314
NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. ix. APRIL 19, 1902.
APPLE-TREE FOLK-LOBE (9 th S. ix. 169).
The following refers to the fruit rather than
the tree. We were always told m.bouth
Notts that we must not eat apples until they
had been christened that is, until after
St. Swithin's Day. Sometimes, however, we
did so, with results resembling those^ so
graphically described by Mr. Henry S. Leigh
in his " lines after Ache-inside." C. C. B.
" Wassail, a drinking song, sung on Twelfth Day Eve, throwing toast to the apple-tree, in order to have a fruitful year, which seems to be a relic of the heathen sacrifice to Pomona" (' Gloss, of Exmoor Dialect').
J. HOLDEN MACMlCHAEL.
This subject has been fully discussed in ' N. & Q.' on more than one occasion. See 1 st S. iv., v., xi. ; 2 nd S. i. ; 4 th S. viii., x. ; 5 th S. xii. ; 6 th S. vii., viii., ix.
EVERAED HOME COLEMAN. 71, Brecknock Road.
There is a note about apples at Christmas at 6< S. xii. 491. W. C. B.
"LIMERICK" (9 th S. ix. 188). Is not the reason for this name to be found in the fact that nonsense verses of a certain form used to be sung to an air of which the refrain was :
Won't you come up, come up,
Won't you come up to Limerick ? (bis).
I presume the tune is that of some brisk air, which is probably well known, but on this point I can say nothing. The tune as applied to "Limericks" was certainly in vogue twenty- five years ago, and may be so at the present time for all I know. J. R. FITZGERALD.
SIR THOMAS MORGAN, OF ARKSTONE (9 th S. ix. 9, 158). An account of this family is given in Harl. MSS. 6596, fo. 184, and 1545 fo. 18 and 19. They differ slightly in the descent, but both make the wife of Sir Thos. Morgan, father of Anne Carey, to be Eliza- beth, daughter of Sir James Whitney. The itter gives the arms of Morgan as Per pale arg. and gu., three lions counterchanged, a star for difference. Arkestone is an estate in the parish of Kingston, arid was afterwards acquired by Serjeant Hoskyns, a well-known lawyer and politician in the reign of James I
J. H. PARRY.
BULL-BAITING (9 th S. ix. 188, 255) I am indebted to MR. F. A. RUSSELL for hs reply. It may be that baiting by dogs improved the quality of the bulfs flesh ; in reality I believe, the excited state of 'the animal just before death would tend to
hasten putrefaction, and, as in the case of a
hunted hare, deer, or rabbit, the flesh would
have to be cooked soon or it would be unfit
to eat. But in asserting that baiting was
"undoubtedly" by dogs, MR. RUSSELL still
leaves unexplained the Cambridge ordinance
of 1376, where "baiting" is defined as being
fed with grass in a stall. G. T.
Bulls were baited by dogs to make their flesh tender for food. That solemn and severe old Puritan, William Perkins, who thought that the heathen were bound to know God, and that atheists ought to be tortured, and that anger was only a physical defect, and that baiting the bear was sinful, yet allows " the bay ting of the bull hath his vse, and therefore it is commanded by ciuill authoritie." See all this in his 'Cases of Conscience,' 1619, p. 346, and more of the same subject in 3 rd S. i. 346, 417.
W. C. B.
At a Manor Court of the Dean and Chapter of Durham held at South Shields in a list of "Certaine orders and penal ties "the follow- ing appear :
" It. if any bocher doe hereafter blow any meate they shall fyne to the Lords of the manner vjs. viiid."
"It. if any butcher or other doe kill any bull vnlesse hee bee first bayted that then hee or they soe killing the same shall fyne to the Lords xs."
R. B-R.
"Hop THE TWIG" (9 th S. ix. 189). See the amusing anecdote related by De Quincey in his essay on * Coleridge and Opium-Eating ' (* Collected Writings of Thomas De Quincey,' ed. Masson, 1890, vol. v. p. 201) concerning a wife-hunting German, whose English educa- tion had been neglected :
" It turned out that the Dictionary he had used (Arnold's, we think), a work of one hundred and fifty years back, and, from mere German ignorance, giving slang translations from Tom Brown, L'Es- trange, and other jocular writers had put down the verb sterben (to die) with the following worship- ful series of equivalents: 1. To kick the bucket ; 2. To cut one's stick ; 3. To go to kingdom come ; 4. To hop the twig; 5. To drop off the perch into Davy's locker."
The ' N.E.D.' quotes from Mary Robinson's ' Walsingham ' (1797), vol. iv. p. 280: "[He] kept his bed three days, and hopped the twig on the fourth." The ' Craven Dialect ' (1828) gives, " l Hop the twig,' to run away in debt." The 'N.E.D.' also cites an instance of the phrase in the sense of "to die" as recent as 1870. THOMAS HUTCHINSON.
If, as applied to death, it were desirable
- hat one phrase more than another should
3e in abeyance, surely that phrase would be
- To hop the twig," although one has cer-
