Notes and Queries, Number 28, May 11, 1850 | Page 9

the vale of Tywi; and on becoming possessed of her property, abandoned his wild life, and with it the name of Catti; and quietly subsiding into Thomas Jones, Esq., became a poet and antiquary of high reputation. In addition to which, and as if to mark their sense of the value of a man so powerful for good or for evil, the government appointed him high sheriff for the county of Carmarthen. He died universally respected, and left a name which yet kindles many a Welsh heart, or amuses many a cottage circle in the long nights of winter.
His life has been published in an 8vo. volume, which was probably the work to which the "Note" of "MELANION" referred.
SELEUCUS.
Cheshire Round (No. 24. p. 383.).--A dance so called, peculiar to the county from whence it takes its name. The musical notes of the _Cheshire Round may be seen in The Dancing Master_, 1721, vol. i., and in Edward Jones' Cheshire Melodies. It was sometimes danced "longways for as many us will" (as described in The Dancing Master), but more frequently by one person. A handbill of the time of William the Third states, "In Bartholomew Fair, at the Coach-House on the Pav'd stones at Hosier-Lane-End, you shall see a Black that dances the Cheshire Rounds to the admiration of all spectators." Michael Root and John Sleepe, two clever caterers of "Bartlemy," also advertise "a little boy that dances the Cheshire Round to perfection." There is a portrait of Dogget the celebrated comedian (said to be the only one extant, but query if it is not Penkethman?), representing him dancing the Cheshire Round, with the motto "Ne sutor ultra crepidam."
EDWARD F. RIMBAULT.
Horns to a River.--Why the poets give horns to rivers, must be sought for in the poet's book, nature. I like the interpretation given by a glance up some sinuous and shelving valley, where the mighty stream, more than half lost to the eye, is only seen in one or two of its bolder reaches, as it tosses itself here to the right, and there to the left, to find a way for its mountain waters.
The third question about horns I am not able to answer. It would be interesting to know where your correspondent has found it in late Greek.
J.E.
Oxford, April 16. 1850.
Horns.--For answer to the third Query of "L.C." (No. 24. p. 383.), I subscribe the following, from Coleridge:--
"Having quoted the passage from Shakspeare,
"'Take thou no scorn To wear the horn, the lusty horn; It was a crest ere thou wert born."
As You Like It, Act iv. sc. 2.
"I question (he says), whether there exists a parallel instance of a phrase, that, like this of 'Horns,' is universal in all languages, and yet for which no one has discovered even a plausible origin."--_Literary Remains_, vol. i. p. 120. Pickering, 1849.
ROBERT SNOW.
Coal Brandy (No. 22. p. 352.).--This is only a contraction of "coaled brandy," that is, "burnt brandy," and has no reference to the purity of the spirit. It was the "universal pectoral" of the last century; and more than once I have seen it prepared by "good housewives" and "croaking husbands" in the present, pretty much as directed in the following prescription. It is only necessary to remark, that the orthodox method of "coaling," or setting the brandy on fire, was effected by dropping "a live coal" ("gleed") or red-hot cinder into the brandy. This is copied from a leaf of paper, on the other side of which are written, in the hand of John Nourse, the great publisher of scientific books in his day, some errata in the first 8vo. edit. of Simsons's Euclid, and hence may be referred to the year 1762. It was written evidently by some {457} "dropper-in," who found "honest John" suffering from a severe cold, and upon the first piece of paper that came to hand. The writer's caligraphy bespeaks age, and the punctuation and erasures show him to have been a literary man, and a careful though stilted writer. It is not, however, a hand of which I find any other exemplars amongst Nourse's correspondence.
"Take two glasses of the best brandy, put them into a cup which may stand over the fire; have two long wires, and put an ounce of sugar-candy upon the wires, and set the brandy on fire. Let it burn till it is put out by itself, and drink it before you go to bed.
"To make it more pectoral, take some rosemary and put it in the brandy, infused for a whole day, before you burn it."
This is the fundamental element of all the quack medicines for "coughs, colds, catarrhs, and consumption," from Ford's "Balsam of Horehound" to Dr. Solomon's "Balm of Gilead."
T.S.D.
Shooter's Hill, April 4.
Howkey or Horkey (No. 17. p. 263.).--Does the following passage from Sir Thomas