Notes and Queries, Number 55, November 16, 1850 | Page 5

on which the husband, to justify his wife, insisted upon her being tried by the Church Bible, and that the accuser should be present: accordingly she was conducted to the parish church, where she was stript of all her cloathes to her shift and undercoat, and weighed against the Bible; when, to the no small mortification of her accuser, she outweighed it, and was honorably acquitted of the charge."
A.D.N.
Abingdon, Nov. 1850.
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MINOR NOTES.
_Quin's incoherent Story._--The comic story of Sir Gammer Vans (Vol. ii., p. 280.) reminds me of an anecdote related of Quin, who is said to have betted Foote a wager that he would speak some nonsense which Foote could not repeat off-hand after him. Quin then produced the following string of incoherences:--
"So she went into the garden to pick a cabbage leaf, to make an apple-pie of; and a she-bear, coming up the street, put her head into the shop, and said 'Do you sell any soap?' So she died, and he very imprudently married the barber; and the powder fell out of the counsellor's wig, and poor Mrs. Mackay's puddings were quite entirely spoilt; and there were present the Garnelies, and the Goblilies, and the Picninnies, and the Great Pangendrum himself, with the little round button at top, and they played at the ancient game of 'Catch who catch can,' till the gunpowder ran out of the heels of their boots."
L.
_Touchstone's Dial._--Mr. Knight, in a note on _As You Like It_, gives us the description of a dial presented to him by a friend who had picked it "out of a deal of old iron," and which he supposes to be such a one as the "fool i' the forest" drew from his poke, and looked on with lacklustre eye. It is very probable that this species of chronometer is still in common use in the sister kingdom; for my brother mentions to me that, when at school in Ireland some fifteen or sixteen years since, he had seen one of those "_ring-dials_" in the possession of one of his schoolfellows: and Mr. Carleton, in his amusing _Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry_, thus describes them:--
"The ring-dial was the hedge-schoolmaster's next best substitute for a watch. As it is possible that a great number of our readers may never have heard of--much less seen one, we shall in a word or two describe it--nothing indeed could be more simple. It was a bright brass ring, about three quarters of an inch broad, and two inches and a half in diameter. There was a small hole in it, which, when held opposite the sun, admitted the light against the inside of the ring behind. On this were marked the hours and the quarters, and the time was known by observing the hour or the quarter on which the slender ray, that came in from the hole in front, fell."
J.M.B.
_America and Tartary._--
"Un j��suite rencontra en Tartarie une femme huronne qu'il avoit connue au Canada: il conclut de cette ��trange aventure, que le continent de l'Am��rique se rapproche au nord-ouest du continent de l'Asie, et il devina ainsi l'existence du d��troit qui, longtemps apr��s, a fait la gloire de Bering et de Cook."--Chateaubriand, _G��nie du Christianisme_, Partie 4., Livre 4., Chap. 1.
Yet, with all deference to the edifying letters of this missionary jesuit, it is difficult to make such distant ends meet. It almost requires a copula like that of the fool, who, to reconcile his lord's assertion that he had with a single bullet shot a deer in the ear and the hind foot, explained that the deer was scratching his ear at the time with his foot.
Subjoined is one more proof of the communication which once existed between America and the Old World:
Colomb disoit m��me avoir vu les restes des fourneaux de Salomon dans les mines de Cibao."--Chateaubriand, _G��nie, Notes, &c_.
MANLEIUS.
_Deck of Cards._--
"The king was slily finger'd from the deck." _Henry VI._, pt. iii. Act v. Sc. 1.
It is well known, and properly noted, that a pack of cards was formerly called a _deck_; but it should be added that the term is still commonly used in Ireland, and from being made use of in the famed song of "De Night before Larry was stretched,"
"De deck being called for dey play'd, Till Larry found one of dem cheated,"
it seems likely to be preserved. I may add, that many words and many forms of expression which have gone out of vogue in England, or have become provincial, are still in daily use in Ireland.
J.M.B.
_Time when Herodotus wrote._--The following passage appears to me to afford strong evidence, not only that Herodotus did not complete his history till an advanced age, but that he did not begin it. For in lib. i. 5. he writes: "[Greek: