Notes and Queries, Number 47, September 21, 1850

Notes and Queries, Number 47,
September 21, 1850

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Title: Notes & Queries, No. 47, Saturday, September 21, 1850
Author: Various
Release Date: November 3, 2004 [EBook #13936]
Language: English
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NOTES AND QUERIES:
A MEDIUM OF INTER-COMMUNICATION FOR LITERARY MEN,
ARTISTS, ANTIQUARIES, GENEALOGISTS, ETC.
* * * * *
"When found, make a note of."--CAPTAIN CUTTLE.
* * * * *

No. 47.] SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 1850 [Price Threepence.
Stamped Edition 4d.
* * * * * {257}
CONTENTS.
NOTES:-- Old Songs. 257 "Junius Identified." by J. Taylor. 258 Folk
Lore:--Spiders a Cure for Ague--Funeral Superstition--Folk Lore
Rhymes. 259 On a Passage in the Tempest, by S.W. Singer. 259
Punishment of Death of Burning. 260 Note on Morganatic Marriages.
261 Minor Notes:--Alderman Beckford--Frozen Horn--Inscription
translated--Parallel Passages--Note on George Herbert's Poems--"Crede
quod habes"--Grant to Earl of Sussex--First Woman formed from a
Rib--Beau Brummell's Ancestry. 262
QUERIES:-- Gray's Elegy and Dodsley's Poems. 264 Hugh Holland
and his Works, by E.F. Rimbault, L.L.D. 265 Harvey and the
Circulation of the Blood. 266 Minor Queries:--Bernardus
Patricius--Meaning of Hanger--Cat and Bagpipes--Andrew
Becket--Laurence Minot--Modena Family--Bamboozle--Butcher's Blue
Dress--Hatchment and Atchievement--"Te colui Virtutem"--"Illa
suavissima Vita"--Christianity, Early Influence of--Meaning of
Wraxen--Saint, Legend of a--Land Holland--Farewell--Stepony
Ale--"Regis ad Exemplar"--La Caronacquerie--Rev. T.
Tailer--Mistletoe as a Christmas Evergreen--Poor Robin's
Almanacks--Sirloin--Thompson of Esholt. 266
REPLIES:-- Replies to Minor Queries:--Pension--Execution of Charles
I.--Paper Hangings--Black-guard--Pilgrims' Road--Combs buried with
the Dead--Aërostation--St. Thomas of Lancaster--Smoke
Money--Robert Herrich--Guildhalls--Abbé Strickland--Long
Conkin--Havock--Becket's Mother--Watching the Sepulchre--Portraits
of Charles I.--Joachim, the French Ambassador. 269
MISCELLANEOUS:-- Notes on Books, Sales, Catalogues, &c. 271
Books and Odd Volumes Wanted. 271 Notices to Correspondents. 271
Advertisements. 272
* * * * *
NOTES.
OLD SONGS.
I heard, "in other days," a father singing a comic old song to one of his
children, who was sitting on his knee. This was in Yorkshire: and yet it

could hardly be a Yorkshire song, as the scene was laid in another
county. It commenced with--
"Randle O'Shay has sold his mare For nineteen groats at Warrin'ton
fair,"
and goes on to show how the simpleton was cheated out of his money.
I find in Hasted's History of Kent (vol. i. p. 468., 2nd edit.) mention
made of the family of Shaw, who held the manor of Eltham, &c., and
who "derive themselves from the county palatine of Chester." It is
further stated that _Randal de Shaw_, his son, was settled at Haslington
Hall in that county.
All, indeed, that this proves is, the probability of the hero of the song
being also a native of Cheshire, or one of the adjacent counties; and
that the legend is a truth, even as to names as well as general facts. The
song is worthy of recovery and preservation, as a remnant of English
character and manners; and I have only referred to Hasted to point out
the probable district in which it will be found.
There are many other characteristics of the manners of the humbler
classes to be found in songs that had great local popularity within the
period of living memory; for instance, the Wednesbury Cocking
amongst the colliers of Staffordshire and Rotherham Status amongst
the cutlers of Sheffield. Their language, it is true, is not always very
delicate--perhaps was not even at the time these songs were
composed,--as they picture rather the exuberant freaks of a
half-civilised people than the better phases of their character. Yet even
these form "part and parcel" of the history of "the true-born
Englishman."
One song more may be noticed here:--the rigmarole, snatches of which
probably most of us have heard, which contains an immense number of
mere truisms having no connexion with each others, and no bond of
union but the metrical form in which their juxtaposition is effected, and
the rhyme, which is kept up very well throughout, though sometimes
by the introduction of a nonsense line. Who does not remember--
"A yard of pudding's not an ell,"
or
"Not forgetting _dytherum di_, A tailor's goose can never fly,"
and other like parts?
It is just such a piece of burlesque as Swift might have written: but

many circumstances lead me to think it must be much older. Has it ever
been printed? {258}
There is another old (indeed an evidently very ancient) song, which