to judge of the meanings of words by their connexion, and by comparing them as used by various authors, according to Sir T. Elyot's advice :

"It is not inugh for hym to haue red poetes, but all kyndes of wrytyng must also be sought for, not for the histories only, but also for the propretie of wordes, which communely doo receiue their auctoritie of noble auctours."-Sir T. Elyot's' Governour' (1537), f. 57.

On the whole this plan has served me very well. In process of time words come to be used in a very different sense from their root-meaning; then this way of ascertaining their value is the most satisfactory.

All but PROF. SKEAT, I hope, would see that the objectionable expression was only a rhetorical exaggeration, and it was scarcely worth while to notice it, coming from such an obscure individual. But, on the whole, there is not much reason to be displeased with his note, because, with an evident desire to find all the fault possible with me, he has not done much damage. But why did he reserve all his criticism for me, and not bestow a word on the definition of niggling as “chopping and changing"?

I only hazarded a conjecture as to the meaning of the passage in 'Piers Plowman'; and it is not yet proved to be wrong. It reads:

And nevelynge with the nose,
And his nekke hangyng.

How could be hang his neck without carrying his nose along with it—that is, downward? Snivelling means something weak and contemptible, and this is not always true of wrath. The matter is not yet plain. As neuelynge and nevelynge (spelt nyuelynge by ST. SWITHIN), are stated by PROF. SKEAT to be "quite different words," would he kindly oblige by giving the root of the one which means downwards?

ST. SWITHIN is probably right; but I should prefer passages from old authors to a bare quotation from a dictionary. Common sense told me MR. MARSHALL'S word might be snivelling, and I knew neese or nese was old English for sneeze, because there are passages in the Bible where it can mean nothing else. But does it always mean this? When we read, "His nesynge is like a glystrynge fyre," is ST. SWITHIN quite sure that it describes the Leviathan as sneezing in the water? It might well make "the depe to boyle lyke a pot." All the glossarists and dictionary-men in the world will have difficulty in persuading me that is a correct rendering of the Hebrew, because it introduces a touch of the grotesque into one of the grandest passages of the Bible. Why should the crocodile be the only animal or reptile represented as sneezing?

Boston, Lincolnshire.

R. R.

THOMAS NOEL (8th S. v. 487).—Thomas Noel, the author of 'Rymes and Roundelayes,' was the eldest son of the Rev. Thomas Noel, M.A., rector

of Kirkby Mallory, and also rector of Elmthorps, both in the county of Leicester. He was born in 1800, and took his degree at Oxford, Merton College, in 1824. He died at Brighton upwards of thirty years ago. I have the above information from the late Rev. H. A. Noel, for several years the highly respected rector of St. Clement's, Longsight, Manchester, and youngest brother of the poet, in reply to a query in the Manchester City News, October 1, 1892. G. H. S.

Heaton Moor, Stockport.

isabelle" is a light yellow colour, a mixture of ISABELLA OF FRANCE (8th S. vi. 7).—“ Couleur white, yellow, and flesh colour (see Rozan, 'Petites Ignorance de la Conversation,' p. 257 in the ninth ed.). The colour is said to have derived its name from the appearance of some archducal linen. Isabella of Austria, daughter of Philip II. of Spain married Albert of Austria, son of Maximilian II. and of Elizabeth, daughter of Henry II. of France, Her father gave her the Netherlands as a dowry, and it was while besieging Ostend, which was in a state of revolt, that she gave her name to a colour. Isabella swore not to change her linen till the town was taken. The siege lasted three years,

with the result that the linen became "couleur isabelle." S. MAVROJANI.

From the query of G. L. S. it seems that another Isabella makes a claim, hitherto, I had thought, in dispute only between Isabella "the Catholic," and Isabella, daughter of Philip II. of Spain and Archduchess of Austria, to give her name to the peculiar yellow colour which her unchanged linen had in course of time acquired. The first of these ladies set out with her husband in April, 1491, on their crusade against Grenada, which did not capitulate till November. But if her vow to make no change in her underclothing covered the whole of that period, she was far outdone by the second lady, whose similar vow with regard to the siege of Ostend in 1601 left her free from washerwomen's bills till 1604. Her portrait may now be seen among others of fair women (and foul) at the Grafton Gallery. G. L. S. will doubtless have ascertained, before writing to N. & Q.,' that the query and reply on 'Isabel Colour' in 6th S. ii. 307, 525, did not give the information of which he is in search with regard to Isabella of France. And he will not need to be reminded that Isabella of France was imprisoned after the execution of the "Gentle Mortimer" at Castle Rising and elsewhere. But there is no reason to suppose that scantiness of wardrobe was a condition of her incarceration. And though she might have been willing to go to the last extremity to save her lover, Edward III. has never been credited with the joke of translating "Love's last shift" into "La dernière chemise de l'Amour." Indeed, he always bore in mind that, however faulty Isabella's conduct, she was a queen, a king's daughter, and his mother.

KILLIGREW.

It was Isabella of Castile, wife of Ferdinand of Aragon, who gave her name to the colour, known ever after "" as couleur isabelle." E. S. H.

Castle Semple. The lady said to have given her name to the colour was Isabella of Austria, daughter of Philip II., King of Spain, and Elizabeth of France. She was married to Albert, son of Maximilian II., and was given by her father on her marriage the Sovereignty of the Low Countries. She accompanied her husband in his wars against the Dutch, and at the siege of Ostend, which lasted more than three years, she swore she would not change her linen till it was taken. She died in 1633. brief moment she was put forward by the Spanish Government as Queen of France, being niece and nearest relative of Henry III.

Reading.

For a

CONSTANCE RUSSELL.

JAMES MARGETSON (8th S. vi. 1).-As a descendant I have been much interested in this

account of the archbishop. Am I to understand that the children of Ann were (1) Thomas, the doctor; (2) Major John, killed at Limerick; and (3) James, died young? Major John's daughter married the Earl of Bessborough, and seems to have been an heiress, or possessed of Sysonby in Leicestershire. HENRY F. PONSONBY.

66

"RADICAL REFORMERS" (8th S. iv. 226, 337, 458; v. 409).-MR. J. P. OWEN, in his interesting notes hereon, asks, when referring to the principles of the Chartist agitators, whether he is not correct in thinking that the points which were advanced at the meeting at Birmingham on August 6, 1838, as the political creed of the Chartists, had not been urged at a period some fifty years previous to the date named. He is quite right in so thinking. After my perusal of his remarks on the point in question, I found, on reference to the article on "Chartism in the National Cyclopædia,' that, apparently, in the principles or details of the People's Charter" there is nothing new; for we find that in 1780 the Duke of Richmond introduced a Bill into the House of Lords for annual parliaments and universal suffrage. In the same year the electors of Westminster appointed a committee to take into consideration the election of members of the House of Commons, and in their report they recommended the identical points which constitute the main features of what is now called the "People's Charter." The society of the Friends of the People, established in 1792, three years afterwards published a declaration which recommended a very large extension of the suffrage. And in seasons of national distress, says the writer of the article referred to, the amendment of the representative system has always been warmly taken up by the people of England. C. P. HALE.

THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON AND WATERLOO (8th S. v. 345, 389, 433; vi. 17).-Not long before his death, 1867, Sir James South told me the following:

"Lord Ashley after visiting at Strathfieldsaye dined with me at the Observatory here: he alluded to convereations with the Duke-one was, the Duke of Welling. ton said the opposed generals were clever men, Soult especially. But how was it, Sir, you always had the better of them?' asked Lord Ashley. Why, I blundered as well as they, but my men got me out of scrapes, theirs left them in,' was the reply."

JOHN J. MERRIMAN.

EdinburghEAN GRAMMAR (8th S. vi. 8).—We make, in English, no distinction of form between nominative and accusative in the case of nouns. This has led to occasional confusion between the cases of pronouns; and that is all.

