_Cure for the Hooping-cough._--"I know," said one of my parishioners, "what would cure him, but m'appen you woudent believe me." "What is it, Mary?" I asked. "Why, I did every thing that every body teld me. One teld me to get him breathed on by a pie-bald horse. I took him ever such a way, to a horse at ----, and put him under the horse's mouth; but he was no better. Then I was teld to drag him backward through a bramble bush. I did so; but this didn't cure him. Last of all, I was teld to give him nine fried mice, fasting, in a morning, in this way:--three the first morning; then wait three mornings, and then give him three more; wait three mornings, and then give him three more. When he had eaten these nine fried mice he became quite well. This would be sure to cure your child, Sir." W.H.K. Drayton Beauchamp. _Gootet._--In Eccleshall parish, Staffordshire, Shrove Tuesday is called Gootet. I am not aware if this be the true spelling, for I have never seen it in print. Can any of your readers supply the etymology, or state whether it is so called in any other part of England? I have searched numerous provincial glossaries, but have hitherto been unsuccessful. B.G.J. * * * * * THE DUKE OF MONMOUTH'S POCKET-BOOK. It is reasonable to conclude, that the article copied from _Chambers' Edinburgh Journal_, in No. 13., furnishes the strongest evidence that can be adduced in support of the opinion, that the book in the possession of Dr. Anster is the one found on the Duke of Monmouth when captured, after his defeat at Sedgemoor; and, if so, it is impossible to admit the hypothesis, because a portion of the contents of the real book has been given to the world and contains matter far too important to have been passed over by Dr. Anster, had it existed in his volume. In the 6th edition of Dr. Welwood's _Memoirs of the most material Transactions in England for the last Hundred Years preceding the Revolution in 1688_, printed for "Tim. Goodwin, at the Queen's Head, against St. Dunstan's Church, in Fleet Street, 1718," the following passage is to be found at p. 147.:-- "But of the most things above mentioned there is an infallible proof extant under Monmouth's own hand, in a little pocket-book which was taken with him and delivered to King James; which by an accident, as needless to mention here, I have leave to copy and did {398} it in part. A great many dark passages there are in it, and some clear enough that shall be eternally buried for me: and perhaps it had been for King James's honour to have committed them to the flames, as Julius Cæsar is said to have done on a like occasion. All the use that shall be made of it is, to give in the Appendix some few passages out of it that refer to this subject, and confirm what has been above related." In the Appendix the following extracts are given from the Duke's book:--