2»* S. IX. April 7. '60.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



275 



efficacious that the captives were miraculously 

 disencumbered of their fetters, and found them- 

 selves free. In the pictorial representations of 

 this worthy queen and saintly lady she is figured, 

 crowned and veiled ; a captive is kneeling at her 

 feet," but in gratitude ; for be is unencumbered, 

 and his broken fetters are in Radegunda's hands. 



J. DORAN. 



Bumptious and Gumption (2 nd S. ix. 125.188.) 

 — Sir E. L. B. Ly tton, in My Novel, gives an amus- 

 ing disquisition on the words gumption and lump- 

 turns : — 



" ' She was always— not exactly proud like— but what 

 I call gumptious.' 



" ' 1 never heard that word before,' said the Parson. 

 'Bumptious indeed, though 1 believe it is not in the 

 dictionary, has crept into familiar parlance, especially 

 amongst young folks at school and college.' 



" ' Bumptious is bumptious, and gumptious is gump- 

 tious,' said the landlord. ' Now, the town beadle is 

 bumptious, and Mrs. Avenel is gumptious.' 



" ' She is a very respectable woman,' said Mr. Dale. 



" ' In course, Sir ; all gumptious folks are : they value 

 themselves on their respectability, and look down on their 

 neighbours.' 



" Parson. ' Gumptious — gumption. I think I remember 

 the substantive at school ; not that my master taught it 

 to me. Gumption, — it means cleverness.' 



" Landlord. ' There's gumption and gumptious ! Gump- 

 tion is knowing ; but when I say that sum un is gumptious, 

 I mean — though that's more vulgar like— sum un who does 

 not think small beer of hisself. You take mc, Sir? ' " 



w. c. 



When the question about gumption was first 

 started, it at once struck me that it was con- 

 nected with gaivm, and gaivmless ; at the same 

 time the word bumptious suggested itself as being 

 a corruption of presumptuous, to which it in the 

 main corresponds. J. Eastwood. 



Gumption, heedfulness, carefulness, acuteness of 

 observation. It is still in use in the South of 

 Scotland; from A.-S. gyman, geman; from which, 

 to gome, still in use in South of Scotland (but not 

 found in Jamieson's Scottish Dictionary), to ob- 

 serve, take heed, jemen (Ancren Rime, passim). 



Bumptious, in common use in Lincolnshire, pre- 

 sumptuous, pertinacious. In Ilolloway's Diet, of 

 Provincialisms it is, " apt to take unintended af- 

 fronts ; petulantly, and arrogantly." J. Mn. 



A Roste Yerne (2' :d S. ix. 178.) — Is roste 

 ycrne written for rostern f Rostrum would of 

 course be perverted into rostern. As the lectern 

 (let tern, lettron, lectorne, lettrone, lutrin, lectries, 

 let tires) made after the shape of an eagle, with 

 outspread wings, was and is used for reading the 

 011,80 would the rostern , be used as the pul- 

 pit from which the people might be addressed. 



W. C. 



Would not rusty iron, or even a corruption of 

 rostrum, be as good an explanation of this phrase 

 as tli'' one : tatcd by your correspondent to be 

 " doubtless" the correct one ? J. Eastwood. 



Celebrated Writer (2 nd S. ix. 144.) — The 

 writer alluded to is probably Robert Hall, the 

 Baptist minister at Cambridge, whose widow died 

 at the end of February last. Cottle records this 

 incident of Hall : " He stated ... that he had arisen 

 from his bed in the middle of the night two or 

 three times when projecting his ' Sermon on In- 

 fidelity ' to record thoughts, or to write down 

 passages that he feared might otherwise escape his 

 memory." {Early Recollections of Coleridge, 1837, 

 vol. i. p. 107.) 



" Such," as Johnson says, " is the labour of 

 those who write for immortality." The practice 

 I should think was and is common. No author 

 who cares for intellectual economy should neglect 

 it. The poet Campbell wrote part of his Lochiel 

 in the middle of the night, after being "bedded." 



My late lamented friend Mrs. J. W. Loudon 

 told me that she devoted some hours of every 

 night, after having retired to her bed, to reading. 



llaving alluded to Cottle, I will finish this note 

 with a Query. Is Joseph Cottle still alive ? If 

 not, when did he die ? * Clammild. 



Athenamm Club. 



Heraldic Drawings and Engravings (2 nd S. 

 viii. 471.; ix. 53.) — Ache appears to have con- 

 fused a print of the death-warrant of King Charles 

 I. with the original document. In Porny's Ele- 

 ments of Heraldry, 1795, p. 23 , is the following 

 passage : — 



" The first instance I have met with (of indicating 

 tinctures in engraving) for English coats of arms, is in 

 a print of the warrant for the execution of King Charles 

 I. in which the tinctures of the arms, in several of the 

 seals, are expressed with the lines now used. All the 

 publications of English heralds, before that period, hav- 

 ing in their cuts the tinctures of the arms denoted only 

 by their initial letters : as 0. for or., A. argent, &c, which. 

 may be seen in the works of Upton, Camden, Dugdale, 

 Leigh, Milles, and others." 



F. L. 



Dinner Etiquette (2" d S. ix. 170.) — Like 

 your correspondent Ci-devant Jeune-homme I 

 have a distinct recollection of having seen the 

 ladies go out of the drawing-room first in single 

 file, followed by the gentlemen in the same order. 

 My impression is that the system of hooking, like 

 the dancing of quadrilles, was not introduced till 

 after the Peace in 1814. Meletes. 



Holding up the Hand (2 nd S. ix. 72. 189.) — 



The form of administering an oath in the French 

 courts of police involves the holding up the hand, 

 — a custom probably to be traced, together with 

 other forms, to the usages of the old Roman law. 

 The man to be sworn listens to the oath, which an 

 officer of the court recites, and then holding up 

 his right hand exclaims, Jc jure! W. C. 



[* Mr. Joseph Cottle died at his residence, Firlield- 

 house, Knowlc, near Bristol, on June 10, 1853, in his 

 eighty-fourth year. — Ed.] 



