{601}

NOTES AND QUERIES:

A MEDIUM OF INTER-COMMUNICATION FOR LITERARY MEN, ARTISTS, ANTIQUARIES, GENEALOGISTS, ETC.

"When found, make a note of."—Captain Cuttle.

CONTENTS.

Notes.

POPULAR STORIES OF THE ENGLISH PEASANTRY,

NO. V.

By far the larger portion of our tales consist of those connected with the popular mythology of elves, and giants, and bleeding trees; of witches and their wicked doings; of frogs that would go a-wooing, and got turned into princes; and amorous princes who became frogs; of primitive rough chests transformed into coaches; young ladies who go to bed young ladies, and get up owls; much despised younger sons crowned kings of boundless realms; and mediæval tabbies getting inducted into flourishing vizierships by the mere loss of their tails: stories, in short, of the metamorphosis of all conceivable things into all conceivable shapes. Lest this catalogue should frighten your readers, I at once disavow any intention of reflecting more than a specimen. Their puerility renders them scarcely suitable to your columns, and there is moreover such a sameness in those best worth preserving—the fairy legends—that a single example would be amply sufficient for our purpose of pointing out the different varieties of oral romance. Whenever the story relates to the dealings of the fairy-folk with mankind, the elf is almost always represented as the dupe; while, in his transactions with rival supernaturals, he invariably comes off victorious. Giants especially, being always of sleepy and obtuse intellect, afford a fine field for the display of his powers; and we find him baffling their clumsy plans, as well also as the more cunning devices of weird-sisters, in a manner which proves him to be a worthy scion of the warlike avenger of the Sagar. The lovers of folk-lore will probably agree with me in regarding the following tale as a choice bit of elfin history, illustrating the not very amicable relations of the witches and the good people. No sneers, therefore, gentle readers, but listen to the simple strain of "Fairy Jip and Witch One-eye."

Once upon a time, just before the monkey tribe gave up the nauseous custom of chewing tobacco, there lived an old hag, who had conceived an inordinate desire to eat an elf: a circumstance, by the way, which indubitably establishes that elves were {602}of masticable solidity, and not, as some one has it, mere

So the old lady went to the place where the fairies dwelt, and knocked at the hill-top:—"Pretty little Jip!" said she; "come and see the sack of cherries I have brought thee, so large, so red, so sweet." Fairies, be it known, are extremely fond of this fruit, and the elf rushed out in eager haste. "Ha! ha!" said One-eye, as she pounced upon him, and put him in her bag (witches always carry bags), "take care the stones don't stick in thy throttle, my little bird." On the way home, she has to visit a place some distance from the road, and left Jip meanwhile in the charge of a man who was cutting faggots. No sooner was her back turned, than Jip begged the man to let him out; and they filled the bag with thorns. One-eye called for her burden, and set off towards home, making sure she had her dinner safe on her back. "Ay, ay! my lad," said she, as she felt the pricking of the thorns; "I'll trounce thee when I get home for stinging me with thy pins and needles." When she reached her house, she belaboured the bag with a huge stick, till she thought she had broken every bone in the elf's body; and when she found that she had been wasting her strength upon a "kit" of thorns, her rage knew no bounds. Next day, she again got possession of Jip in a similar manner, and this time left him in care of a man who was breaking stones by the road-side. The elf makes his escape as before, and they fill the sack with stones. "Thou little rogue!" said the witch, as she perspired under the burden; "I'll soften thy bones nigh-hand." Her appetite was only whetted, not blunted, by these repeated failures, and despairing of again catching her prey in the same way as before, she assumed the shape of a pedlar with a churn on his shoulder, and contrived to meet Jip in a wood. "Ah! Master Redcap," quoth she; "look alive, my little man, the fox is after thee. See! here he comes: hie thee into my churn, and I will shelter thee. Quick! quick!" In jumped the elf. "Pretty bird!" chuckled the old Crocodile; "dost thee scent the fox?" This time she went straight home, and gave Jip to her daughter, with strict orders that she should cut off his noddle and boil it. When the time came for beginning the cooking, Miss One-eye led her captive to the chopping-block, and bade him lay down his head. "How?" quoth Jip; "I don't know how." "Like this, to be sure," said she; and, suiting the action to the word, she put her poll in the right position. Instantly the fairy seizes the hatchet, and serves her in the manner she intended to serve him. Then picking up a huge pebble, he climbs up the chimney to watch the progress of events. As he expected, the witch came to the fire to look after her delicacy; and no sooner does she lift up the lid of the pot, than "plop" came down Jip's pebble right into the centre of her remaining optic, the light of which is extinguished for ever; or, according to some versions, killed her stone-dead.^[1]

Some of the stories are so extremely like the German ones, that, with very slight alterations, they would serve as translations. These, for obvious reasons, it will not be worth while to trouble you with. Among them, I may particularise the following from the Kinder und Hausmärchen:—Hans im Gluck: Der Frieder und das Catherlieschen; Von der Frau Füchsin; and Van den Nachandel-Boom.

Modern tales of diablerie are not so uncommon as might be expected. In the time of Chaucer, the popular belief ascribed the departure of the elves to the great number of wandering friars who mercilessly pursued them with bell, book, and candle; and at the present day, in the opinion of our uneducated peasantry, the itinerant sectarian preachers are endowed with similar attributes. The stories told of these men, and their encounters with the powers of darkness, would fill a new Golden Legend. There is one tale in particular which comes within our designation of "popular stories," as is well known in almost all parts of England,—How a godly minister falls over the company of wicked scoffing elves, and how he gets out.^[2] The last time I heard it, it was related of a preacher of the Ranting persuasion, well known some dozen years ago in a certain district of Warwickshire; and I prefer to give it in this localised form, as it enables me to present your readers with "Positively the last from Fairyland."

