432 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 236. 



he happened to attend a neighbouring church 

 service, to see a man acting in that capacity, and 

 saying the responses for the people. 



John James. 

 Avington Rectory, Hungerford. 



I have just seen an extract from "N". & Q." in 

 one of our local papers, mentioning Elizabeth 

 King as being clerk of the parish of Totteridge in 

 1802, and a question by Y. S. M. if there were 

 any similar instance on record of a woman being 

 a parish clerk ? In answer to this Query, I beg 

 to inform Y. S. M. that in the village of Misterton, 

 Somerset, in which place I was born, a woman 

 acted as clerk at my mother's wedding, my own 

 baptism, and many years subsequently : I was 

 born in 1822. Wm. Higgins. 



Bothy (Vol. ix., p. 305.). — For a familiar men- 

 tion of this word (commonly spelt Bothie), your 

 correspondent may be referred to the poem of The 

 Bothie of Toper-na-fuosich, a Long- Vacation Pas- 

 toral, by Arthur Hugh Clough, Oxford : Macpher- 

 son, 1848. The action of the poem is chiefly carried 

 on at the Bothie, the situation of which is thus de- 

 scribed (in hexameter verse) : 



" There on the blank hill side, looking down through 

 the loch to the ocean, 

 There with a runnel beside, and pine trees twain be- 

 fore it, 

 There with the road underneath, and in sight of 

 coaches and steamers, 

 j Dwelling of David Mackaye, and his daughters Elspie 

 and Bella, 

 Sends up a volume of smoke the Bothie of Toper-na- 

 fuosich." 

 This sort of verse, by the way, is thus humor- 

 ously spoken of by Professor Wilson in his dedi- 

 cation, " to the King," of the twelfth volume of 

 Blackwood (1822): 



" What dost thou think, my liege, of the metre in which 



I address thee ? 

 Doth it not sound very big, very bouncing, bubble- 



and-squeaky, 

 Rattling, and loud, and high, resembling a drum or a 



bugle — 

 Rub-a-dub-dub like the one, like t'other tantara- 



tara? 

 (It into use was brought of late by thy Laureate 



Doctor — 

 But, in my humble opinion, I write it better than he 



does) 

 It was chosen by me as the longest measure I 



knew of, 

 And, in praising one's King, it is right full measure 



to give him." 



ClJTHBERT BEDE, B.A. 



King's Prerogative and Hunting Bishops (Vol. 

 ix., p. 247.). — The passage of Blackstone, referred 

 to by the Edinburgh Reviewer, will be found in his 

 Commentaries, vol. ii. p. 413., where reference is 



made to 4 [Coke's] Inst. 309. See also the same 

 volume of Blackstone, p. 427. It is evident that 

 Bishop Jewel possessed his " muta canum." See 

 a curious account of a visit to him by Hermann 

 FalkerzhUmer, in the Zurich Letters, second series, 

 pp. 84. &c. H. Gough. 



Lincoln's Inn. 



Green Eyes (Vol. viii., p. 407.; Vol. ix., p. 112.). 

 — Antoine Heroet, an early French poet, in the 

 third book of his Opuscules d Amour, has the follow- 

 ing lines : 



" Amour n'est pas enchanteur si divers 

 Que les yeux noirs face devenir verds, 

 Qu'un brun obscur en blancheur clere tourne, 

 Ou qu'un traict gros du vissage destourne." 



(Love is not so strange an enchanter that he can 

 make black eyes become green, that he can turn 

 a dark brown into clear whiteness, or that he can 

 change a coarse feature of the face.) Uneda. 



Philadelphia. 



Brydone the Tourist (Vol. ix., pp. 138. 255. 

 305.).— 



" On lui a reproche d'avoir sacrifie la verite au plaisir 

 de raconter des choses piquantes." 



In a work (I think) entitled A Tour in Sicily, 

 the production of Captain Monson, uncle to the 

 late Lord Monson, published about thirty years 

 ago, I remember to have read a denial and, as 

 far as I can remember, a refutation of a statement 

 of Brydone, that he had seen a pyramid in the 

 gardens or grounds of some dignitary in Sicily, 

 composed of — chamber-pots ! I was, when I read 

 Mr. Monson's book (a work of some pretensions 

 as it appeared to me), a youngster newly returned 

 from foreign travel, and in daily intercourse with 

 gentlemen of riper age than myself, and of attain- 

 ments as travellers and otherwise which I could 

 not pretend to ; many of them were Italians, and 

 I perfectly remember that by all, but especially by 

 the latter, Brydone's book was treated as a book of 

 apocrypha. Traveller, 



Descendants of John of Gaunt, Noses o/(Vol. vii., 

 p. 96.). — Allow me to repeat my Query as to 

 E. D.'s remark : he says, to be dark-complexioned 

 and black-haired " is the family badge of the Her- 

 berts quite as much as the unmistakeable nose in 

 the descendants of John of Gaunt." I hope E. D. 

 will not continue silent, for I am very curious to 

 know his meaning. Y. S. M. 



"Fid" (Vol. vii., p. 271.). — I am surprised at 

 the silence of your Irish readers in reference to 

 the pronunciation of this word. I certainly never 

 yet heard it pronounced like " but " amongst edu- 

 cated men in Ireland, and I am both a native of 

 this country and resident here the greater part of 

 my life. The Prince Consort's name I have occa- 



