Notes and Queries, Number 181, April 16, 1853

    H. T. Ellacombe.
Edmund Burke.—Can any of your correspondents tell me when and where he was married?

    B. E. B.

Plan of London.—Is there any good plan of London, showing its present extent? The answer is, None. What is more, there never was a decent plan of this vast metropolis. There is published occasionally, on a small sheet of paper, a wretched and disgraceful pretence to one, bedaubed with paint. Can you explain the cause of this? Every other capital in Europe has handsome plans, easy to be obtained: nay more, almost every provincial town, whether in this country or on the Continent, possesses better engraved and more accurate plans than this great capital can pretend to. Try and use your influence to get this defect supplied.

    L. S. W.

Minchin.—Could any of your Irish correspondents give me any information with regard to the sons of Col. Thomas Walcot (c. 1683), or the families of Minchin and Fitzgerald, co. Tipperary, he would much oblige

    M.

Minor Queries with Answers

Leapor's "Unhappy Father."—Can you tell me where the scene of this play, a tragedy by Mary Leapor, is laid, and the names of the dramatis personæ? It is to be found in the second volume of Poems, by Mary Leapor, 8vo. 1751. This authoress was the daughter of a gardener in Northamptonshire, and the only education she received consisted in being taught reading and writing. She was born in 1722, and died in 1746, at the early age of twenty-four. Her poetical merit is commemorated in the Rev. John Duncombe's poem of the Feminead.

    A. Z.

[The scene, a gentleman's country house. The dramatis personæ: Dycarbas, the unhappy father; Lycander and Polonius, sons of Dycarbas, in love with Terentia; Eustathius, nephew of Dycarbas, and husband of Emilia; Leonardo, cousin of Eustathius; Paulus, servant of Dycarbas; Plynus, servant to Eustathius; Timnus, servant to Polonius; Emilia, daughter of Dycarbas; Terentia, a young lady under the guardianship of Dycarbas; Claudia, servant to Terentia.]

Meaning of "The Litten" or "Litton."—This name is given to a small piece of land, now pasture, inclosed within the moat of the ancient manor of Marwell, formerly Merewelle, in Hants, once the property of the see of Winchester. It does not appear to have been ever covered by buildings. What is the meaning or derivation of the term? Does the name exist in any other place, as applied to a piece of land situated as the above-described piece? I have spelt it as pronounced by the bailiff of the farm.

    W. H. G.

Winchester.

[Junius and Ray derive it from the Anglo-Saxon lictun, cœmiterium, a burying-place. Our correspondent, however, will find its etymology discussed in the Gentleman's Magazine, vol. lxxviii. pp. 216. 303. and 319.]

St. James' Market House.—In a biography of Richard Baxter, the Nonconformist divine, about 1671:

"Mr. Baxter came up to London, and was one of the Tuesday lecturers at Pinner's Hall, and a Friday lecturer at Fetter Lane; but on Sundays he for some time preached only occasionally, and afterwards more statedly in St. James's Market House."

Where was the Market House situate?

    P. T.

[Cunningham, in his Handbook of London, under the head of St. James' Market, Jermyn Street, St. James', tells us that "here, in a room over the Market House, preached Richard Baxter, the celebrated Nonconformist. On the occasion of his first Sermon, the main beam of the building cracked beneath the weight of the congregation." We recollect the old market and Market House, which must have stood on the ground now occupied by Waterloo Place.]

Replies

GRUB STREET JOURNAL

(Vol. vii., pp. 108. 268.)

Reginensis has been referred by F. R. A. to Drake's Essays for an account of this journal. Drake's account is, however, very incorrect. The Grub Street Journal did not terminate, as he states, on the 24th August, 1732, but was continued in the original folio size to the 29th Dec., 1737; the last No. being 418., instead of 138., as he incorrectly gives it. He appears to have supposed that the 12mo. abridgment in two volumes contained all the essays in the paper; whereas it did not comprise more than a third of them. He mentions as the principal writers Dr. Richard Russel and Dr. John Martyn. Budgell, however, in The Bee (February, 1733) says, "The person thought to be at the head of the paper is Mr. R—l (Russel), a nonjuring clergyman, Mr. P—e (Pope), and some other gentlemen." Whether Pope wrote in it or not, it seems to have been used as a vehicle by his friends for their attacks upon his foes, and the war against the Dunces is carried on with great wit and spirit in its pages. It is by far the most entertaining of the old newspapers, and throws no small light upon the literary history of the time. I have a complete series of the journal in folio, as well as of the continuation, in a large 4to. form, under the title of The Literary Courier of Grub Street, which commenced January 5, 1738, and appears to have terminated at the 30th No., on the 27th July, 1738. I never saw another complete copy. The Grub Street Journal would afford materials for many curious and amusing extracts. One very entertaining part of it is the "Domestic News," under which head it gives the various and often contradictory accounts of the daily newspapers, with a most humorous running commentary.

    James Crossley.

STONE PILLAR WORSHIP

(Vol. v., p. 122.)

Sir James Emerson Tennent, in his learned and curious Note on stone worship in Ireland, desires information as to the present existence of worship of stone pillars in Orkney. When he says it continued till a late period, I suppose he must allude to the standing stone at Stenness, perforated by a hole, with the sanctity attached to promises confirmed by the junction of hands through the hole, called the promise of Odin. Dr. Daniel Wilson enters into this fully in Præhistoric Annals of Scotland, pp. 99, 100, 101. It has been told myself that if a lad and lass promised marriage with joined hands through the hole, the promise was held to be binding. Whence the sanctity attached to such a promise I could not ascertain to be known, and I did not hear of any other superstition connected with this stone, which was destroyed in 1814. In the remote island of North Ronaldshay is another standing stone, perforated by a hole, but there is no superstition of this nature attached to it. At the Yule time the inhabitants danced about it, and when there were yule dancings in neighbouring houses, they began the dancing at the stone, and danced from the stone all the road to what was called to me the dancing-house. The sword dance, with a great deal of intricate crossing, and its peculiar simple tune, still exists in Orkney, but is not danced with swords, though I heard of clubs or sticks having been substituted. There are found in these islands the two circles of stones at Stenness, and single standing stones. One of these, at Swannay in Birsay, is said by tradition to have been raised to mark the spot where the procession rested when carrying the body of St. Magnus after his murder in Egilshay in 1110, from that island to Christ's Kirk in Birsay, where it was first interred. Here is a date and a purpose. The single standing stones, in accordance with Sir James's opinion, and to use nearly his expressions, are said to mark the burial-places of distinguished men, to commemorate battles and great events, and to denote boundaries; and these, and still more the circles, are objects of respect as belonging to ages gone by, but principally with the educated classes, and there is no superstition remaining with any. Such a thing as the swathing stone of South Inchkea is not known to have existed. The stones in the two circles, and the single standing stones, are all plain; but there was found lately a stone of the sculptured symbolical class, inserted to form the base of a window in St. Peter's Kirk, South Ronaldshay, and another of the same class in the island of Bressay, in Zetland. The first is now in the Museum of Scottish Antiquaries in Edinburgh; and the Zetland stone, understood to be very curious, is either there or in Newcastle, and both are forming the subject of antiquarian inquiry.

    W. H. F.

AUTOGRAPHS IN BOOKS

(Continued from Vol. vii., p. 255.)

The following are probably trifling, but may be considered worth recording. Facing the title-page to The Works of Mr. Alexander Pope, London, W. Bowyer, for Bernard Lintot, &c., 1717, 8vo., no date at end of preface, is in (no doubt) his own hand:

"To the Right Honorable the Lord Viscount Bolingbroke, from his ever-oblig'd, most faithfull, and affectionate servant, Alex. Pope."

Cranmer's Bible, title gone, but at end, Maye 1541:

"This Bible was given to me by my ffather Coke when I went to keepe Christmas with him at Holckam, anno Domini 1658. Will. Cobbe."

Sir William Cobbe of Beverley, York, knight, married Winifred, sixth daughter of John (fourth son of the chief justice), who was born 9th May, 1589.

