_Easter Eggs_ (No. 16. p. 244.).--Breakfasting on Easter Monday, some years ago, at the George Inn at Ilminster, in the county of Somerset, in the palmy days of the Quicksilver Mail, when the table continued to be spread for coach travellers at that time from four in the morning till ten at night, we were presented with eggs stained in the boiling with a variety of colours: a practice which Brande records as being in use in his time in the North of England, and among the modern Greeks.
_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."
_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.
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.:--