362 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 52. 



observed to me the other day, "I's ill grathed 

 for't job" — rather a terse Saxon contrast to my 

 latinized paraphrase. 



Grathedly would then mean, " In a state of 

 good order, fitness, readiness, or perfection." 



To tiie cognate German gerade, adv., I find the 

 senses, " directly, just, exactly, perfi-ctly, rightly." 



The prevailing impression given by your nume- 

 rous testimonials as to the character of the word 

 gradely, is one of decency, order, rightness, per- 

 fectness. 



I fancy the whole family (who might be called 

 the children of rath), viz. paS, rathe, (gerathe, 

 grathedly, gradelij), rather (only a Saxon form of 

 readier), have as a common primeval progenitor the 



Sanscrit "^J^" (radh), which is interpreted "a 



process towards perfection;" in other words, "a 

 becoming ready." G. J. Cayley. 



Wydale, Oct. 21. 



P. S. — Greadhj is probably a transposition for 

 geradly. The Yorkshire pronunciation oi gradehj 

 is almost as if written ^7-«;'ef/-/y. 



I think it probable that the words greed, 

 greedily, are from the same radicle. By the 



way, is radix perhaps derived from T^J^ ('""'Oj ^ 



tooth (from the fang-like form of roots), whence 

 rodere and possibly radius f 



COLI^AR or ESSES. 



Although the suggestion made by C. (Vol. ii., 

 p. 330.), viz. that the Collar of Esses had a " me- 

 chanical" origin, resulting from the mode of form- 

 ing " the chain," and that " the name means no 

 more than that the links were in the shape of the 

 letter S.," could only be advocated by one unac- 

 quainted with the real formation of the collar, yet, 

 as I am now pledged before the readers of " Notes 

 AND Queries" as the historiogriipher of livery 

 collars, it may be expected that I should make 

 some reply. This may be accompanied with the 

 remark, that, about the reign of Henry VIII., a 

 collar occurs, which might be adduced in support 

 of the theory suggested by the Rev. Mr. Ella- 

 combe, and adopted by C. It looks like a collar 

 formed of esses ; but it is not clear whether it was 

 meant to do so, or was merely a rich collar &f 

 twisted gold links. That was the age of ponder- 

 ous gold collars, but which were arbitrary features 

 of ornamental costume, not collars of livery. Such 

 a collar, however, resembles a series of esses placed 

 obliquely and interlaced, as thus : SSSS ; not laid 

 flat on their sides, as figured by C. Again, it is 

 true an (endless) chain of linked esses was formed 

 merely by attaching the letters ms.^fi like hooks 

 together. This occurs on the cup at Oriel College, 

 Oxford, engraved in Shaw's Ancient Furniture^ \\\ 

 Shelton's Oxonia Illustrata, and in the Gentlenuxn's 



Magazine for August last ; but the connexion of 

 this with the English device is at least very 

 doubtful. The ctq) is not improbably of foreign 

 workmanship, and IMenneus assigns such a collar 

 to the knights of Cyprus ; even there the S was 

 not without its attributed import : 



" Per literam autem S. qu^ Silentii apud Romanos 

 nota fuit, secretum societatis et aniicitise sinndachriim, 

 individuamque pro patriae defensione Societutem deno- 

 tari." — Fr. Mennenii Dtlicice Equest. Ordinum, 1613. 

 12mo. p. 153. 



However, the answer to the suggestion of Mb. 

 Ellacombe and C. consists in this important dis- 

 tinction, that the Lancastrian livery collar was 

 not a chain of linked esses, but a collar of leather 

 or other stiff material, upon which the letters were 

 distinctly figured at certain intervals ; and when it 

 came to be made of metal only, the letters were 

 still kept distinct and upright. On John of 

 Ghent's collar, in the window of old St. Paul's 

 (which I have already mentioned in p. 330.), there 

 are only five, 



S S S S S, 

 at considerable intervals. On the collar of the 

 poet Gower the letters occur thus, — 

 SSSSS SSSSS. 



On that of Queen Joan of Navarre, at Canterbury, 

 thus, — 



S|S:SiSJ.S:SI_ 



There is then, I think, little doubt 'that this 

 device was the sj/tnholum or nota of some word of 

 which S was the initial letter ; whether Societas, or 

 Siletitimn, or Sotweyiance, or Soneraigne, or Senes- 

 chalhcs, or whatever else ingenuity or fancy may 

 suggest, this is the question, — a question which it is 

 scarcely possible to settle authoritatively without 

 the testimony of some unequivocal contemporary 

 statement. But I flatter myself that I have now 

 clearly shown that the esses were neither the links 

 of a chain, nor yet (as suggested in a former 

 paper) identical with the gormetti fremales, or 

 horse-bridles, which are said to have formed the 

 livery collar of the King of Scots. 



John Gough Nichols. 



'' Christus purpureum ^emmati textus in auro 

 Signabat Labarum, Clypeorimi insignia Christus 

 Scripserat ; ardebat summis crux addita cristis." 

 By the same sort of reasoning — viz. conjecture 

 — that Mk. John Gough Nichols adheres to the 

 opinion that the Collar of SS. takes its name from 

 the word Seneschallus, it miglit be contended that 

 the initial letters of the lines above quoted mysti- 

 cally stand for " Collar, S.S." Enough, however, 

 has already been written on this unmeaning point 

 to show that some of us are "great gowks," or, in 

 other words, stujiid guffs, to waste so much pen, 

 ink, and paper on the subject. 



There are other topics, however, connected with 

 the Collar of SS. which are of real interest to a 