This copy has, before Joshua and Psalms, a page of engravings, being the "seconde" and "thyrde parte;" also before the New Testament, the well-known one of Henry VIII. giving the Bible, but the space for Cromwell's arms is left blank or white. Cromwell was executed July 1540; but do his arms appear in the 1540 impressions?

Cranmer's quarterings are, 1 and 4, Cranmer; 2, six lions r.; 3, fusils of Aslacton. In the Gent. Mag., vol. lxii. pp. 976. 991., is an engraving of a stone of Cranmer's father, with the fusils on his right, and Cranmer on his left. The note at p. 991. calls the birds cranes, but states that Glover's Yorkshire and other pedigrees have pelicans; and Southey (Book of the Church, ii. p. 97.) states that Henry VIII. altered the cranes to pelicans, telling him that he, like them, should be ready to shed his blood. The engraving, however, clearly represents drops of blood falling, and those in the Bible appear to be pelicans also.

This Bible has the days of the month in MS. against the proper psalms, and where a leaf has been repaired, "A.D. 1608, per me Davidem Winsdon curate."

    A. C.

GRINDLE

(Vol. vii., pp. 107. 307.)

I think I can supply I. E. with another example of the application of this name to a place. A few miles east or south-east of Exeter, on the borders of a waste tract of down extending from Woodbury towards the sea, there is a village which is spelt on the ordnance map, and is commonly called, Greendale. In strictness there are, I believe, two Greendales, an upper and a lower Greendale. A small stream, tributary to the Clyst river, flows past them.

Now this place formerly belonged to the family of Aumerle, or Alba Marla, as part of the manor of Woodbury. From that family it passed to William Briwere, the founder of Tor Abbey, and was by him made part of the endowment of that monastery in the reign of Richard I. In the two cartularies of that house, of which abstracts will be found in Oliver's Monasticon, there are many instruments relating to this place, which is there called Grendel, Grindel, and Gryndell. In none of them does the name of Greendale occur, which appears to be a very recent form. Even Lysons, in his Devonshire, does not seem to be aware of this mode of spelling it, but always adopts one of the old ways of writing the word.

I have not seen the spot very lately, but, according to the best of my recollection, it has not now any feature in keeping with the mythological character of the fiend of the moor and fen. The neighbouring district of down and common land would not be an inappropriate habitat for such a personage. It has few trees of any pretension to age, and is still covered in great part with a dark and scanty vegetation, which is sufficiently dreary except at those seasons when the brilliant colours of the blooming heath and dwarf furze give it an aspect of remarkable beauty.

Whether the present name of Greendale be a mere corruption of the earliest name, or be not, in fact, a restoration of it to its original meaning, is a matter which I am not prepared to discuss. As a general rule, a sound etymologist will not hastily desert an obvious and trite explanation to go in search of a more recondite import. He will not have recourse to the devil for the solution of a nodus, till he has exhausted more legitimate sources of assistance.

The "N. & Q." have readers nearer to the spot in question than I am, who may, perhaps, be able to throw some light on the subject, and inform us whether Greendale still possesses the trace of any of those natural features which would justify the demoniacal derivation proposed by I. E. It must not, however, be forgotten that three centuries and a half of laborious culture bestowed upon the property by the monks of Tor, must have gone far to exorcise and reclaim it.

    E. S.

Some years ago I asked the meaning of Grindle or Grundle, as applied to a deep, narrow watercourse at Wattisfield in Suffolk. The Grundle lies between the high road and the "Croft," adjoining a mansion which once belonged to the Abbots of Bury. The clear and rapid water was almost hidden by brambles and underwood; and the roots of a row of fine trees standing in the Croft were washed bare by its winter fury. The bank on that side was high and broken; the bed of the Grundle I observed to lie above the surface of the road, on the opposite side of which the ground rises rapidly to the table land of clay. My fancy instantly suggested a river flowing through this hollow, and the idea was strengthened by the appearance of the landscape. The village stands on irregular ground, descending by steep slopes into narrow valleys and contracted meadows. I can well imagine that water was an enemy or "fiend" to the first settlers, and I was told that in winter the Grundle is still a roaring brook.

I find I have a Note that "in Charters, places bearing the name Grendel are always connected with water."

    F. C. B.