Зображення сторінки
PDF
ePub

is said to have lately married his grandmother. It is thus related :-" On Friday Mr. John Palmer, second son of Mr. William Palmer of Yatton Marsh, Aymstrey, was married to Mrs. Mary Palmer, relict of the late Mr. John Palmer of Leinthall Earls, who was grandfather to her present husband. The bride, though she may be properly called grandmother to the bridegroom, is no more than thirty years of age."

Ar Alnwick, every burgess who takes up his freedom goes in procession to a large pond at some distance from the town, dressed with ribbons, makes a jump into it, and gets through as he can. A party generally perform at the same time, and then gallop back to the town, the foremost in the race being pronounced winner of the boundaries. They are entertained with ale at the gate of the Castle by the Duke's steward,-a holly tree is planted at the young freeman's door, and the day ends with such merriment as is usual-dancing, drinking, and sports.1

Courier, July 18, 1814. "REAL redlegged Partridge-eggs. Noblemen and gentlemen may be supplied with any quantity just imported from France, by applying to Mr. Joseph Clark, Poulterer, South Audley Street."

THERE are odd persons all the world over, but in other parts of the world they die and their oddities with them. In England every man's oddities find some faithful chronicler. Thus a chapter of Obituary Anecdotes.

WANT of churches in large towns. Marybone contains not less than 60,000 inhabitants. Pancras in the same predicament -very populous, with only one church. Yet we found Catholic colleges, and have no money for churches!

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

PRESERVES the main cause of poaching; of this nation.

The miry pool is called the "Freeman's well," and the custom still exists.-J. W. W.

Gas Lights. Insurance Offices. Police. Prostitution.

O. P. The Green Man.

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small]

Population. Bills of Mortality. Pro- properties of a turquoise ? "Why," said the

[blocks in formation]

WHEN or where did this character originate?

Charles the Fifth had an excellent fool, Don Frances; he was staunch to the last, for when some assassins had mortally wounded him, and his wife hearing a disturbance at the door, enquired what was the matter? "Nothing, Mistress," said he; "they have only killed your husband." A fool, Perico de Ayala, who was his friend, begged him to pray for him in the next world, Frances replied, "Tie a string round my little finger, lest I should forget it."-FLORESTA'S Espanola, p. 123.

Perico de Ayala, the Marquis of Villena, once ordered his wardrobe-keeper to give the fool un sayo de brocado; the man only

fool, "if you have a turquoise about you, and should fall from the top of a tower and be dashed to pieces, the stone would not break."-Ibid. p. 124.

It is a good remark of DAVIES (Dramatic Miscellanies), that fools seem to have been employed to supply the want of free society. A jest from an equal was an insult; yet conversation wanted its pepper, and vinegar, and mustard.

DURING Lockyer's reign at Bristol, 6000 houses were planned; an increase which would have required at least 60,000 inhabitants, they were houses of such size. It was like the South Sea infatuation.

SPERMACETI manufactory. No dog was safe in the neighbourhood, and no horse.

DEBAT and his Sermons. My Uncle T., having heard the text of one, could name the texts for the next six weeks; which he did once for a wager. When Debat was told this, he readily answered, "I am very glad to find that any one of my congregation is so attentive."

My Uncle T. made a good stand against erecting the pulpit so, as that the preacher "I shall should have his back to the altar. live," he says, "to see a great many asses

The turquoise, it is well known, was thought to possess the rare power of giving warning to its owner, as it looked pale or bright. True as a turquoise became a proverb, and is used by Ben Jonson.-J. W. w.

get up in that pulpit; and I should not like to hear them braying at the congregation, and at the Altar and the Decalogue." LACK of employment for females.

CHEDDAR. The whole parish clubbed their milk to make a cheese for the lord of the manor (the late Lord Weymouth, so called, 1772), when he came of age. Tasting it, it proved not good, and was therefore not presented. When it was scooped out, the cavity was large enough to hold a girl of thirteen.

GEORGE LUKINS. Man walking on the water. Colliers. Penpark, Hol, and Tucker. Mr. Levi. A conjurer at Mangotsfield. MORAVIANS. ENGLISH loyalty. Vivat Rex et Regina lad, he was so terrified at the ghost of Hamon the play bills.

CRIMPING.

GLASTONBURY waters. The history of one patient here is very remarkable. When a

let at Drury Lane, that in consequence of the shock, a humour broke out, and settled in the king's evil. After all medicines had

PRYNNE was imprisoned at Dunster under failed, he came to these waters, and they Cromwell.

MINEHEAD in 1772 a place of respectable trade. A West India trade in connection with Barnstaple or Bristol, and pilchards to the amount of 300 or 400 barrels arrived and exported to the Mediterranean.

USE of saffron in old times.

OUR fashionables might almost keep Ramadan all the year round, without altering their present mode of life.-Koran, vol. i. P. 34.

FOR low-born gentry I heard T. Southey use a strong expression :-" Fellows," he called them, "who have not nails enough to scratch their heads with."

GEORGE ROBART's mother died during the great election at Bristol, and her death was kept secret till it was over, because he was too active a man to be spared. Just when this had been settled between him and T. Southey, T. went to the post office and found a letter to tell him his own mother was dead. That also was not made known till after the poll was closed.

On the authority of James the waggoner's son, it is stated that every Bristol apprentice must draw a truck, in order to acquire his freedom.

effected a thorough cure. Faith cured what fear had produced.

JAPAN ink and Japan blacking.

THE celebrated Belleish convent soap can only be had in a fair and unadulterated state at the original Opificium of C. Mason & Co., No. 116, Pall Mall.

