226
NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* S. V. MARCH 24, 1900.
and the 69th, both of which had a Welsh
origin. The men of the second had from
Nelson the name of the " Old Agamemnons,"
after the battle of Cape St. Vincent, in which
they served as marines.
The " Old Bendovers " was one of the nick- names of the 96th Foot, now the Manchester Regiment.
" Old and Bold " was the name of the 29th, now the Worcestershire Regiment, and the Prince of Wales's Own West Yorkshire Regi- ment.
The "Old Bold Fifth" was a nickname of the Northumberland Fusiliers.
"Old Bucks" is a nickname used for the Bedfordshire Regiment, because it was ori- ginally the Buckinghamshire Regiment.
The "Old Buffs" is a name for the Buffs, or East Kent Regiment.
The 3rd Dragoon Guards are nicknamed the " Old Canaries," from the yellow facings of their uniforms.
"Old Eyes" is a name for the Grenadier Guards.
The Royal Irish Fusiliers are made up of the former 87th and 89th Regiments. It has been known as the "Old Fogs," from the war cry "Faugh a ballagh" ("Clear the way ").
"Old Five and Threepennies " was the nickname of the former 53rd, now part of the King's Shropshire Light Infantry.
The Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers comprises the former 27th and 108th Regiments. The last was nicknamed " Old Munster."
WILLIAM E. A. AXON. (To be continued.)
THE PIGEON CUKE. Daily experience re-
minds us that empiricism dies hard, but it is
fortunately less frequently attended with
cruelty than was the case in the good old
times. The survival to the present day in
France of a shocking practice much employed
by our ancestors is attested in a paragraph
of the Pall Mall Gazette of 14 February,
which seems to me deserving of preservation
in'N. &Q.':
" Paris, Monday. If the following facts were not vouched for by a highly distinguished physician, Dr. G. Legue\ it would be permissible to regard them as an invention suggested by sundry of the marvellous 'cures' in vogue in the Middle Ages. Dr. Legue" was put on the track of his curious dis- covery oy one of his patients, who informed him in the most casual manner, and as if there were nothing extraordinary about the statement, that she had tried the ' pigeon cure ' for meningitis and for the first time with limited success. Dr. Legu6 had to confess his entire ignorance of the cure in question, and to ask for an explanation of its nature. It was then revealed to him that in this sceptical age, and
in Paris, of all places in the world, there are people
who believe in the efficaciousness, as a remedy for
certain maladies, of the blood of a freshly killed
pigeon. The head of the patient to be treated is
shaved, and then the breast of the pigeon is ripped
open by the ' operator,' and the warm and bleeding
carcass immediately applied to the bared skull.
The believers in this cruel and senseless cure imagine
that all fever is drawn out of the body by the hot
life-blood and the quivering flesh of the pigeon. The
extraordinary thing is that faith in the cure is
widespread, and recourse to it frequent. Dr. Legue,
who has thoroughly investigated the matter, has
been able to obtain the address of a shop in the
Central Markets at which nothing else is sold but
live pigeons destined to this strange purpose. The
business done is so brisk that the late proprietor,
Madame Michel, has been able to retire, after making
a small fortune. Her successor declares that the
pigeon cure is considered a sovereign remedy for
influenza, since the appearance of which she has
been unable to meet the demand that has arisen for
birds. They are also used, it seems, in cases of
typhoid fever; but in this instance two pigeons are
necessary, and they are applied to the feet of the
patient.
Two notable instances will at once recur to the minds of those of your readers to whom, as to myself, the ' Diary ' of Samuel Pepys is a household word. On 19 October, 1663, Pepys, alluding to the illness of Queen Katherine, says : " It seems she was so ill as to be shaved and pigeons put to her feet, and to have the extreme unction given her by the priests, who were so long about it that the doctors were angry"; and on 21 January, 1667/8, he mentions that he found Kate Joyce's husband " in his sick bed, very sensible in discourse and thankful for my kindness to him, and his breath rattled in his throate, and they did lay pigeons to his feet while I was in the house, and all despair of him and with good reason." The following are the only other notices of the practice upon which I can at the moment lay my hands, but I feel sure that I could discover others in seventeenth-century receipt books in my possession. Vanden Bossche, in his 'Historia Medica,' Brux., 1639, says that some writers advise the application of a pigeon cut open (columbam dissectam) to the spine of a person afflicted with melancholy, or to the head of a person of weak intellect. W. Kemp, M.A., in 'A Brief Treatise of the Nature and Cure of the Pestilence,' 1665, remarks that if any should question the receiving of inward benefit in the plague by the wearing in the bosom of an amulet, made by filling a walnut shell with quicksilver, " we may ask them if they did never hear of pigeons applied to the feet," &c.
J. ELIOT HODGKIN.
"YAM." The etymology of this is unknown, so I may be pardoned for indulging in what does not pretend to be more than a guess at