Providence B—— was a well-known man throughout that whole country-side. He had made more converts than all his brethren put together, and, in the matter of spirits and demons, would stand a comparison with Godred or Gutlac, or, by'r Lady, St. Anthony himself. Now it fell out one day, that Providence was sent for to the house of a wealthy yeoman to aid in expelling an evil spirit which had long infested his daughter. I must here remark, en parenthèse, that scenes of this fearfully ludicrous nature are far from unfrequent in our country districts. The besotted state of ignorance in which a great portion of our rural population are still enwrapt, renders them peculiarly open to the fleecing of these fanatics, who, marvellous to relate, are almost everywhere {603}looked upon with respect, and treated with the greatest consideration, proving incontestably that,

On this occasion the job proved a tough one, and it was not till a late hour that Prov. set off on his road home. It was a pitchy dark night, and somehow or other the preacher and his nag contrived to lose their way among the green lanes, and it was not till they had floundered about for some time that our hero discerned (as is usual in such cases) a light gleaming through the thick foliage before him, which he incontinently discovers to proceed from a solitary dwelling in the middle of the woods. Of course he dismounts, and knocks at the door; and of course it was opened by a suspicious-looking old woman in toggery which it would do Mr. James's heart good to depict. To his request for a night's lodging, she yielded a ready assent—too ready, Prov. thought; for it seemed from her manner as though he had been expected. He was shown into a bed-room, and was proceeding to divest himself of his garments, when he hears a knock at the door, and a voice asked him to come down to supper. Prov. made answer that he didn't want any, that he was in bed, and that moreover he was engaged at his devotions; but presently the messenger returned, and declared that if he did not join the company downstairs, they would come and sup with him. Poor Prov. quaked with fright, but thought it politic to cloak his fears, so followed the servant to the house-room, where there were a number of people sitting round a table plentifully laden with good things. All of them were little "shrivelled up" old men; and, as the chairman motioned Prov. to a vacant seat, they all regarded him with a stare that made him feel the reverse of jolly. Although he is well acquainted with the neighbourhood, he recognises none of them. The meal proceeded in solemn silence: look which way he would, he encounters the gaze of his companions, who appear to scowl at him with an expression of fiendish hate. Dreadful surmises flit across his brain. Suddenly his attention becomes directed to the posterior portion of the gentleman next him. "By Jove! he has a tail. Yes, he has; and so has his neighbour, and so have they all." He fancies too he can trace a resemblance between the individual who sits at the head of the table and the fiend of the morning's exorcism. All is now clear as a pike-staff. It is a decided case of trepan. That dark fellow on the right has to complain of a forcible ejection from a comfortable dwelling in the portly corpus of Master Muggins the miller; and he on the left is the identical demon who got into Farmer Nelson's cow, and gave our hero a world of trouble to get him out. He is in the power of the incubi, whom he has been so long warring against. Not a moment is to be lost, for already they are whispering together, and the scowls get fiercer and fiercer. What is to be done? A monk would have had recourse to his breviary; Prov. thought of his hymn-book. "Brethren," says he, "it is usual wi' us at the heend of a feast to ax a blessing."

"A blessing quotha! and to us?" roared the fiends. "Ha! ha! Yea! yea!" said Prov.; and instanter he out with that spirit-stirring stanza of "immortal John:"

Who shall depict the scene while these words were being uttered? The old men turn all sorts of colours, from green to blue, and blue to green, and back again to their original hue. At the last line, the uproar becomes terrible; and, amidst shouts of fiendish wailing, the whole company resolve themselves into a thin blue smoke, in which state they career up the chimney, taking with them a bran new chimney-pot, and leaving behind a most offensive odour of lucifer matches. Prov. saw no more; he fainted.

Some scandalous fellows spread abroad a report that the morning's sun discovered our valiant vessel snugly ensconced in a dry ditch; but as he always denounced strong waters, and was moreover a leading member of the Steeple "United Totals," I, for one, do not believe it. From the examples already given, I trust your readers will think with me that these old world relics are worth preserving. I hope they will not be backward in the good work. A few more years, and the scheme of an English work on the plan of Grimm's will be impracticable. The romance-lore, both oral and written, which erewhile delighted the cottager, is growing out of date. The prosy narrative of "How John the serving-man wedded an earl's daughter, and became a squire of high degree;" and the less placid, but still intolerably dull feats of the "Seven Champions," have no charms for him now. He has outgrown the old chap-book literature, and affectionates the highly seasoned atrocities of the Old Bailey school; which, to the disgrace of the legislature, are allowed to poison the minds of our labouring community with their weekly broad-sheets of crime and obscenity. Even those prime old favourites, the Robin Hood Garland and Shepherd's Kalendar, with its quaint letter-press and grim woodcuts, are getting out of fashion, and beginning to be missed from their accustomed nook beside the family Bible.

T. Sternberg.

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P.S. Owing to some unaccountable inadvertence, I have only just seen the number of "N.& Q." containing the highly interesting communications of H. B. C. and Mr. Stephens. Will Mr. Stephens allow me to ask him where he procured his tale, for I agree with H. B. C. that it is "desirable to fix the localities as nearly as possible." My version came from the Gloucestershire side of the county.

DR. THOMAS MORELL'S COPY OF H. STEPHENS' EDIT. OF ÆSCHYLUS, 1557, WITH MSS. NOTES.

