tion of the law. They cannot commit treason,
nor be outlawed, nor excommunicate, _for they have no souls_, neither
can they appear in person, but by attorney."

ERICA.

_Apparition of the White Lady_ (Vol. viii., p. 317.).--Some account of the
origin of this apparition story is given at considerable length by Mrs.
Crowe in the _Night Side of Nature_, chapter on Haunted Houses, pp. 315.
318.

JOHN JAMES.

Avington Rectory, Hungerford.

_Female Parish Clerk_ (Vol. viii., p. 338.).--The sexton of my parish, John
Poffley, a man worthy of a place in Wordsworth's _Excursion_, was telling
me but a few days ago, that his mother was the parish clerk for twenty-six
years, and that he well remembers his astonishment as a boy, whenever {432}
he happened to attend a neighbouring church service, to see a man acting in
that capacity, and saying the responses for the people.

JOHN JAMES.

Avington Rectory, Hungerford.

I have just seen an extract from "N. & Q." in one of our local papers,
mentioning Elizabeth King as being clerk of the parish of Totteridge in
1802, and a question by Y. S. M. if there were any similar instance on
record of a woman being a parish clerk? In answer to this Query, I beg to
inform Y. S. M. that in the village of Misterton, Somerset, in which place
I was born, a woman acted as clerk at my mother's wedding, my own baptism,
and many years subsequently: I was born in 1822.

WM. HIGGINS.

_Bothy_ (Vol. ix., p. 305.).--For a familiar mention of this word (commonly
spelt _Bothie_), your correspondent may be referred to the poem of _The
Bothie of Toper-na-fuosich_, a Long-Vacation Pastoral, by Arthur Hugh
Clough, Oxford: Macpherson, 1848. The action of the poem is chiefly carried
on at the Bothie, the situation of which is thus described (in hexameter
verse):

"There on the blank hill side, looking down through the loch to the
ocean,
There with a runnel beside, and pine trees twain before it,
There with the road underneath, and in sight of coaches and steamers,
Dwelling of David Mackaye, and his daughters Elspie and Bella,
Sends up a volume of smoke the Bothie of Toper-na-fuosich."

This sort of verse, by the way, is thus humorously spoken of by Professor
Wilson in his dedication, "to the King," of the twelfth volume of Blackwood
(1822):

"What dost thou think, my liege, of the metre in which I address thee?
Doth it not sound very big, verse bouncing, bubble-and-squeaky,