RUSSIA oil, which restores hair on bald

heads, and prevents it from growing grey; and of which no bottles are genuine unless they have the Russian eagle on the outside, and are signed in red ink by the proprietors, Mochrikufsky and Prince, to counterfeit which is felony. May we not hint that the difficulty of counterfeiting would be greatly increased if Mochrikufsky would sign his name in the Russ character.-Mockery en verdad.

BAJAZET'S Oriental depilatory. Athenian wiggery.

Bloom of Circassia. Milk of roses. Violet soap. Almond paste. Palmyrene soap. Pearl dentrifice.

The man who makes pearl soap advertises for old pearls.

Udor Kallithrix, or Circassian water. Neureticopeklicon.

The celebrated Polish vegetable soap paste, prepared by M. Delcroix in Poland

Street, from a recipe of M. Brufkosky, his friend, an eminent chemist at Warsaw, the sole inventor of this precious composition, which has been universally approved of by persons of the first rank inhabiting that blank and frozen country.

ATHENIAN Wiggery.

HIGH beds. Feather bed.

MRS. K. knew a servant man, remarkably parsimonious, who gave an itinerant female quack ten guineas for a bottle of stuff, which was to bring hair on his head (he having been bald twenty years), if he rubbed one tea spoonful every night, and took another, as long as the bottle lasted. He bargained very hard to let it be pounds.

PATENT elastic India cotton invisible ticoats, manufactured for the spring.

[ocr errors][merged small][merged small]

OLD Winstone! benefit advertisement at Jacob's Well," that on that night Cynthia would appear in all her glory."

TURNER knew a man retired from busi

pet-ness, whose daily employment was to angle in one of the round citizen-garden fishponds, where he had some unlucky gold and silver fish, &c. One fish, which had once lost an eye by the hook, used to bite so often as to provoke him. Hang that fellow," he would say; "this is the sixth time I have caught him this season.'

BEAUTY improved, preserved, and rendered permanent by the habitual use of the Sicilian soap, or Italian washing paste, prepared from cosmetic flowers, balsams, and herbs collected in Sicily and the fruitful plains of Italy. The use of this soap renders the operation of shaving most luxuriously agreeable.

"By Divine Providence,"-Wither's balm of Quito.

The Reverend Mr. Barclay, of the antibilious pill, and solvent nervous specific drops, is now metamorphosed into Barclay

oni.

Ar Brough, four bells the largest in the county. One Brunskili, who lived upon Stanemore, and had many cattle, said one day to one of his neighbours, "Dost thou hear how loud these bulls low? and if all these cattle should low (crunen is the word), might they not be heard from Brough hither ?" The man said yes. "Well then," said he, “I'll make them all crune together." And he sold them, and bought these bells for the church.'

The reader should refer to the ballad. See Poems. p. 466. One vol. edit. To croon, says BROCKET, in v. is to "bellow like a disquiet ox." Dut. Kreunen.-J. W. W.

66

[ocr errors]

He knew another man, a spent merchant, in like manner retired, who was miserable till he invented, as an amusement, the daily work of emptying a water cistern by a pint

measure!

Ar Knightsbridge, William Ick, purveyor of asses' milk to the royal family.

REGULARITY of a stage-coachman's life. At one house where he called about half

past seven, he said at going away, "In a week I shall see you by daylight."

CITY wall at Salisbury. Mud walls in that neighbourhood thatched. Walking to Hale, I saw a cripple boy playing with his crutches; leaning on the one, he used the other as a bat to play with the stones in the road.

PARK paling.

BLACKBIRD is the commonest name of a horse in Somersetshire.

[blocks in formation]

PSALMODY is regularly taught in these northern counties. Once in five or six years a teacher comes to Keswick, and all the young in the parish who have good voices, learn of him at their own expense; it is a part of education as regularly as dancing is. They teach in the church, and the bell rings at evening, after all other work, for the purpose. This is necessary every five or six years, because by that time they are in want of tenors. After the teaching, the poorer parents go about asking money, to help bear the expense.

Nightingales heard in Lord Lonsdale's gardens at Whitehaven, 1808.

Forty years ago they slept naked in this place.1

Mrs. Wilson's father, who was clerk of the parish, had only one shirt with sleeves, which was for Sundays.

When last in Legberthwaite, I saw a little water wheel made by the boys in a dyke by the road side; an interesting boy's work.

Candlemas is the day for lending money here, the nearest Saturday to it, or if it be in the middle of the week, the two near

1i.e. at Keswick. Legberthwaite mentioned below is near Leathes' Water.-J. W. W.

est. Men who never appear in the market any other day come then, with their money bags. "The shabbiest coats," says Mr. Edmondson, "carry the money bags to market, and the sprucest rides home with it."

HALF way up Skiddaw I saw scratched

on a stone:

"Hail, lofty hill !

Thee whom great nature bade arise,
And lift thy lofty summit to the clouds.
Hail, lofty mountain, hail!"

View from the bottom of the first summit, where the vale and lake are seen lying immediately below; the mountain arch forming the foreground, and the whole descent lost.

white, and has a rail on each side; a comThe ladder at Bowder stone is now painted plete ladies' ladder! being thereby rendered seemingly more safe, and really less

secure.

Newcastle.-ON the way from Durham three coal waggons travelling up hill by steam. Patent shot tower—it declined from the perpendicular-a man proposed to undermine it on the opposite side, and load that side so as to make it sink. It was done, and the building sinking on one side became again perpendicular. But the patent is evaded by dropping shot down an old coal pit.

The castle has a draw-well half-way up. The entrance through a lousy-looking old clothes house. One church whose tower Sir C. Wren said was worth coming from London to see. The walls threatened with destruction.

Monkchester its old name.

NEAR Moffatt, a dog used for many years to meet the mail and receive the letters for a little post town near.

RAMJAM House between Stamford and Grantham.

CARR'S Folly, near St. Helen's. How

« НазадПродовжити »