As your valuable paper is in the hands of scholars of every description in every part of the world, the following communication may meet the eye, and be of no slight interest to some of your classical readers, and, at the same time, give a stimulus to hunters at bookstalls. Some time since, in one of my hunts, I stumbled upon a very fine copy of Pet. Victorine's (Vettori) edition of Æschylus, printed by H. Stephens, 1557. I was much gratified in finding it had belonged to the celebrated Thomas Morell, D.D., F.R.S., F.S.A., the lexicographer, and had his book-plate and autograph. The margins were filled with many conjectures and emendations written in two very ancient hands, and, besides, some MSS. Scholia on the Prometheus and Poesæ. In carefully examining them I found many were marked with the letters (A) and (P). I remembered the present very learned Bishop of London, in the preface to his edition of the Choæphoræ, mentioned the vast assistance he had received in editing that play from a copy of this very edition of Æschylus (H. Stephens, 1557), lent to him by Mr. Mitford, the margins of which were similarly marked. The bishop observes these emendations were by Auratus and Portus, two learned French scholars; and that Mr. Mitford's volume contained several other emendations without the signatures (A) and (P), which he, for distinction's sake, marked (Q). Now my copy also possessed these readings marked (Q). The bishop further observed, that the writer of the MSS. notes was a cotemporary of Casaubon's from a remark at p. 14. of the volume. The learned bishop's description of the volume will be found in the Museum Criticum, vol. ii. p. 488. I at first imagined I had met with this identical volume; but a closer examination proved I was mistaken, as my copy, besides all those carefully noted by Dr. Blomfield, contained many other emendations, but had not the note at p. 14. of the Prometheus. Whoever was the copier or writer of the marginal MSS. in my volume, was evidently a Frenchman, as some of the notes are in French. The handwriting is very ancient and contracted, and has the appearance of being of the early portion of the seventeenth century. The most interesting part, however, of the story still remains. Dr. Thomas Morell edited the Prometheus, 4to., 1773. The title is as follows: Æschyli P. V. cum Stanl. Versione et Scholiis, α, β, (et γ ineditis), &c. Now these Scholia γ, which he professes to give for the first time, I found to be those in the very ancient hand in the margin of my volume. He frequently also gives the various marginal readings, and styles them "Marg. MS." Moreover he occasionally adopts these notes without any acknowledgment, especially where they throw any light on the text. The volume then is of great curiosity and value. From a curious note at the end of the Prometheus, Morell takes nine iambic lines, to which is affixed "Ad Calcem Dramatis MS. Regii." From this it would seem the Scholia were taken from a MS. in the Royal Library at Paris.

We may observe then as a remarkable circumstance, that while Bishop Blomfield was describing the copy belonging to Mr. Mitford, a similar copy, with more notes, and of equal antiquity as to the MSS. emendations, was in existence, and had once been in the possession of, and of much assistance to the great Dr. Morell. Where Morell got this volume, and how he should not have acknowledged the aid he derived from it, is a mystery. As I mentioned before, the handwriting is far prior to Morell's day. The volume is rendered still more interesting by its having many of Stanley's emendations, about which such a controversy arose from the observations made by Blomfield in his preface to the Agamemnon. And I am almost induced to think it might originally have belonged to Stanley, who made a similar use of it to what Morell did. Many of the emendations are still inedited. This valuable volume, therefore, is of great interest, (1) from the vast number of MSS. readings, and (2) from its having been formerly in the possession of Dr. Morell, and the circumstances above mentioned. It is a very large and clean copy of the now scarce edition of H. Stephens; and your bibliographical readers will be astonished to hear I purchased it for one shilling! I may mention I showed it to the Bishop of London and Dr. Wordsworth, Canon of Westminster, who were both interested with it. The latter showed me in return several volumes of MSS. collections for a new edition of Æschylus, made by his lamented brother the late Mr. John Wordsworth, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, perhaps the profoundest Greek scholar next to Porson the University of Cambridge ever possessed, and who so ably reviewed Professor Scholefield's Æschylus in the Philological Museum. The classical world can never sufficiently regret that death prevented us from receiving at his hands a first-rate edition of this noble poet, as he had been at much pains in travelling all over the Continent, and examining all the MSS. extant; and from his known partiality to the author, and {605}vast learning, would doubtless have done ample justice to his task.

Richard Hooper.

St. Stephen's, Westminster.

ON A PASSAGE IN THE "MERCHANT OF VENICE," ACT III. SC. 2.

The passage in which I am about to propose some verbal corrections has already been in part examined by your correspondent A. E. B. in p. 483. of this volume; but the points, except one, to which I advert, have not been touched by that gentleman. The first folio reads thus:

The word guiled in the first line is printed guilded in the second folio, the form in which gilded appears often in the old copies. I have no doubt that this is the true reading, and it would obviate the difficulty of supposing that Shakspeare wrote guiled for guiling.

In Henry Peacham's Minerva Britanna, 1612, p. 207., of deceitful "court favour" it is said:

Notwithstanding your correspondent's ingenious argument to show that beautie in the third line may be the true reading, I cannot but think that it is a mistake of the compositor caught from beauteous in the preceding line; and that gypsie was the word used by the poet, who thus designates Cleopatra. The words in their old form might well be confused. For "thou pale and common drudge," in the seventh line, I unhesitatingly read "thou stale and common drudge;" and, by so doing, avoid the repetition of the same epithet to silver and lead. It is evident that the epithet applied to silver should be a depreciating one; while paleness is said to move more than eloquence. The following passage in King Henry IV., Part I. Act III. Sc. 2. confirms this reading:

To obviate the repetition, Warburton altered paleness to plainness, but paleness was the appropriate epithet for lead. Thus, Baret has, "Palenesse or wannesse like lead. Ternissure."

And in Romeo and Juliet, Act II. Sc. 5., we have:

With these simple and, most of them, obvious corrections, I submit the passage to the impartial consideration of those who with me think that our immortal poet, so consummate a master of English, has been here, as elsewhere, rendered obscure, if not absurd, by the blunders of the printer. It will then run thus:

I may just observe, that in Troilus and Cressida, Act II. Sc. 2., the quarto copies have printed pale for stale, which is corrected in the folio.

S. W. Singer.

EPISODE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

Mademoiselle de Sombreuil and the Glass of Blood.

"... In the Abbaye, Sombreuil, the venerable Governor of the Invalides, was brought up to the table, and Maillard had pronounced the words 'à la Force,' when the Governor's daughter, likewise a prisoner, rushed through pikes and sabres, clasped her old father in her arms so tightly that none could separate her from him, and made such piteous cries and prayers that some were touched. She vowed that her father was no aristocrat, that she herself hated aristocrats. But to put her to a further proof, or to indulge their bestial caprices, the ruffians presented to her a cup full of blood, and said 'Drink! drink of the blood of the aristocrats, and your father shall be saved!' The lady took the horrible cup, and drank and the monsters kept their promise."

