed 

 to have grown in this street, where, to a recent 

 period, the stables of the George Inn, and those of 

 a person named Foster opposite, occupied the 

 principal portion of the short lane called " Land 

 of Green Ginger." It is hardly possible that the 

 true zingiber can have grown here, even in the 

 manure heaps ; but a plant of the same order 

 (Zingiberacece) may have been mistaken for it. 

 Some of the old women or marine school-boys of 

 the Trinity House, in the adjoining lane named from 

 that guild, or some druggist, may have dropped, 

 either accidentally or experimentally, a root, if 

 not of the ginger, yet of some kindred plant. 

 The magnificent Fuchsia was first noticed in the 

 possession of a seaman's wife by Fuchs in 1501, 

 a century prior to the introduction of the ginger 

 plant into England. T. J. Buckton. 



Birmingham. 



PHOTOGRAPHIC CORRESPONDENCE. 



Stereoscopic Angles. — The discussion in " N", 

 & Q." relative to the best angle for stereoscopic 

 pictures has gone far towards a satisfactory con- 

 clusion : there are, however, still a few points which 

 may be beneficially considered. 



In the first place, the kind of stereoscope to be 

 used must tend to modify the mental impression; 

 and secondly, the amount of reduction from the 

 size of the original has a considerable influence 

 on the final result. 



If in viewing a stereoscopic pair of photographs, 

 they are placed at the same distance from the eyes 

 as the length of the focus of the lens used in pro- 

 ducing them, then without doubt the distance be- 

 tween the eyes, viz. about two and a quarter 



