426 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



O* S. IX. June 2. 'GP. 



gical account of tbis discovery, perhaps Mr. Car- 

 rington or some other of your contributors in 

 that locality may be enabled to render some in- 

 formation as to the position in which the body was 

 found, as also if there was any record to denote 

 the individual in question ; in all probability it 

 may have been one of the founders who was thus 

 honoured. Abracadabra. 



Money Value in 1704. — A certain class of 

 persons had an income of 50/. a year in the year 

 1704 (Queen Anne's reign). Can any of your 

 numerous readers inform me what sum of money 

 would, in the present day, be equivalent to 50/. 

 a-year in 1704? W. H. 



Land Measure. — Whence do we derive our 

 several measures of length in land-measure ? 

 And why does the perch differ in length in Eng- 

 land and Ireland ? <£_ 



Dublin Society. — Can any of your readers 

 oblige me by naming any books referring to so- 

 ciety in Dublin about the years 1730 to 1735, 

 particularly the wits and beauties, and Dean 

 Swift's set ? Enquirer. 



Landlord. — When was the designation " Land- 

 lord " first given to the keeper of an inn ? S. B. 



"Eyelin." — Could any of your readers inform 

 me the subject and story of a lithograph I pur- 

 chased some years since abroad. The title is 

 " Eyelin," and taken from a painting by Lessing. 

 The subject consists of a fine old man in a prison 

 cell, with two young monks who have just de- 

 scended into the prison with a view to instruct 

 the prisoner, but who seem frightened at his 

 anger. A. B. S. 



George II. Halfpenny. — On a halfpenny of 

 George II. of which I have seen two specimens, 

 a rat appears in the act of climbing to the knee 

 of Britannia. Is this a genuine coin ? and what 

 is the meaning of this singularity, which is so 

 contrived that, at first sight, th.e rat might be 

 mistaken for that part of the robe which should 

 cover the knee of Britannia. I have heard it said 

 that a new species of rat first appeared in Eng- 

 land at the accession of the Hanoverian dynasty. 



J. Mn. 



Concur : Condog : Cockeram's English Dic- 

 tionary. — Everybody knows the story of Dr. 

 Littleton's introducing " condog " into his Latin 

 Dictionary as the equivalent of " concur," but it 

 may not be equally well known that he was l.ot 

 the original inventor of the joke. In Cockeram's 

 curious little English Dictionary, (a copy of the 

 sixth edition of which, dated 1639, is now before 

 me,) I find " concurre" and " condog" given as 

 convertible with " agree." Now, as the earliest 

 edition of Cockeram was probably published fifty 

 years before Littleton (which first appeared in 



1678), a singular difficulty occurs. Could the 

 learned Doctor have stolen this valuable discovery 

 from Cockeram, and then basely covered the theft 

 by fabricating the story about his boy, &c. ? And 

 another difficult question is this : How came the 

 original inventor to hit upon the discovery ? Had 

 he a boy to help him ? I pause for a reply to 

 these momentous questions; but before I close, 

 I may mention that our friend Cockeram antici- 

 pated to some small extent another idea of modern 

 times — that so ably carried out by Dr. Roget in 

 his Thesaurus. The second part of his Dictionary 

 consists of a list of common words, explained, as 

 he says, " by a more refined and elegant speech," 

 by the use of which a person not satisfied with 

 saying to his friend, " If you'll allow me I'll wake 

 you early, and then we'll take a walk together," 

 might refine his speech as follows : " If you'll 

 approbate, I will matutinally expergefie you, and 

 then we'll obambulate together." This is ab- 

 surd enough, but notwithstanding there are some 

 very interesting matters in Cockeram. I should 

 be greatly obliged by any information about the 

 author himself. Lethrediensis. 



" Caledonia." — There is a play entitled Cale- 

 donia, or the Clans of Yore, by Wm. Thomson, 

 Edinburgh, 1818. In Watt's Bihliotheca the 

 authorship is ascribed to W. Thomson, LL.D., 

 author of numerous niiscellaneoun works, who 

 died in 1817. Can any of your readers who may 

 be able to refer to this volume, inform me whether 

 this was a posthumous publication ? X. 



Yellow-hammer. — What is the proper way of 

 spelling the name of this bird ? I have examined 

 some ten or fifteen dictionaries, and find it given 

 uniformly as above ; but I perceive an innovation 

 has lately been hazarded by the Rev. C. A. Johns, 

 in a little illustrated work on Birds, published by 

 the Society for the Promotion of Christian Know, 

 ledge. Mr. Johns discards the h altogether, and 

 would no doubt, if challenged, tell us as his rea- 

 son for the change that ummer is the German 

 word for a bunting, and that our English Ziammer 

 is no doubt a corruption therefrom. Yarrell, I 

 believe, was the first to suggest the correction. 

 Homher, in the West of England, signifies a ham- 

 mer ; and in the same districts the chaffinch is 

 best known as the yellow-homber. Let us try to 

 settle at once which is the correct orthography, 

 and which the corruption. T. Hughes. 



Chester. 



Vant in personal names, as Bullivant, Pilli- 

 vant ; and in local names, as Bullevant in Ire- 

 land. Qu. Dan. vand, water ? R. S. Charnock. 



A Father's Justice. — Where may the original 

 of the following story be found ? — 



" In old times a king passed a law, that whoever in 

 his dominions was convicted of adultery should lose both 



