202 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2°« S, VI. 141., Sept. 11. '58. 



monuments of the Dead ; " and exposes " the bar- 

 barous insolencys of the sacrilegious troopers." 

 He reasons against all violent opposition to the 

 conduct of the king ; and enforces his arguments 

 by the scriptural examples of the Jews under 

 Nebuchadnezzar, and the Christians under Nero. 

 He then proceeds to justify the employment of Ro- 

 man Catholics in the armies of his sovereign. And 

 here, I think, we have a clue to those proceedings 

 which the dominant power instituted against him, 

 and which resulted in the confiscation of his pro- 

 perty, &c. The tract concludes with a caution, 

 in the form of a Postscript. 



An eloquent and over-zealous apologist of the 

 king's alliance with Papists could hardly fail 

 to draw upon himself the extremest hatred and 

 vengeance of the fanatical Roundheads ; whose 

 arms, moreover, were rapidly bringing their Great 

 llebeliion to a triumphant close. 



That The Loyall Convert is the production of 

 Quarles, I believe as well from its peculiar style 

 of composition as from its contents. I would re- 

 fer those who are acquainted more particularly 

 with his prose writings, to his Observations con- 

 cerning Princes and States upon Peace and War 

 (4to. Lond., 1642); a work which was both con- 

 ceived and executed in a much less biassed spirit 

 than the Convert; and which probably prompted 

 its too-conscious author to confess that he had 

 (unwittingly no doubt) "brought some faggots to 

 the National Combustion." /8. 



ANTIQUITr OF TRICKS AND GAMES. 



I have always thought that a very curious essay 

 might be written on this subject. As a specimen 

 of what it might contain I oifer the two following 

 cases : — 



There is a cheating trick which almost every 

 one has probably seen performed at fairs, race- 

 courses, and such like places. It is called Prick 

 in the Garter or Prick in the Belt; in the old 

 dramatists we meet with it under the name of 

 Fast and Loose. We thus trace it back to the 

 sixteenth century ; but in the part of the Roman 

 de la Rose written by Jean de Meun in the com- 

 mencement of the fourteenth century are these 

 lines : 



" De Fortune la semilleuse, 



]'^t (le sa roii perilleuse 



Tous les tors center ne porroie ; 



C'est le gieu de boute-en-cnrroie." 



V. C879. 

 In the Glossary, M. Lantin de Damercy in- 

 forms us that neither himself nor Sainte-Palaye nor 

 Barbazan could make anything of it. But surely 

 Boute-en-Coi-7-oie must be precisely the same as 

 Prick in the Belt. I can, however, trace it up 

 even to the times of the Greeks and Romans. In 

 the Ouomaslicon of Julius Pollux (ix. 7.) there is 



the following description of a game called Hitnan- 

 teligmos, which I will give in his own words, and 

 which is as exact a description of Prick in the 

 Belt as could be written : — 



*' *0 5« luavTeKtyfj.o';. Snr\ov t/xai'TO? Aa^uptv9aj5ijs co-Tt Trept- 

 arpO(f>T^, Kaff' ^s efict KaBcvTa irarrdKlOi' T^s fitTrAoijs TVytlv ' ct 

 yap JU.7J KvOiVTO? e/ATrcptet'AijTTTO Tcp IfjidvTC to naTTa.\i,ov t^ttijto o 



"The Ilimanteligmos is a labyrinthine rolling of a 

 double strap, in which one was to try to put a peg in the 

 loop ; and if on unrolling the strap the peg was not caught 

 in the loop the pricker lost." 



The other case is a game which Ovid describes 

 thus in his Art of Love : — 



" Parva tabella capit ternos utrimque lapillos ; 

 In qua vicisse est continuasse suos." — iii. 365. 



Now this has always struck me as a very exact 

 description of a game at which I often played 

 when a schoolboy. Its name in Ireland is Tip- 

 top-Castle; the only name for it among English 

 schoolboys that I have been able to learn is 

 Noughts and Crosses. I dare say, however, that 

 most readers of " N. & Q." are well acquainted 

 with it. Thos. Keightlby. 



BRITISH SURNAMES. 



Your readers are aware that I have in pro- 

 gress a very elaborate and important work on 

 this subject. As I expect ere long to go to 

 press, I am most anxious to put myself in com- 

 munication with anybody and everybody that 

 can supply information, either directly to me, 

 or through the medium of "N. & Q." Besides 

 the etymology of surnames — English, Scottish, 

 Irish, and Welsh, and those of French, Dutch, 

 German, &c., naturalised in the United Kingdom 

 — I wish to show, where practicable, the century 

 in which the name originally appears ; and in the 

 case of foreign names, the particular circum- 

 stances in which they were imported, as, e. g. at 

 the Norman Conquest, at the Revocation of the 

 Edict of Nantes, at the Revolution, &c. I am 

 also anxious to exhibit the principal varieties of 

 orthography in each particular name, and the cor- 

 ruptions which have taken place in our family 

 nomenclature. Another feature in the work will 

 be anecdotes relating to surnames, and proverbs 

 showing forth family characteristics. It will be 

 worth recording how three hundred Metcalfes 

 formed the escort of their kinsman the sheriff of 

 York — how the Haigs of Bemerside never become 

 extinct — how the Culpepers, of whom there were 

 at one time twelve baronets and knights existing, 

 have become well-nigh defunct — how the Pollards 

 were known as Politic ; the Macraws as Wild ; 

 the Cradochs as Crafty. The vicissitudes of for- 

 tune will also be set down ; as where a day- 

 labourer represents an ancient house, and where 

 the Emperors of the East have for their descen- 



