336 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 232. 



sesscd some landed property. This village was called 

 Ouarville, and Ouarville became the name by which I 

 was known in my own country. A fancy struck me 

 that I would cast an English air over my name, and 

 therefore I substituted, in the place of the French 

 diphthong ou, the w of the English, which has the same 

 sound. Since this nominal alteration, having put it as 

 a signature to my published works and to different 

 deeds, I judged it right to preserve it. If this be a 

 crime, I participate in the guilt of the French literati, 

 who, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, made 

 no scruple whatsoever of grecising or (if we may use 

 the expressions) latinising their appellations. Arouet, 

 to escape from a reproachful pun upon his name, 

 changed it into that of Voltaire. The Anglomania (if 

 such it may be called) has occasioned me to alter 

 mine ; not, as it has been pretended, to draw in dupes, 

 or to avoid passing for the son of my father, since I 

 have perpetually borne, signed, and printed the name 

 of my father after that second name which was given 

 to me according to the custom of my country." 



There are many other interesting particulars, but 

 the above is all that bears upon his adoption of 

 the name Warville, and will, perhaps, be con- 

 sidered pretty conclusive. N. J. A. 



"Branks" (Vol. ix., p. 149.). — Tn Wodrow's 

 Biographical Collections, vol. ii. p. 72., under the 

 date June 15, 1596, will be found the following : 



" The Session (of Glasgow) appoint jorgs and branks 

 to be made for punishing flyters." 



I cannot at this moment refer particularly, but 

 I know that the word is to be found in Burns' 

 Poems in the sense of a rustic bit or bridle. The 

 term is still in use in the west of Scotland ; and 

 country horses, within the memory of many, were 

 tormented with the clumsy contrivance across 

 their noses. With all its clumsiness it was very 

 powerful, as it pressed on the nostrils of the 

 animal: its action was somewhat like that of a 

 pair of scissors. L. N. R. 



Theobald le Botiller (Vol. viii., p. 367.). — If 

 Mr. Devereux refers to Lynch on Feudal Dig' 

 nities, p. 81., he will find that Theobald le Bo- 

 tiller, called the second hereditary Butler of Ire- 

 land, was of age in 1220, and died, not in 1230, 

 but in 1248 ; that he married Roesia de Verdon ; 

 that his eldest son and heir was Theobald, third 

 Butler (grandfather of Edmund, sixth Butler, 

 who was created Earl of Carrick), and that by the 

 same marriage he was also the ancestor of the 

 Verdons of England and of Ireland. Now, in 

 Lodge's Peerage by Archdall, 1789, vol. iv. p. 5., 

 it is said that the wife of Theobald, second Butler, 

 was Joane, eldest sister and co-heir of John de 

 Marisco, a great baron in Ireland ; and thirdly, 

 Sir Bernard Burke, in his Extinct Peerage, makes 

 his wife to be Maud, sister of Thomas a Becket. 

 Which of these three accounts am I to believe ? 



Y. S. M. 



Lord Harington (not Harrington) (Vol. viii., 

 p. 366.). — In Collins' Peerage, by Sir Egerton 

 Brydges, ed. 1812, I find that Hugh Courtenay, 

 second Earl of Devon, born in 1303, had a daugh- 

 ter Catherine, who married first, Lord Harington, 

 and secondly, Sir Thomas Engain. This evidently 

 must have been John, second Lord Harington, 

 who died in 1363, and not William, fifth lord, as 

 given in Burke : the fifth lord was not born till 

 after 1384, and died in 1457. Y. S. M. 



Amontillado (Vol. ix., p. 222.). — This wine was 

 first imported into England about the year 1811, 

 and the supply was so small, that the entire quan- 

 tity was only sufficient for the table of three con- 

 sumers, who speedily became attached to it, and 

 thenceforward drank no other sherry. One of 

 these was His Royal Highness the late Duke of 

 Kent ; and another, an old friend of one who now 

 ventures from a distant recollection to give an 

 account of its origin. 



The winegrowers at Xeres de la Frontera had 

 been obliged, in consequence of the increasing 

 demand for sherry, to extend their vineyards up 

 the sides of the mountains, beyond the natural 

 soil of the sherry grape. The produce thus ob- 

 tained was mixed with the fruit of the more genial 

 soil below, and a very good sherry for common 

 use was the result. 



When the French devastated the neighbourhood 

 of Xeres in 1809, they destroyed many of the 

 vineyards, and for a time put the winegrowers to 

 great shifts. One house in particular was obliged 

 to have recourse chiefly to the mountain grape 

 for the support of its trade, and for the first time 

 manufactured it without admixture into wine. 

 Very few butts of this produce would stand, and 

 by far the greater portion was treated with brandy 

 to make it saleable. 



The small quantity that resisted the acetous 

 fermentation, turned out to be very different in 

 flavour to the ordinary sherry wine, and it was 

 sent over to this country under the name of 

 Amontillado sherry, from the circumstance of the 

 grape having been grown on the mountains. 



The genuine wine is very delicate, with a pe- 

 culiar flavour, slightly aromatic rather than nutty ; 

 and answers admirably to the improved taste of 

 the present age. Patonce. 



"Mairdil" (Vol. ix., p. 233.).— I have heard 

 the word " maddle" often used in the West Riding 

 of Yorkshire, in exactly the same sense as the 

 word mairdil, as mentioned by Mr. Stephens. 

 And in this part the work-people would use the 

 word "muddle" in a similar sense. J. L. Sisson. 



Separation of the Sexes in Church (Vol. ii., 

 p. 94.). — In many churches in Lower Brittany I 

 observed that the women occupied the nave ex- 

 clusively, the men placing themselves in the aisles. 



