2 nd S. IX. May 19. '60.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



389 



repaired or restored. In the new masonry is 

 neatly cut the above-mentioned inscription. This, 

 of course, has been done by authority. Now who 

 was St. Govor ? John Williams. 



Arno's Court. 



[St. Govor was one of the three principal saints of 

 Gwent, in South Wales. See " N. & Q." 2-»» S. iii. 77. 

 An engraving of the hermitage of St. Govor is given in 

 Fenton's Tour through Pembrokeshire, p. 415.] 



Style of a Marquess. — Sir Bernard Burke, 

 Ulster King of Arms, in his Peerage and Baro- 

 netage, says that " the style of a Marquess is 

 ' Most Honourable.' " The Irish Compendium 

 states that " a Marquess hath the title of Most 

 Noble, Most Honourable and Potent Prince." 

 Which is right ? James Graves. 



Kilkenny. 



[Ulster is correct : the style of a Marquess is " Most 

 Honourable."] 



SJUyftaf* 



DIBDIN'S SONGS. 

 (2 od S. ix. 280.) 



I have the opportunity of seeing "N. & Q." only 

 once a month, or I should have noticed sooner the 

 observations and Queries of Fairplat with re- 

 spect to the sea songs of Dibdin. 



I beg in the first place to disclaim entirely the 

 intention of disparaging or even discussing the 

 merits of Dibdin as a song writer. In saying that 

 his songs had never in my time been generally 

 accepted by sailors on account of the nautical ab- 

 surdities in which they abound, I merely stated a 

 fact within my own knowledge and experience, 

 upon which the public in general could not pos- 

 sibly be competent to judge. It is hardly con- 

 sistent with "fair play" to accuse me of violating 

 " the claims of justice and truth," and censuring 

 " all those who have ventured to think differently 

 a3 to their merits." I did neither the one nor the 

 other. I neither admitted nor denied the poetical 

 or lyrical merits of the songs : I merely denied 

 their technical correctness, and said it was " a 

 mistake to suppose that they had been generally 

 accepted by sailors." Is it not enough for Fair- 

 plat that they have been accepted by all the 

 world besides, and have procured for their author 

 and his descendants fame, and honour, and pen- 

 sions ; not empty praise only, but solid pudding 

 likewise ? 



In answer to Query 1. Why did Pitt encourage 

 Dibdin to go among the sailors during the mutiny 

 at the Nore? I can only say, in the first place, 

 that I do not believe he did anything of the kind; 

 if he did it is not mentioned in any history of that 

 event which has come within my knowledge, and 

 is as difficult to be accounted for as the expedition 



of an English clergyman and his wife, a few years 

 ago, to Rome to convert the Pope to Protestantism, 

 or that of the three Quakers to Petersburgh to 

 persuade Czar Nicholas to join the Peace-at-any- 

 price Society. It is I believe true, at least we 

 have it on the authority of Dibdin's son, in a 

 Memoir contained in the edition of the songs pa- 

 tronised by Lord Minto, that 



"A pension of 200/. a year was awarded him rather 

 late, for having, at the express desire of Mr. Pitt's mi- 

 nistry, put himself to an expense of more than GOO?, by 

 quitting highly lucrative provincial engagements and 

 opening his theatre in a hot July, at considerable nightly 

 loss, in town, where he was instructed to write, sing, 

 publish, and give away loyal war songs, and that before 

 he had enjoyed the said pension long enough to repay 

 his losses in earning it, it was withdrawn by a succeeding 

 ministry ; a part of it was restored a short period before 

 his death, which took place in 1814." 



This answers the Query, Why did George III. 

 give Dibdin a pension ? It may also account for 

 the notion that Pitt employed him " to go among 

 the sailors." No doubt Pitt thought that sailors 

 might be attracted to Dibdin, and perhaps imbibe 

 from his performances a better spirit than then 

 generally prevailed among them. It was catch- 

 ing, however, at a very slender rope-yarn, and I 

 am not surprised that the peace ministry of Mr. 

 Addington withdrew a pension conferred for such 

 very doubtful services. 



The pension granted by Her present Majesty to 

 his daughter is, I doubt not, a fitting acknow- 

 ledgment of the great abilities which Dibdin cer- 

 tainly possessed as a song-writer, and much more 

 as a musical composer, and which he invariably 

 employed in the cause of loyalty and patriotism. 

 He was the author of considerably more than a 

 thousand songs, many of which he set to music 

 himself, and good music too, as I am informed by 

 those who are competent to judge. Of these about 

 a hundrjd are sea songs, so called at least by 

 landsmen ; and perhaps they may pass current as 

 such in the yacht squadron, or in the cockpit with 

 the younger midshipmen, who of course are less 

 nice in their nauticals than Jack ; but I do not 

 hesitate to say that, with the exception of perhaps 

 four or five, they all contain stanzas which ut- 

 terly defy emendation, and in which technical 

 terms are so jumbled and misapplied, or the sen- 

 timents are so foreign to a seaman's habits of 

 thought as to be not only distasteful to sailors 

 generally, but even more unintelligible to them 

 than to landsmen. Take, for example, the follow- 

 ing stanza from by no means the worst of them, 

 "The Greenwich Pensioner," of which Dibdin 

 himself informs us that he sold first and last ten 

 thousand seven hundred and fifty copies : — 



" That time bound straight for Portugal 

 Right fore and aft we bore, 

 Bnt when we'd made Cape Ortegal 

 A cale blew off the shore, — 