Thus, in relating the massacres of September, writes the author of Knight's Pictorial Hist. of Engl. (Reign of Geo. III., vol. iii. p. 160.); and thus tradition has handed down to us this most horrible episode of the first French revolution; one which made so deep an impression on my own mind, that the scene was always uppermost whenever the atrocities committed during that eventful period of French history were under consideration. This impression, I am glad to say, has now been removed by M. Granier de Cassagnac, who (Histoire du Directoire) states that the tradition is not founded on fact; and as it is the first denial of the event which has come under my notice, I send you the substance of the evidence which M. de Cassagnac brings forward in support of his statement:— {606}

1. The Marquise de Fausse-Lendry, in her work, Quelques-uns des Fruits amers de la Révolution, does not make any allusion to the fact, although she was in the same chamber with Mlle. de Sombreuil, and relates her heroic devotion to her father.

2. Peltier, who was in Paris at the time, and published his Histoire de la Révolution du 10 Août early in 1793, does not say a word as to the occurrence.

3. The report of Piette, which was drawn up in Mlle. de Sombreuil's favour, and from details supplied by herself, is completely silent on the matter.

4. Being arrested with her father, and her younger brother, Mlle. de Sombreuil was taken to the Prison de la Bourbe on the 31st of December, 1793. One of the prisoners thus notices the event in his journal:

"Du 11 Nivôse, an II.

"L'on amena aussi a famille Sombreuil, le père, le fils, et la fille: tout le monde sait que cette courageuse citoyenne se précipita, dans les journées du mois de Septembre, entre son père et le fer des assassins, et parvint à l'arracher de leurs mains. Depuis, sa tendresse n'avait fait que s'accroître, et il n'est sorte de soins qu'elle ne prodiguât à son père, malgré les horribles convulsions qui la tourmentaient tous les mois, pendant trois jours, depuis cette lamentable époque. Quand elle parut au salon, tous les yeux se fixèrent sur elle et se remplirent de larmes."—Tableau des Prisons de Paris sous Robespierre, p. 93.

Here again, not a word about the glass of blood, although the narrative was written at no very distant period from the occurrences of September.

Maton de la Varennes, in his Hist. particulière des Evènemens, written subsequent to the events of Fructidor, year V., is enthusiastic in his praise of Mlle. de S.'s devotion; but says not a word as to the horrible sacrifice by which she is represented to have purchased her father's life.

The tradition is found for the first time in print in a note to Legouvé's Mérite des Femmes, which appeared in 1801; and the subject has been consecrated by the pen of the exiled poet Victor Hugo, in an ode to Mlle. de Sombreuil. Since then M. Thiers, without further looking into the matter, has given place to it in his Hist. de la Révolut. Française:

Victor Hugo's lines are the following:—

The subsequent history of this unfortunate family was this. M. de Sombreuil and his youngest son perished on the scaffold, the 10th June, 1794. The elder brother, Charles de Sombreuil, was shot at Vannes in June, 1795, after the Quiberon expedition. Leaving prison and France, after the 9th Thermidor, Mlle. de S. married an emigrant, the Comte de Villelume, who, under the Restoration, became governor of the Invalides at Avignon, at which place she died in 1823.

Philip S. King.

MILTON INDEBTED TO TACITUS.

There is perhaps nothing in "Lycidas" which has so commended itself to the memory and lips of men, as that exquisite strain of tender regret and pathetic despondency in which occur the lines—

It is with no desire to impair our admiration of these noble lines that I would ask, if that graceful glorifying of Fame as "the last infirmity of noble minds" was not suggested by the profound remark of Tacitus, in his character of the stoical republican, Helvidius Priscus (Hist., l. iv. c. 6.):

"Erant, quibus appetentior famæ videretur, quando etiam sapientibus cupido gloriæ novissima exuitur."

The great Englishman has condensed and intensified the expression of the concise and earnest Roman. This is one of those delightful obligations which repay themselves: Milton has more than returned the favour of the borrowed thought by lending it a heightened expression.

Thomas H. Gill.

Minor Notes.

Note by Warton on Aristotle's "Poetics."—Some of your correspondents having expressed a wish that the MS. remarks of eminent scholars, when met with by your readers, might be communicated to the world through your pages, I beg to send you the following observations, signed J. Warton, which I have found on the blank leaf of a copy of Aristotle's Poetics (edit. of Ruddimannos, Edinb. 1731):—

"To attempt to understand poetry without having diligently digested this treatise, would be as absurd and impossible as to pretend to a skill in geometry without having studied Euclid. The fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth chapters, wherein he has pointed out the properest methods of exciting terror and pity, convince us that he was intimately acquainted with those objects which most forcibly affect the heart. The prime excellence of this precious treatise is the scholastic precision and philosophical clearness with which the subject is handled, without any address to {607}the passions or imagination. It is to be lamented that the part of the Poeticks in which he has given precepts for comedy did not likewise descend to posterity."

A considerable number of notes, in the same handwriting, are also in the volume.

J. M.

Oxford.

Misappropriated Quotation.—I have heard the following passage of Lord Bacon's, Essay VIII., and by a Cambridge D.D. too, so far as the word "fortune," attributed to Paley:

"He that hath a wife and children hath given hostages to fortune, for they are impediments to great enterprises. The best works of the greatest merit for the public have proceeded from unmarried and childless men."

B. B.

The God Arciacon.—In a Descriptive Account of the Antiquities in the Grounds and in the Museum of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society, drawn up by the learned Curator of the antiquities, at page 20. I find the following inscription and explanation:—

"N. III. An altar recently discovered in the rubble foundation, under one of the pillars of the church of St. Dionis, Walmgate, York. It is inscribed:

DEO
ARCIACON
ET N. AVG. SI
MAT. VITALIS
ORD V. S. LM.

Which may be read thus: DEO Arciacon et Numini Augusti Simatius Vitalis Ordovix Votum solvit libens merito, i.e. To the God Arciacon and to the Divinity of Augustus, Simatius Vitalis, one of the Ordovices, discharges his vow willingly, deservedly—namely, by dedicating this altar. There is nothing in this inscription to indicate its date, or the Emperor to whose divinity, in part, the altar is dedicated. The god Arciacon, whose name occurs in no other inscription, was probably one of those local deities to whom the Roman legions were so prone to pay religious reverence, especially if in the attributes ascribed to them they bore any resemblance to the gods of their own country. If the reading and interpretation of ORD be right, Vitalis was a Briton; and Arciacon may have been a deity acknowledged by the Ordovices, who occupied the northern parts of Wales."

