REPLIES TO MINOR QUERIES:--Derivation of the Word "Island"--"Paetus and Arria"--"That Swinney"--The Six Gates of Troy--Milton's Widow--Boom--"Nugget" not an American Term--Soke Mill--Binometrical Verse--Watch-paper Inscription--Dotinchem--Reversible Names and Words--Detached Church Towers--Bishop Ferrar--"They shot him by the nine stone rig"--Punning Devices--Ashman's Park--"Crowns have their compass," &c.--Ampers and--Throwing Old Shoes for Luck--Ennui 374 MISCELLANEOUS:-- Books and Odd Volumes wanted 377 Notices to Correspondents 377 Advertisements 378 * * * * * Notes. Notes on Midland County Minstrelsy. It has often occurred to me that the old country folk-songs are as worthy of a niche in your mausoleum as the more prosy lore to which you allot a separate division. Why does not some one write a Minstrelsy of the Midland Counties? There is ample material to work upon, and not yet spoiled by dry-as-dust-ism. It would be vain, perhaps, to emulate the achievements of the Scottish antiquary; but surely something might be done better than the county _Garlands_, which, with a few honorable exceptions, are sad abortions, mere channels for rhyme-struck editors. There is one peculiarity of the midland songs and ballads which I do not remember to have seen noticed, viz. their singular affinity to those of Scotland, as exhibited in the collections of Scott and Motherwell. I have repeatedly noticed this, even so far south as Gloucestershire. Of the old Staffordshire ballad which appeared in your columns some months ago, I remember to have heard two distinct versions in Warwickshire, all approaching more or less to the Scottish type: "Hame came our gude man at e'en." Now whence this curious similarity in the vernacular ideology of districts so remote? Are all the versions from one original, distributed by the wandering minstrels, and in course of time adapted to new localities and dialects? and, if so, whence came the original, from England or Scotland? Here is a nut for DR. RIMBAULT, or some of your other correspondents learned in popular poetry. Another instance also occurs to me. Most of your readers are doubtless familiar with the pretty little ballad of "Lady Anne" in the _Border Minstrelsy_, which relates so plaintively the murder of the two innocent babes, and the ghostly retribution to the guilty mother. Other versions are given by Kinloch in his _Ancient Scottish Ballads_, and by Buchan in the _Songs of the North_, the former laying the scene in London: "There lived a ladye in London, All alone and alonie, She's gane wi' bairn to the clerk's son, Down by the green-wood side sae bonny." {358} And the latter across the Atlantic: