390
NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. VIIL NOV. IG, 1007.
male line. One family resides in the
neighbourhood of its ancient home, and the
name is represented in the United States.
Would Dolbeare be a form of De la Bere ? W. G. RICHARDS.
59, Hill Park Crescent, Plymouth.
" CANON " OF WINE AT MESS. Some forty-five years ago, and earlier, the mess rules in force at the head- quarters of the B.A. and R.E., at Woolwich and Chatham respectively, contained provisions for the charges for wine drunk after mess, according as the wine was of the " first canon," or of a second or subsequent one. An officer wishing to restrict himself to a glass or two left at the end of the first canon, and his name did not appear in the butler's list of the second, &c. It did not, I think, mean a " round " of the bottles simply. Writing from memory, after the lapse of many years, I am not positive as to the number of n's in the word ; but, in any case, I do not find an apposite example in the ' N.E.D.'
H. P. L.
ARTJNDEL CASTLE LEGEND. Thanks to the publishers of " Everyman's Library," which is a boon to those whose purses are not well filled, I have just been enabled to read that splendid piece of old English prose entitled ' The Boke named the Gouernour,' by Sir Thomas Elyot. On p. 79 this passage occurs :
"Other remembrance there is of diuers horsis by whose monstraous power men dyd exploite incredible affaires : but by cause the reporte of them con- tayneth thinges impossible, and is nat writen by any approued autour : I will nat in this place reherce them : sauyng that it is yet supposed that the castell of Arundell in Sussex was made by one Beauuize, erle of South hamton, for a monument ol his horse called Arundell, whiche in ferre coun- trayes had saued his maister from many periles."
the exception of the first two, the father is
described as Matthew Lee alias Tyson, of
Eccles. There is no mention of Tyson in
the will. All the neighbouring parishes
and Eccles have been well searched, but
nothing to indicate parents of Matthew
Lee alias Tyson has been found. Wills of
Lichfield, York, Chester, and P.C.C. have
been examined. Perhaps a reader of
' N. & Q.' may have some knowledge of the
family. LEO C.
MEDIAEVAL CHURCHYARDS. What was the mediaeval practice with regard to the disposal of the dead and the erectior. of memorial stones ? These appear yery seldom of an earlier date than the seven-
- eenth century. Were they not erected
>efore then ? Also, what has become of
- he remains (the bones) of the thousands
who must have been buried in the church- yards of every parish ? Do the natural processes of decay account for their db- ippearance ? or were the bones from tin.e
- o time removed by burning or otherwise
bo make room for succeeding generations ? SARAH ELIZABETH CROSS. Ivy Cote, Egham.
" MOTJCHARABY." This word is explained in ' The Century Dictionary ' as having two senses : (1) "a balcony enclosed with lattice- work in a customary Oriental fashion " ; (2) "a balcony with parapet and machico- lations, often embattled, projecting from the face of a wall over a gate, to contribute to the defense of the entrance." The second sense is illustrated by a woodcut of a so-called " moucharaby " at Carisbrooke Castle ; the definition is apparently taken, with some verbal alteration, from ' The Imperial Dictionary ' (1882). In the earlier
Is it known what old romance or chronicle
the knight had in his mind ? I should be
glad to have an exact reference.
JOHN T. CITRRY.
LEE alias TYSON. Matthew Lee, o Chapel en le Frith, co. Derby, yeoman in his will dated July, and proved in October 1769, at Lichfield, mentioned his wife Mary, and children James, Thomas, Reginald ; Catherine, wife of Thos. Wood ; Ann, wife of Wm. Ward ; Sarah, wife of Thos. Hall ; a friend and executor, Thos. Downs of Horridge ; witnesses Thos. Lomas, Joseph and Edw. Bennett ; house and lands at Eccles, also at Whitchough, the latter on lease from Samuel Kirle of Whitchough. The baptisms of children in Chapel en le Frith cover the period 1716-30, and, with
dictionary only the second of these senses
is given, and the illustration is taken from
the Hotel de Sens, Paris. Now there is no
difficulty about the word in its application
to the latticed balcony of North African
houses ; it is plainly a French rendering
of a loose pronunciation of the Arabic
mashrabiyya h (Dozy). But the other alleged
sense is puzzling. I can only suppose it to
be due to the caprice of some French writer
on architecture, whose work was presumably
translated before 1882. Can any reader
point out the source ? It may be remarked
that neither of the dictionaries referred to,
nor Funk's 'Standard Dictionary,' which
follows them, recognizes the Arabic ety-
mology ; they all treat the word simply as
"French." HENRY BRADLEY.
Clarendon Press, Oxford.