In the name ARCIACON I fancy that I see in a Latinized form the British words ARCH IACHAWR, i.e. the Supreme Healer. Arch has the same meaning in Welsh as it has in the English and several other languages. In combination it is shortened to Ar, as in Yr Arglwdd Dduw, the Lord God. My conjecture is, that the Britons may have worshipped a God whose attributes resembled those of the Æsculapius of the Greeks. I hope that some of the contributors to "N. & Q." will be so kind as to give some information on this subject.

Gat-tothed.—I do not know whether this mysterious word in the description of the "Wife of Bath," has been satisfactorily explained since the time of Tyrwhitt; but perhaps the following passage may suggest a new reading in addition to "cat-tothed" and "gap-tothed," which he gives in his note on Canterbury Tales, p. 470.:

"The Doctor deriveth his pedigree from Grono ap Heylyn, who descended from Brocknel Skythrac, one of the princes of Powis-land, in whose family was ever observed that one of them had a gag-tooth, and the same was a notable omen of good fortune."—Barnard's Life of Heylyn, p. 75., reprinted in Heyl. Hist. Ref. Eccl. Hist. Soc., 1. xxxii.

Query, What was a gag-tooth? The "Wife" herself says,

J. C. R.

Goujere.—The usage of this word by Shakspeare (in the Second Part of Henry IV.) is another proof that he took refuge in Cornwall, when he fled from the scene of his deerstalking danger. The Goujere is the old Cornish name of the Fiend, or the Devil; and is still in use among the folk words of the West.

C. E. H. Morwenstow.

The Ten Commandments in Ten Lines.—In looking over the Registers of the Parish of Laneham, Notts, last April, I discovered on one of the leaves the Commandments with the above title. It is signed "Richard Christian, 1689:" he was vicar at that time.

S. Wiswould.

Vellum-bound Books.—In a list of thirty books printed for T. Carnan and F. Newbery, and issued in 1773, I find the phrase two volumes bound in one in the vellum manner in seven instances; also, four volumes bound in two in the vellum manner; and, six volumes bound in three in the vellum manner. In other cases we have only the word bound or sewed. I have a suspicion that the phrase in the vellum manner may have some obsolete meaning; and submit this note to the consideration of those who are in search of a vellum-bound Junius.

Bolton Corney.

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Queries.

THOMAS GILL, THE BLIND MAN OF ST. EDMUNDSBURY.

Putting in order this morning a mass of pamphlets, which my women-kind threaten to sweep into the kitchen unless more tidily kept, I came upon a few poetical tracts by "Thomas Gill, the Blind Man of St. Edmundsbury." Not having had any previous acquaintance with this poetical moralist, I have looked over the lot; but beyond the above description of himself upon their titles, they afford little information regarding their author.

There is, however, proof, in The Blind Man's Case at London, 1711, that Gill was a character in his day. In what he loftily calls "The Argument" to these eight pages of doggrel, he says:

"The Blind Man of Bury by the Persuasions of his Printer, and some other supposed Friends, takes his Wife with him to London, with an Intention to settle there, where they met with so many Inconveniences, and so great Difficulties and Charges, as soon disgusted them with the Place."

Hereupon the blind man, finding himself disappointed in his expectations of, apparently, a larger sphere for his begging operations, opens out upon the metropolis in a fine round style of abuse in his "Letter to his Good Friend and Benefactor at Bury."

Desirous that my successor in the O—— library should have the advantage of all the information I can collect, in regard to the bibliographical curiosities therein contained, I am induced to avail myself of the medium your pages afford to inquire whether any of your Suffolk antiquaries can give me, or point out where I can help myself to, any particulars touching my new friend with an old face.

J. O.

BRONZE MEDALS.

Having applied in vain to several distinguished numismatists respecting certain bronze medals in my cabinet, which have baffled my own researches, I now beg to seek for information through the medium of "N. & Q.," to which I have been already much indebted; and have little doubt but that among your many intelligent correspondents some one will be found to solve my difficulties.

The medals to which I refer, and which I will describe very briefly, are the following; and I am desirous of obtaining some account of the persons in whose honour they were struck:—

1. Astalia. Size (Mionnet's scale), 16. "Diva Julia Astalia." Bust to the left. Rev. "Unicum for. et pud. Exemplum." A phœnix rising from its ashes. Probably not later than the early part of the sixteenth century.

2. Conestagius. Size, 15½. "Hieronimus Conestagius, MDXC." Bust in armour to the right, with ruff round the neck. Beneath, "MART. S***." Rev. A pen and a sword in saltire. An oval in high relief, of Italian workmanship.

3. Meratus. Size, 13½. "Franciscus Meratus I.P.F." Bearded bust to the right. Rev. "Me Duce Tutus Eris." A figure seated holding a book in its right hand. Query the meaning of the initials after the name?

4. Aragonia. Size, 13. "D. Maria Aragonia." Bust to the right, with a crown falling from her head. Rev. None.

5. Hanna. Size, 18. "Martinus de Hanna." Bust in a gown, to the right. Rev. "Spes mea in Deo est." A full-length figure, with hands clasped and raised towards heaven: apparently a foreign Protestant divine.

6. Corsi. Size, 20. "Laura Corsi March. Salviati." Hooded bust to the left, with crucifix suspended from the neck. Beneath, "MDCCVIII." Rev. "Mens immota manet." Full-length female figure, with helmet on her head, leaning on a spear round which a serpent is twined, with a stag by her side. In the background, on one side, is represented a castle on a wooded height; on the other, a vessel is seen labouring in a storm. A striking medal; and the lady's portrait makes one feel interested to learn her history, which seemingly ought to be known: but I must confess my ignorance even whether the Marquisate of Salviati be in Italy or Sicily.

John J. A. Boase.

P.S.—John de Silvâ, Count de Portalegre, who accompanied Don Sebastian in his expedition to Africa against Muley Moloch, published at Genoa in 1585 a work entitled Dell' Unione del Regno di Portogallo alla Corona di Castiglia, under the name of Conestaggio; but not having the book by me, I do not know whether the Christian name "Geronimo" also appears.

ACWORTH QUERIES.

In the church of St. Mary Luton, Beds, there is a brass slab bearing the figures of a knight and his two wives, with the following inscription:

"Pray for the soules of John Acworth Squyer and Alys and Amy his wyfes, which John deceased the xvij day of March the yer of our Lord M′v^cxiij. On whose souls Jhu have mercy."

For arms, he bore quarterly, 1st and 4th, erm. on a chief indented gu. 3 coronets or. 2nd and 3rd, or, between 3 roses a chev. gu.

In the reign of Henry VIII. there was one Johan Acworth (a lady of the bedchamber to Katherine Howard), who married Sir John Bulmer, and went to reside at York.

John Acworth was, I believe, succeeded by his son, George Acworth, who married Margaret, the {609}daughter of — Wilborefoss, of Durham, Esquire, and had issue a daughter, Johan Acworth. This Johan Acworth married Sir Edward Waldegrave, the youngest son of George Waldegrave, of Smalbridge, Essex, Esq. I do not know if George Acworth had any other issue.

In 1560 there was a George Acworth who was public orator of Cambridge. He was formerly of Peterhouse, and took his D.C.L. at St. John's, Oxon. He was in his early days the friend and companion of Archbishop Parker. In 1576, he was appointed Master of the Faculties, Judge of the Prer. Court of Ireland. He is said to have died in Ireland, but where or when I do not know.

There was another of the name, Allin Acworth, formerly of Magdalen Hall, Oxon, and Vicar of St. Nicholas, Rochester, Kent. He was a sufferer by the Act of Uniformity, having been, in consequence of that Act, expelled his vicarage in 1666. Of his subsequent history I find no trace.

If any of your correspondents can give me any information relative to any of the above, their descent, or intermarriages, I shall be much obliged.

The name is, I believe, an uncommon one, and is only borne, as far as I can learn, by one family now in existence. There was, however, another family of the name formerly belonging to Suffolk, who bore for arms: Sa. a griffin segreant armed and langued or. But I cannot find any trace of their residence, &c., or when they flourished or became extinct.

I believe there was a Baron of the name in the reign of one of the early Henries, but unfortunately can discover no certain information about him.

The above particulars are wanted for genealogical purposes.

G. B. A.

Minor Queries.

"Row the boat, Norman."—In the Chronicles of England collected by John Stow, and printed in 1580, is the following passage:—

"1454. John Norman, Draper, Maior. Before thys time the Maiors, Aldermen, and Commoners of the Citie of London were wonte all to ride to Westminster when the Maior should take hys charge, but this Maior was rowed thyther by water; for the whiche the watermen made of hym a song, 'Rowe the boate, Norman,' &c."

Are any of your correspondents in possession of the words of this song? or is the tune to which it was sung known?

T. G. H.

The Hereditary Standard Bearer.—In Crawford's Peerage of Scotland it is mentioned, that in the year 1107 Alexander I., by a special grant, appointed a member of the Carron family (to whom he gave the name of Scrimgeour, for his valour in a sharp fight) the office of Hereditary Standard Bearer. Can you inform me how the Scrimgeours were deprived of this honour? The family is not extinct, and yet I see the Hereditary Royal Standard Bearer is now a Wedderburne, and the Earl of Lauderdale is also Hereditary Standard Bearer. There surely must have been injustice committed some time to cause such confusion. When and how did it take place?

T. G. H.

Walton's Angler; Seth's Pillars; May-butter; English Guzman.—In Walton's Complete Angler, in the beginning of the discourse between Piscator and Venator, the former, expatiating on the antiquity of the art of angling, gives as one of the traditions of its origin, that Seth, one of the sons of Adam,

"Left it engraven on those pillars which he erected, and trusted to preserve the knowledge of the mathematics, music, and the rest of that precious knowledge, and those useful arts which, by God's appointment or allowance, and his noble industry, were thereby preserved from perishing in Noah's flood."

What is the tradition of Seth's Pillars?

Piscator in chap. v. says:

"But I promise to tell you more of the fly-fishing for a trout, which I may have time enough to do, for you see it rains May-butter."

What is May-butter, or the origin of the saying?

In the amusing contest between the gypsies related in the same chapter, these worthies were too wise to go to law about the residuary shilling, and did therefore choose their choice friends Rook and Shark, and our late English Guzman, to be their arbitrators and umpires.

What is the explanation of these names? There appears to be some natural consequence to this choice, for the decision seems to have been arrived at by the act of reference. The notes explain that by "our English Guzman"^[3] was intended one James, a noted thief. I suppose his prototype was Don Guzman D'Alfarache; but no interpretation of the passage is given. Would it be found to have reference to some passage in the book referred to in the note?

Anon.

{610}

Radish Feast.—I copied the following from the north door of St. Ebbe's Church, Oxford. Can any of your correspondents explain the origin and meaning of this feast?

"St. Ebbe's Parish.

"The annual meeting for the election of Church-wardens for this Parish will be held in the vestry of the Parish Church on Easter Tuesday, at 4 o'clock in the afternoon.

"Wm. Brunner, "Wm. Fisher,

Churchwardens.

"Dated 10 April, 1852.

"The Radish Feast will be at the Bull Inn, New Street, immediately after the Vestry."

R. R. Rowe.

Cambridge.

What Kind of Drink is Whit?—In going over the famous old mansion Cothele, near Tavistock, the other day, I saw, among other primæval crockery, three pot-bellied jugs, two of which were inscribed "Sack, 1646;" and the third, a smaller one, "Whit, 1646." What kind of drink is whit?

W. G. C.

"Felix natu," &c.—

Of whom was this said, and by whom?

Henry H. Breen.

