r Notes.

_Tippet._--The origin of words signifying articles of dress would be a
curious subject for investigation. Tippet is derived by Barclay from the
Saxon _taeppet_; but I find the following passage in Captain Erskine's
Journal of his recent _Cruise in the Western Pacific_, p. 36. He is writing
of the dress of the women at the village of Feleasan, in the Samoan
Islands:

"And occasionally a garment (_tiputa_) resembling a small poncho, with
a slit for the head, hanging so as decently to conceal the bosom."

May we not trace here both the article and the name?

W. T. M.

_Ridings and Chaffings._--A singular custom prevails in South
Nottinghamshire and North Leicestershire. When a husband, forgetting his
solemn vow to love, honour, and keep his wife, has had recourse to physical
force and beaten her, the rustics get up what is called "a riding." A cart
is drawn through the village, having in it two persons dressed so as to
resemble the woman and her master. A dialogue, representing the quarrel, is
carried on, and a supposed representation of the beating is inflicted. This
performance is {371} always specially enacted before the offender's door.

Another, and perhaps less objectionable, mode of shaming men out of a
brutal and an unmanly practice, is to empty a sack of chaff at the
offender's door,--an intimation, I suppose, that _thrashing_ has been "done
within." Perhaps this latter custom gave rise to the term "chaffing."
Thirty years ago both these customs were very common in this locality; but,
either from an improved tone of morality, or from the comparative rarity of
the offence that led to them, both _ridings_ and _chaffings_ are now of
very rare occurrence.

Can any reader of "N. & Q." inform me whether these customs have prevailed,
or still prevail, in other counties?

THOMAS R. POTTER.

Wymeswold, Leicestershire.

_Henry of Huntingdon's "Letter to Walter."_--Mr. Forester (Bohn's
_Antiquarian Library_) decides, in opposition to Wharton and Hardy, that
this epistle was written in 1135, during the lifetime of Henry I., and
there can be no doubt that the passage he quotes bears him out in this; but
it is not less certain that, whether owing to the death of the friend to
whom the letter was addressed, or from a wholesome fear of the resentment
of that king who is so roughly handled in it, the publication was deferred
long enough for the author to reinforce by a few "modern instances" of more
r