480 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 238. 



from the Isle of Man. This is not " a Jonathan." 

 Perhaps the Isle of Man is too small to swing long- 

 tailed cats in. Uneda. 

 Philadelphia. 



Mr. T. D. Stephens, of Trull Green, near this 

 town, has for some years had and bred the Manx 

 tailless cat; and, I have no doubt, would have 

 pleasure in showing them to your correspondent 

 Shirley Hibbebd, should he ever be in this 

 neighbourhood. K. Y. 



Taunton. 



A friend of mine, who resided in the Park Farm, 

 Kimberley, had a breed of tailless cats, arising from 

 the tail of one of the cats in the first instance 

 having been cut off; many of the kittens came 

 tailless, some with half length ; and, occasionally, 

 one of a litter with a tail of the usual length, and 

 this breed continued through several generations. 



G.J. 



Names of Slaves (Vol. viii., p. 339.). — I can 

 answer the first of J. F. M.'s Queries in the affirm- 

 ative; it being common to see in Virginia slaves, 

 or free people who have been slaves, with names 

 acquired in the manner suggested : e. g. " Philip 

 Washington," better known in Jefferson county 

 as " Uncle Phil.," formerly a slave of the Wash- 

 ingtons. A large family, liberated and sent to 

 Cape Palmas, bore the surname of " Davenport," 

 from the circumstance that their progenitor had 

 been owned by the Davenports. In fact, the 

 practice is almost universal. But fancy names are 

 generally used as first names : e. g. John Ran- 

 dolph, Peyton, Jefferson, Fairfax, Carter, &c. A 

 fine old body-servant of Col. Willis was called 

 " Burgundy," shortened into " Uncle Gundy." So 

 that " Milton," in the case mentioned, may have 

 been merely the homage paid to genius by some 

 enthusiastic admirer of that poet. J. Balch. 



Philadelphia. 



Heraldic (Vol. ix., p. 271.). — On the brass of 

 Robert Arthur, St. Mary's, Chartham, Kent, are 

 two shields bearing a fess engrailed between three 

 trefoils slipped : which may probably be the same 

 as that about which Loccan inquires, though I am 

 unable to tell the colours. There are two other 

 shields bearing, Two bars within a bordure. The 

 inscription is as follows : \ 



" Hie iacet dns Robertus Arthur quondam Rector 

 isti' Ecclie qui obiit xxviii die marcii A diii Millo 

 CCCC°LIIII°. Cui' ale ppiciet' de' Arae." 



F. G. 



Solar Annual Eclipse of 1263 (Vol. viii., p. 441.). 

 — Mr. Tytler, in the first volume of his History of 

 Scotland, mentions that this eclipse, which occurred 

 about 2 p.m. on Sunday, August 5, 1263, has been 

 found by calculation to have been actually central 



and annular to Ronaldsvoe, in the Orkneys, where 

 the Norwegian fleet was then lying : a fine ex- 

 ample, as he justly adds, " of the clear and certain 

 light reflected by the exact sciences on history." 

 S. asks, is this eclipse mentioned by any other 

 writer ? As connected with the Norwegian expe- 

 dition, it would seem not ; but Matthew of West- 

 minster (vol. ii. p. 408., Bohn's edit.) mentions it 

 having been seen in England, although he places 

 it erroneously on the 6th of the month. 



J. S. Warden. 



Brissot de Warville (Vol. ix., p. 335.). — Bris- 

 sot's Memoires is a very common book in the ori- 

 ginal, and has gone through several editions. 

 The passage quoted by N. J. A. was only an 

 impudent excuse for an impudent assumption. 

 Brissot, in his early ambition, wished to pass 

 himself off as a gentleman, and called himself 

 Brissot de Warville, as Danton did DAnton, and 

 Robespierre de Robespierre; but when these 

 worthies were endeavouring to send M. de War- 

 ville to the scaffold as an aristocrat, he invented 

 this fable of his father's having some landed pro- 

 perty at Ouarville en Beauce (not Beance), and that 

 he was called, according to the custom of the coun- 

 try, from this place, where, it seems, he was put out 

 to nurse. When the dread of the guillotine made 

 M. de Warville anxious to get rid of his aristo- 

 cratic pretensions, he confessed (in those same 

 Memoires) that his father kept a cook's shop in the 

 town of Chartres, and was so ignorant that he 

 could neither read nor write. I need not add, 

 that his having had a landed property to justify, 

 in any way, the son's territorial appellation, was a 

 gross fiction. C. 



" Le Compere Mathieu" (Vol. vi., pp. 11. 111. 

 181.). — On the fly-leaf of my copy (three vols. 

 12mo., Londres, 1766) of this amusing work, 

 variously attributed by your correspondents to 

 Mathurin Laurent and the Abbe du Laurens, is 

 written the following note, in the hand of its former 

 possessor, Joseph Whateley : 



" Ecrit par Diderot, fils d'un Coutelier : un homme 

 tres licentieux, qui ecrit encore plusieurs autres Ou- 

 vrages, comme La Religieuse, Les Bijoux mediant (sic), 

 &c. II jouit un grand role apres dans la Revolution. 



"J. W." 



By the way, A. N. styles it " a not altogether 

 undull work." May I ask him to elucidate this 

 phrase, as I am totally at a loss to comprehend its 

 meaning. "Not undull" must surely mean dull, 

 if anything. The work, however, is the reverse 

 of dull. William Bates. 



Birmingham. 



Etymology of "Awkward" (Vol. viii., p. 310.). — 

 H. C. K. has probably given the true derivation 

 of this word, but he might have noticed the singu- 



