Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 1.djvu/304

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

296


NOTES AND QUERIES. ui s. i. APR. 9, 1910.


this subject. There is, however, a difference between authors proper and compilers : the latter are more generally copyists. As to maps of an early date, and not infrequently later ones, I have failed in many instances to find all courts, streets, lanes, &c.

Ogilby and Morgan's map (1677), which has a Three Crown Court leading out of Garlick Hill, is no doubt correct : at least I have this court mentioned many years before Rocque's map of 1761.

Three Shear Court, so far as I at present am aware, was not in existence in 1731. Gar- lick Hill was in the parish of St. James, Garlick Hill or Hith Hill, which consisted of forty houses : there was, however, a Sugar- loaf Court.

If there is a Three Shear Court now on the west side of Garlick Hill, I have no trace of such a court from 1708, and it does not appear in Dodsley (1761) or my authority of 1731.

There was a Crown and Shears Court in St. Botolph's without Aldgate, by Rosemary Lane, and also a 3 Crown Court. As an indication of the unreliability of Dodsley, take a "Maiden Lane n (p/240, vol. iv.) which he describes as ' ' extending from Dead- man's Place to Gravel Lane," &c. This appears on his map as "Maid Lane," and he has on the same page ' ' Maid Lane Gravel Lane.' ?

I may be allowed to say that so far as CCC Court and Three Crown Court or 3 Crown Court are concerned, I take it they all represent the same thing, nor do I think that they necessarily referred to inn signs, any more than, for instance, Three Leg, Three Dagger, Six Garden, &c., Courts, or Seven Step Alley and Five Inkhorn Alley, &c. ALFRED CHAS. JONAS.

Thornton Heath.

YULE LOG IN CORNWALL (11 S. i. 129, 255). The practice of burning Yule logs is supposed to have reached England from Italy, across France. Certainly the French use, or till lately used, enormous Christmas logs. Though the custom has crept into some districts of Western Germany, it is not supposed to be Teutonic in origin.

The existing Yule observances of Europe combine what was once a religious festival and nothing more with pagan rites. Som6 of these rites were derived from the great feast which fell at the beginning of winter when the north of Europe was heathen. Others were drawn from customs which had become attached to the calends of January.

Y. L. C.


"SECOND CHAMBER" (11 S. i. 209). In ' Jeremy Bentham to his Fellow-Citizens of France, on Houses of Peers and Senates,' London, 1830, pp. 4-5, occur the following passage and note :

" 5. Powers that present themselves to me as proposable, are the following : . . . .

"II. A portion of judicial authority. For in France, to the portion of supreme legislative authority in question this appendage stands attached at present. And, this is attached to the portion of legislative authority in England in the case of the Second Chamber called the House of Lords : and, in the Anglo-American Union, in the case of most of its compound States separately taken, as well as in that of the aggre- gate body composed of Deputies sent from all of them, styled the Congress : Senate is the denomina- tion given to it in this latter case (a).

" (a) In speaking of the Chamber of Peers, as likewise of its proposed substitute a Senate, I use the appellation of the Second Chamber, because such appears to me to be the practice. But, whatsoever it may be in respect of any other order, it has not been so, in every instance, in respect of the time of its institution. In the case of the Anglo-American Congress, mention is made of the House of Representatives before any mention is made of the Senate."

The term apparently came into popular use in England at the time of the debates on the Australian Colonies Government Bill in 1850 (' Hansard's Parliamentary Debates,' cxi. 1032), and since then has been used by almost every writer on the subject of constitutions : as Creasy, ' Rise and Progress of the English Constitution,' 1853, p. 311 ; Rowland, 'Manual of the English Constitution,' 1859, p. 586; Mill, 'Con- siderations on Representative Government,' 1861, pp. 231-41 ; Hearn, ' Government of England,' 1867, p. 543 ; Bagehot, ' English Constitution,' 1867, p. 135 ; Todd, ' On Parliamentary Government in England,' 1867, i. 29 ; Bryce, ' American Common- wealth,* 1888, i. 180-85, &c.

Bentham may have obtained the term from Continental writers, and they in turn from American writers of late in the eigh- teenth century. ALBERT MATTHEWS.

Boston, U.S.

BURGLAR FOLK-LORE (11 S. i. 129). 1- think I know what the ' ' disgusting super stitions " are, or one of them, which burglar; hold in raiding houses. It was an old an( common belief among them that exonerand^ alvum on the scene of their depredations the? secured immunity from interruption o discovery. I remember some twenty-fiv years ago the old parish clerk of Woodfon Church, Essex (his name was Lowe), tellin me that some fellows who broke into th