Watt and Dr. Clarke mention an edition, 1749, 2 vols. folio; but I cannot trace any copy of such edition.

JOHN I. DREDGE.

       * * * * * {280}

SIR GAMMER VANS.

In reply to C.’s inquiry (Vol. ii., p. 89.) as to a comic story about one Sir Gammer Vans, I have pleasure in communicating what little information I have on the subject.  Some years ago, when I was quite a boy, the story was told me by an Irish clergyman, since deceased.  He spoke of it as an old Irish tradition, but did not give his authority for saying so.  The story, as he gave it, contained no allusion to an “aunt” or “mother.”  I do not know whether it will be worthy of publication:  but here it is, and you can make what use of it you like:—­

“Last Sunday morning at six o’clock in the evening, as I was sailing over the tops of the mountains in my little boat, I met two men on horseback riding on one mare:  so I asked them ’Could they tell me whether the little old woman was dead yet, who was hanged last Saturday week for drowning herself in a shower of feathers?’ They said they could not positively inform me, but if I went to Sir Gammar Vans he could tell me all about it.  ’But how am I to know the house?’ said I.  ’Ho, ‘tis easy enough,’ said they, ’for it’s a brick house, built entirely of flints, standing alone by itself in the middle of sixty or seventy others just like it.’  ‘Oh, nothing in the world is easier,’ said I.  ‘Nothing can be easier,’ said they:  so I went on my way.  Now this Sir G. Vans was a giant, and bottlemaker.  And as all giants, who are bottlemakers, usually pop out of a little thumb bottle from behind the door, so did Sir G. Vans.  ’How d’ye do?’ says he.  ‘Very well, thank you,’ says I.  ’Have some breakfast with me?’ ‘With all my heart,’ says I. So he gave me a slice of beer, and a cup of cold veal; and there was a little dog under the table that picked up all the crumbs.  ‘Hang him,’ says I.  ‘No, don’t hang him,’ says he; ’for he killed a hare yesterday.  And if you don’t believe me, I’ll show you the hare alive in a basket.’  So he took me into his garden to show me the curiosities.  In one corner there was a fox hatching eagle’s eggs; in another there was an iron apple tree, entirely covered with pears and lead; in the third there was the hare which the dog killed yesterday alive in the basket; and in the fourth there were twenty-four hipper switches threshing tobacco, and at the sight of me they threshed so hard that they drove the plug through the wall, and through a little dog that was passing by on the other side.  I, hearing the dog howl, jumped over the wall; and turned it as neatly inside out as possible, when it ran away as if it had not an hour to live.  Then he took me into the park to show me his deer:  and I remembered that I had a warrant in my pocket to shoot venison for his majesty’s dinner.  So I set fire to my bow, poised my arrow, and shot