88 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 275. 



by Ferrar in his History of Limerick, pp. 409 — 

 412., edit. 1787. Abhba. 



[The following notice of the poor Palatines occurs 

 in the Memoirs of Thomas Marquis of Wharton, by Sir 

 K. Steele, p. 66. : 



" In this year (1709) the poor Palatines came into 

 England, and my Lord Wharton, whose wisdom was too 

 extensive to be confined to the narrow views of an igno- 

 rant selfish faction, procured the Privy Council of Ireland 

 to join with him in an humble address to Her Majesty, 

 that as many of the poor Palatines as Her Majesty should 

 think fit, might be settled in that kingdom ; where they 

 should be very kindly received, and advantageously 

 settled." 



Some farther notices of these poor Palatines will be 

 found in The Annals of Queen Anne, 1709, 8vo. pp. 166 — 

 168. Consult also Boyer's Political State of Great Britain, 

 vol. i. pp. 133. 276—280.] 



Etruscan Bronzes. — At the sale of the collec- 

 tion of the late Crofton Croker, last month, were 

 several Etruscan bronzes labelled — 



" Dug up in 1829, under the immediate inspection of 

 Lucien Buonaparte, Prince of Canino, on his estate at 

 Canino, in Romany, on the borders of Tuscany, from the 

 tombs of the ancient Etruscan kings; discovered to be 

 the ruins of Vitulonia, which existed previous to the 

 foundation of Rome, and 800 years before the birth of 

 Christ. Purchased by Mr. W. Tilt, Great Russell Street, 

 Covent Garden." 



Can any of your readers refer me to an account 

 of this discovery ? R. H. B. 



Bath. 



[In Archceohgia, vol. xxiii. pp. 130 — 276., is a " Cata- 

 logue and account of certain Vases and other Etruscan 

 Antiquities discovered in 1828 and 1829, by the Prince of 

 Canino, translated and communicated to the Society of 

 Antiquaries, by Lord Dudley Stuart, in a letter to .the 

 Earl of Aberdeen." In an appendix to the article is a 

 note by the Prince, containing an account of the origin of 

 the excavations, &c. Consult also the Gent. Mag., vol. c. 

 pt. i. pp. 162. 352.] 



The " Telliamed." — Is a publication called 

 Telliamed (about 1750) known to any of your 

 readers ? D. 



Leamington. 



[|The following notice of this work occurs in Barbier, 

 Dictionnaire des Ouvrages Anonynies, s. v. : " TeUiame d 

 ou Entretiens d'un Philosophe indien avec un Mission- 

 naire francois, sur la diminution de la mer, mis en ordre 

 sur les Memoires de M. de Maillet, par. A. G. [A. Guer]. 

 Amsterdam, I'Honor^, 1748, 2 vols. 8vo. Nouvelle Edi- 

 tion, augment^ sur les originaux de I'auteur, avec une 

 vie de M. de Maillet [par I'abb^ le Mascrier]. Paris, de 

 Bure, 1755, 2 vols. 12mo."] 



" The Twa Bairns" a Ballad. — In Mr. Kings- 

 ley's lecture on English Literature, at Queen's 

 College, Harley Street, published with other 

 lectures in 1849, he asked : 



" How many poets are there in England now who could 

 have written 'The Twa Bairns,' or 'Sir Patrick Spense ? ' " 



We all know " Sir Patrick Spense," through Percy's 



Reliques; but where is the ballad of " The Twa 

 Bairns" to be found ? C. (2) 



[This ballad is entitled " The Bonnie Bairns," and will 

 be found in Allan Cunningham's Songs of Scotland, vol. ii. 

 p. 70., edit. 1826 ; it commences — 



" The lady she walk'd in yon wild wood. 

 Beneath the hoUin tree, 

 And she was aware of twa bonnie bairns 

 Were running at her knee."] 



THE devil's dozen. 



(Vol. X., pp. 346. 474. 531.) 



I might, I think, complain of the tone of G. N.'s 

 reply ; I shall content myself with proving that he 

 is wrong on every point, of both his Query and 

 his " defence " of it. He says he has never heard 

 of the " baker's dozen." I wonder where he has 

 lived. I beg leave to inform him, that the 

 " baker's dozen " is not a phrase, but a fact of 

 daily occurrence in the trade for the numbet 

 fourteen, or more commonly thirteen ; and if he 

 will send to any baker's shop for a dozen of rolls, 

 he will receive thirteen of a larger size, or fourteen 

 of a smaller. I will venture a conjecture at ex- 

 plaining whence this custom may have arisen. 

 Under the highly penal statutes for the assize of 

 bread, bakers were liable to heavy penalties for 

 any deficiency in the weight of loaves, and these 

 weights were specified for loaves of every price 

 from 18d. down to 2d. ; hut penny loaves, or rolls, 

 were (no doubt from their minute weights) not 

 specified in the statute : and therefore the bakers, 

 when selling these nondescripts, to be on the safe 

 side, threw in a thirteenth of the larger rolls or 

 two of the smaller ones. And though the assize 

 has been discontinued, the practice still survives ; 

 and my housekeeper, only last week, received 

 fourteen small rolls for the dozen. Nor is the 

 use of the term confined to the technicality of the 

 trade ; it is frequently used metaphorically to 

 express thirteen or fourteen : for instance, in 

 Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, G. N. 

 will find : 



" Baker's Dozen, /owr^een; that number of rolls being 

 allowed to purchasers of a dozen." 



And it is so ancient, that old Hudson, when he 

 discovered the Bay of that name, gave to a cluster 

 of thirteen or fourteen islands on the east shore of 

 it the name of the " Baker's Dozen," as may be 

 seen in all the charts, and even in the foreign 

 ones, for D'Anville's great atlas exhibits those 

 islands as " La Douzaine du Boulanger." 



The passage G. N. quotes from Dr. Jamieson 

 is an egregious mistake of both his and the good 

 Doctor's. It refers to a matter of an entirely 

 different nature, viz. the superstitious dislike 



