The Pellings

"

That is,

"Oh! lest my son should suffer cold,

Him in his father's coat infold:

Lest cold should seize my darling fair,

For her, her mother's robe prepare."

These children and their descendants they say were called Pellings [1], a word corrupted from their mother's name Penelope.

[1] In England we frequently meet with the surname Pilling and Billing; it might have happened, that a man had met with an English woman of that name, and had married her, and, as is usual in brides, she might have been, though married, called by her maiden name, and the appellation might have been continued to her posterity.— Authors Note.

The name Billing and Belling is the family name of one of the oldest

Cornish (Keltic) families—a fact that suggests other possibilities.

—P. H. E.