water, and
bad liquor, with short measure, was plentifully retailed. Plans of the
regatta were sold from a shilling to a penny each, and songs on the
occasion sung, in which "regatta" was the rhyme for "Ranelagh," and
"royal family" echoed to "liberty."]

_Coket and Cler-mantyn._--Piers Plowman says that when new corn began to be
sold--

"Waulde no beggar eat bread that in it beanes were,
But of _coket_ and _cler-mantyn_, or else of cleane wheate."

What are _coket_ and _cler-mantyn_? Also, what are _coronation flowers_,
and _sops in wine_?

CERIDWEN.

[Both _coket_ and _cler-mantyn_ mean a kind of fine bread. _Coronation_
is the name given by some of our old writers to a species of flower,
the modern appellation of which is not clear. _Sops-in-wine_ were a
species of flowers among the smaller kind of single gilliflowers or
pinks. Both these flowers are noticed by Spenser, in his _Shepherd's
Calendar_ for April, as follows:

"Bring coronations and sops-in-wine
Worn of paramours."]

* * * * *

Replies.

CURFEW.

(Vol. vi., pp. 53. 112.)

It will be remembered that when Mr. Webster, one of the greatest of
American statesmen, was on his death-bed, in October last, he requested his
son to read to him that far-famed "Elegy" of Gray:

"The curfew tolls the knell of parting day."

The editor of the _Boston Journal_, after referring to this circumstance,
which he says has caused an unexampled demand for the works of Gray in the
United States, goes on to give the result of his researches in many old
English works, respecting the origin and meaning of the word _curfew_,
which I trust will interest not only your correspondents who have written
on the subject, but also many of your readers. I glean from the clever
article now before me the following brief notices, which I have not yet met
with in "N. & Q."

In King Alfred's time the curfew was rung at eight o'clock, and called the
"cover fire bell," because the inhabitants, on hearing its peals, were
obliged to cover their fires, and go to bed. Thomson evidently refers, in
the following lines, to this tyrannical law, which was abolished in England
about the year 1100:

"The shiv'ring wretches at the curfew sound,
Dejected sunk into their sordid beds,
And through the mournful gloom of ancient time,
Mused sad, or dreamt of better."

On the people finding that they co