St. Lucia.

"Gutta cavat lapidem."—Can any reader of "N. & Q." inform me whence the following verse is taken?

The first half, I know, is the commencement of a line in Ov. ex Ponto, Ep. x. v. 5., which concludes with—

I have seen it quoted, but no reference given.

A. W.

Kilburn.

Punch and Judy.—Are any of your readers of "N. & Q." not aware that Punch and Judy is a corruption, both in word and deed, of Pontius cum Judæis, one of the old mysteries, the subject of which was Pontius Pilate with the Jews; and particularly in reference to St. Matt. xxvii. 19.? I should be glad to hear of some similar instances.

Bœoticus.

Edgmond, Salop.

Sir John Darnall (Vol. v., pp. 489. 545.).—Can either of your correspondents, E. N. or G., inform me whether the Sir John Darnall, who is the subject of their communications, is descended from John Darnall, who was a Baron of the Exchequer in 1548, or give me any particulars of the "birth parentage, education, life, character, and behaviour" of the latter?

Edward Foss.

The Chevalier St. George.—Can any of the numerous readers of "N. & Q." inform me where ample and minute accounts, either in print or MS., of the Life and Court of the Chevalier St. George, particularly from the death of James II. to his own death, can be obtained; also, of his ministers of state, personal attendants, &c.? I have already examined such of the Stuart Papers as have been published by Mr. Glover, and by Brown in his History of the Highland Clans.

J. W. H.

Declaration of 2000 Clergymen.—Several allusions have been lately made at Parliament to the 2000 clergymen who signed a Declaration calling in question the Queen's supremacy. Was a list of these clergymen ever published? If so, in what newspaper or periodical? What were the exact words of the declaration?

Rusticus.

MS. "De Humilitate."—Can any of your correspondents give me any information as to the date, authorship, or value of a MS. that has lately fallen into my hands? It is a thin quarto, beautifully written upon parchment. The title page is wanting, and the MS. commences with the index: but the title of the work is De Humilitate. It consists of twenty-four chapters. The heading of the first two is as follows:

"Incipit prologus in libello qui inscribitur de humilitate,

Cap. I. Quam perniciosum sit et Deo odibile superbiæ initium, et qualiter ac de quibus gloriandum sit.

II. Quod sit superbia fugienda et sectanda humilitas, quæ in sui vera cognitione fundata consistit," &c.

The top of the first page has a rich initial letter; and at the bottom a coat of arms: Crest, a leopard rampant; shield, argent, 3 bars gules, on a chief azure 3 fleur de lys or. The heading of each chapter is written in red ink.

Ceyrep.

MS. Work on Seals.—Moule, in his Bibliotheca Heraldica, states that there was at the date of the publication of his work (1822), in the library at Stowe, a MS. work, two volumes, folio, by Anstis, on the Antiquity and Use of Seals. Can any of your readers inform me in whose possession this work now is?

A. O. D. D.

Sir George Carew.—Sir George Carew, the able commander and crafty statesman of Queen Elizabeth's time, was created Earl of Totness. His grandfather mortgaged his ancestral estate of Carew, in Pembrokeshire, to Sir Rhys ap Thomas, who, with its subsequent possessors, Sir John Perrot and the Earl of Essex, made great additions to Carew Castle, the magnificent remains of which entitle it to be called the ruined Windsor of Wales.

The Carews then pushed their fortunes in Ireland, and endeavoured to recover the "Marquisate of Cork" on an obsolete and false claim. {611}

The writer wishes for an accurate pedigree of Sir George Carew, showing his relationship to Sir Peter Carew, who was buried at Ross, and to Sir Peter who was killed at the skirmish of Glendalough in 1581.

H.

Docking Horses' Tails.—I should be glad to learn when the practice of docking horses' tails commenced in England, or in any country of Europe, and what was the immediate cause of this amputation? I cannot trace in the plates of Froissart, or others of a later date, any indication of this practice, and in them there are no tails lopped of their fair proportions.

What other nations besides the English have ever docked their horses' tails; and where is any account to be found of their reasons for so doing?

If any of your correspondents will answer these Queries, I shall feel obliged.

Tail.

St. Albans, William, Abbot of.—Archbishop Morton addressed a monition in 1490 to William, Abbot of St. Albans. It is to be found in Wilkin's Concilia, iii. 632., and is extracted from Archbishop Morton's Register, fol. 22. b. Now, in Tanner's Notitia, and in Dugdale's Monasticon, it is stated that William Wallingford, Abbot of St. Albans, died in 1484; and that the chair was vacant until 1492, when Thomas Ramryge was elected abbot. Archbishop Morton's original letter is, I believe, to be seen in the register at Lambeth, and its date is distinctly 1490. This date, moreover, agrees with the Excerpta of Dr. Ducarel in the British Museum.

Can any of your readers solve this difficulty for me, as I am anxious to know immediately whether I may safely identify "William," the notorious evil-liver of Morton's monition, with "Wallington," who bears a respectable character in Dugdale's Monasticon.

L. H. J. Tonna.

Jeremy Taylor on Friendship.—

"I am grieved at every sad story I hear. I am troubled when I hear of a pretty bride murdered in her bride-chamber by an ambitious and enraged rival," &c.—Jeremy Taylor on Friendship, p. 37, fol. Lond. 1674.

This was written A.D. 1657: what is the case referred to?

C. P. E.

Colonel or Major-General Lee.—The dates of his letters tend to prove that Lee was on the continent in 1770, and this is apparently borne out by the "memoirs" published both in America and in England. But Dr. Girdleston, in his strange work published in 1813, asserts that on the 20th April, 1770, at the christening of Sir Charles Davis's eldest son, Charles Sydney, Lee was at Rushbrooke in Suffolk. The proof, however, is not adduced in a simple and straightforward manner. At page 6, Dr. Girdlestone tells us that some person, not named, remembers that Lee stood sponsor, &c.; at page 7, that the register proves that the baptism took place on the 20th April, 1770; and at page 13, that the register proves that Lee was on the 20th April "in that church." This last is the only fact bearing on the question at issue. Will any of your intelligent correspondents residing at Bury favour you with a copy of the register of the baptism of Charles Sydney on the 20th April, 1770?