The matter is discussed in Mätzner's 'English Grammar,' translated by Grice, vol. i. p. 294. The confusion spoken of is there said to be common

Reference is made to Camden, who mentions the legend in his 'Britannia' (Gough's edit., 1789, vol. ii. p. 425). Speaking of the river Croke, which, rising out of Bagmere lake, runs by Brereton," Camden cites a somewhat similar legend of a stew pond near the Abbey of St. Maurice, in Burgundy. Mr. Axon then gives a poem by Felicia Hemans, called 'The Vassal's Lament for the Fallen Tree.' He then says:

"The Brereton family have now passed away. The death omen is alluded to in Sir Philip Sidney's 'Seven Wonders of England,' and the late Major Egerton Leigh made it the subject of a poem in his 'Cheshire Ballads."" Several analogies are given.

The note to Egerton Leigh's ballad 'The Death Omen' says:

"The mere known by the three names mentioned as above, and quoted by Fuller two hundred years since, as the only wonder in Cheshire, and specially noticed by Drayton in his 'Polyolbion,' published in 1613, is partially drained and its mysteries vanished. In Sir Philip Sydney's 'Seven Wonders of England' we find the following:

The Breretons have a lake which, when the sun Approaching warms (not else) dead logs up sends From hideous depth, which tribute when it ends, Sore sign it is the lord's last thread is spun." The three names referred to are Blackmere, Brereton's Lake, and Bagmere. At the head of the ballad is :

Of neighbours Blackmere named of strangers Brereton's lake.-Drayton.

See 'Ballads and Legends of Cheshire,' Longmans & Co., London, 1867 (collected by Egerton Leigh), p. 262. 'The Death Omen' is by Egerton Leigh bimself.

Mention of the legend is made in "A Cavalier's

of Crosby, Lancashire, Esquire, Captain of Dragoons......in the Royalist Army of 1642, edited by the Rev. T. Ellison Gibson, London, Longmans, Green & Co., 1880," p. 301, as follows :—

"Mr. Camden speaks of the prodigious floating of certain fatal blocks as predicting the death of the heirs of the family of the Breertons. I never heard the thing contradicted, saving that in a long discourse which an Sherlotta, Countess of Derby, I heard her say that she ancient lady of that house made of that subject to did not give much credit to it. Yet she seemed to ground her disbelief too much upon one late imposture proved upon the boatmen of the place, who had drawn much people together, and gotten some money from them, by playing a knavish trick. The truth of the main matter may be worth the search."

A friend of mine tells me that the fatal blocks were not whole trunks of trees, but "stous" (rhyming with "brows"). A "stou" is Cheshire for a stool, where a tree or shrub has been cut down, and from which suckers have sprung if left in the ground. See Egerton Leigh's Glossary of Words used in the Dialect of Cheshire,' 1877. Lysons's 'Magna Britannia," " County of Chester," 1810, p. 374, says :—

"The present representative in the female line [of the Breretons of Brereton] is the lady of Abraham Bracebridge. Esq., of Atherston, in Warwickshire, who occasionally resides in the old mansion at Brereton." Brereton Hall is about two miles south of Holmes Chapel, on the road between Knutsford and Church Lawton. ROBERT PIERPOINT.

St. Austin's, Warrington.

FOLK-LORE PERFORATED STONES (8th S. v. 308, 397).-As the church keys which came under my notice were far more cumbrous than the cotton reel accompanying them, it does not appear likely that it was tied to them simply for the purpose of preventing their being mislaid or pocketed by accident. Possibly there may be two motives underlying the custom of tying various things to bunches of keys-the one arising from the idea that it secures them from loss by carelessness, and the other grounded on the notion that it is lucky.

Will MR. PENNY be kind enough to say whether the old woman possessing the witch-stones was a native of Stixwould; and if not, in what part of the world she was "insensed" with traditional respect for their virtues. T. R. E. N. T.

Supposing that there is some charm or mystic meaning attached to these, mention ought to be made of a very remarkable one which once existed in Orkney, amongst the standing stones of Stennis, between Kirkwall and Stromness. This was a large obelisk, perforated by a large hole, and called the Stone of Odin, through which lovers were accustomed to plight their troth by joining their hands. The Odin stone, long the favourite trysting-place of Orcadian lovers, was carried away in 1814 by a neighbouring farmer, who used it in