Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 9.djvu/361

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. IX. MAY 3, 1902.] NOTES AND QUERIES.


353


in association, or in early impressions. The following may serve as specimens of the " hated words " submitted : program, victuals, beau, cuddle, swab, and goitre.

CHARLES BUNDY WILSON. State University of Iowa.

"Burr WEEK" (9 th S. ix. 329). This is a mistake for " baff week." No one in Durham or Northumberland has ever been able to tell me the derivation of " Baff Saturday." May I suggest that replies should be indexed under "Baff," not "Buff," or no one will ever find them ? CHARLES W. DILKE.

SATIRICAL COLOURED PRINTS (9 th S. ix. 269). These are excerpts from

"An Academy for Grown Horsemen, containing the Completest Instructions for Walking, Trotting, Cantering, Galloping, Stumbling, and Tumbling. Illustrated with Copper Plates and adorned with a Portrait of the Author. By Geoffrey Gambado, Esq re , Riding Master, Master of the Horse, and Grand Equerry to the Doge of Venice. London : Printed by W. Nicholson, Warner Street, for W. Baynes, 54, Paternoster Row. 1st ed. 1787."

Henry William Bunbury (1750-1811), the illustrator of this work, was a celebrated caricaturist. The engravings in the book in question are seventeen in number, and are mezzotints ; those of MR. MATTHEWS seem to be coloured by hand.

HAROLD MALET, Colonel.

LLYN COBLYNAU : KNOCKERS' LLYN (9 th S. ix. 229). I have ascended Snowdon thirteen times from various points, and know all its llyns well. None of them, I think, corre- sponds exactly to Mr. Watts-Dunton's de- scriptions of " Llyn Coblynau," but Glaslyn is almost certainly intended. Only from it would the description of Y Wyddfa standing out against the sky "as narrow and as steep as the sides of an acorn " be correct, but from the north and north-west sides of Glaslyn this answers with quite curious exactness to the appearance of the mountain. We must suppose the action of the story to have taken place before the revival of the copper-mining industry on Snowdon. May I be allowed to d well for a moment upon my first ascent, some thirty-two years ago ? I had walked from a point about three miles below Bettws-y-Coed, and had as companion in my climb a son of the late Henry Owen, of Pen-y Gwryd. We went up in a dense mist, doing the whole distance from the inn in an hour and twenty minutes. The mist was thicker than ever when we reached the hut, and the cold intense. Five minutes afterwards the man in charge called us out from our cheese and beer to see " the sight of the season " (it was in July).


The mist was then clearing, and in a few moments was entirely gone. So marvellous a transformation scene, and so immense a prospect, I have never beheld since. For the first and only time in my life I saw from one spot almost the whole of North and Mid Wales, a good part of Western England, and a glimpse of Scotland and Ireland. The vision faded all too quickly, but it was worth walking thirty-three or thirty-four miles, as I did that day, for even a briefer view than that. C. C. B.

In reply to E. W., none of us are very likely, I fear, to succeed in " placing " this llyn, because the author of 'Aylwin,' taking a privilege of romance often taken by Sir Walter Scott before him, probably changed the landmarks in idealizing the scene and adapting it to his story. It may be, indeed, that the Welsh name given to the llyn in the book is merely a rough translation of the gipsies' name for it, the Knockers being gnomes or goblins of the mine ; hence " Cob- lynau'^ goblins. If so, the name itself can give us no clue, unless we are lucky enough to secure the last of the Welsh gipsies for a guide. In any case, the only point from which to explore Snowdon for the small llyn, or perhaps llyns (of which Llyn Coblynau is a kind of composite ideal picture), is no doubt, as E. W. has suggested, Capel Curig ; and I imagine the actual scene lies about a mile south from Glaslyn, while it owes some- thing at least of its colouring in the book to that strange lake. The " Knockers," it must be remembered, usually depend upon the exist- ence of a mine near by, with old partly fallen mine-workings where the dropping of water or other subterranean noises produce the curious phenomenon which is turned to such imaginative account in the Snowdon chapters of Aylwin.' SIGN o DDYLI.

QUEEN CANDACE (9 th S. ix. 321). In addi- tion to my note of last week I may say that the name was also borne by private persons. In the British Museum (Second Egyptian Room) may be seen the mummy and coffin of a young lady named Cleopatra, otherwise Candace, a member of the family of Soter Cornelius Pollios, archon of Thebes, dated by Dr. Wallis Budge about the year 100 A.D. She was probably the granddaughter of another Cleopatra - Candace, wife of the archon, whose mummy and coffin are at Ley- den, and after whom she may have been named, in accordance with Egyptian custom. Reuvens suggested that the name Cleopatra was chosen as the Greek equivalent for Can- dace (originally the dynastic title of the