C. M. L.

"Roses all that's fair adorn."—Can you inform me where I can find a copy of an old poem, which begins as follows:

since I have searched in vain for it.

W. S.

Minor Queries Answered.

Donne.—In Walton's Life of Donne it is said that Donne left behind him—

"The resultance of 1400 authors, most of them abridged and analysed with his own hand; he left also some six score of sermons, all written with his own hand."

Can any one tell me what has become of these MSS., and where they are now to be found if they still exist?

Ajax.

Dr. Evans.—Who was Dr. Evans, author of the Sketch of Christian Denominations? It would not be easy to ascertain, from internal evidence, what "denomination" he was himself! Who is the modern editor, the Rev. James Bransby?

A. A. D.

Replies.

CARLING SUNDAY—ROMAN FUNERAL PILE.

(Vol. iii., p. 449.; Vol. iv., p. 381.; Vol. v., p. 67.)

At Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and many other places in the North of England, grey peas, after having been steeped a night in water, are fried with butter, given away, and eaten at a kind of entertainment on the Sunday preceding Palm Sunday, which {612}was formerly called Care or Carle Sunday, as may be yet seen in some of our old almanacks. They are called carlings, probably, as we call the presents at fairs, fairings. Marshal, in his Observations on the Saxon Gospels, tells us that "the Friday on which Christ was crucified is called in German both Gute Freytag and Carr Freytag;" that the word karr signifies a satisfaction for a fine or penalty; and that Care or Carr Sunday was not unknown to the English in his time, at least to such as lived among old people in the country.

In the old Roman calendar I find it observed on this day (the 12th of March), that a dole is made of soft beans. I can hardly entertain a doubt but that our custom is derived from hence. It was usual among the Romanists to give away beans in the doles at funerals; it was also a rite in the funeral ceremonies of heathen Rome. There is a great deal of learning in Erasmus's Adages concerning the religious use of beans, which were thought to belong to the dead. An observation which he gives us of Pliny concerning Pythagoras's interdiction of the pulse, is highly remarkable. It is "that beans contain the souls of the dead." For which cause also they were used in the Parentalia. Plutarch also, he tells us, held that pulse to be of the highest efficacy for invoking the manes. Ridiculous and absurd as these superstitions may appear, it is yet certain that our carlings deduce their origin from thence. On the interdiction of this pulse by Pythagoras, the following occurs in Spencer De Leg. Hebr., lib. i. p. 1154.:—

"Quid enim Pythagoras, ejusque præceptores, Ægypti Mystæ, adeo leguminum, fabarum imprimis, esum et aspectum fugerent; nisi quod cibi mortuorum cœnis et exequiis proprii, adeoque polluti et abominandi haberentur," &c.—Brand's Observations on Popular Antiquities, Ellis's ed., vol. i. pp. 95-99.

In the notes in loco is mentioned "a practice of the Greek church, not yet out of use, to set boyled corne before the singers at their commemorations of the dead," v. Gregorii Opusc., p. 128. The length of this reply will not admit of my here enumerating the other emblems of the resurrection of the body used by the fathers and other writers. I shall therefore conclude with an extract from Rennel's Geographical System of Herodotus, p. 632., relating to the Pythagorean prohibition of beans:—

"The Bengalese have the Nymphæa nelumbo in their lakes and inundations; and its fruit certainly resembles at all points that of the second species of water-lily described by Herodotus; that is, it has the form of the orbicular wasp's nest; and contains kernels of the size and shape of a small bean. Amongst the Bramins this plant is held sacred; but the kernels, which are of a better flavour than almonds, are almost universally eaten by the Hindoos.

"It may, however, be a question whether it has always been the case; and whether in the lapse of time that has taken place since the days of Pythagoras (who is supposed to have visited India, as well as Chaldæa, Persia, and Egypt), a relaxation in discipline may not have occasioned the law to be dispensed with; instances enough of a like kind being to be met with elsewhere. Kyamos in the Greek language appears to signify, not only a bean, but also the fruit or bean of the Nymphæa nelumbo. Is it not probable then that the mystery of the famous inhibition of Pythagoras, an enigma of which neither the ancients nor the moderns have hitherto been able to give a rational solution, may be discovered in those curious records of Sanscrit erudition, which the meritorious labours of some of our countrymen in India are gradually bringing to light?"

Bibliothecar. Chetham.

HART AND MOHUN.

(Vol. v., p. 466.)

In Downes' Roscius Anglicanus, edit. 1789, mention is made of these two actors, thus:

"Hart was apprentice to Robinson, an actor who lived before the Civil Wars; he afterwards had a captain's commission, and fought for Charles I. He acted women's parts when a boy.

"Mohun was brought up under Robinson, as Hart and others were: in his youth he acted Bellamente, in Love's Cruelty, which part he retained after the Restoration."—Page 10.

It appears to have been the practice of the old actors—the "master actors," as they were called—to take youths as apprentices, and to initiate them in female characters, as a preparatory step towards something weightier. Richard Robinson, above-mentioned, circa 1616, usually performed female characters himself.^[4] In 1647 his name occurs, with several others, prefixed to the dedication of the first folio edition of Fletcher's Plays. He served in the king's army in the civil wars, and was killed in an engagement by Harrison, who refused him quarter, and who was afterwards hanged at Charing Cross.

The patent of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, of which Mr. Hart and Major Mohun formed part of the company, having descended from Thomas to Charles Killigrew—

"In 1682 he joined it to Dr. Davenant's patent, whose company acted then in Dorset Garden, which, upon the union, were created the King's Company: after which Mr. Hart acted no more, having a pension to the day of his death from the United Company. I must not omit to mention the parts in several plays of some of the actors, wherein they excelled in the performance of them. First, Mr. Hart, in the part of Arbaces, in King and no King; Amintor, in the Maid's Tagedy; Othello; Rollo; Brutus, in Julius Cæsar; Alexander. Towards the latter end of his acting, if he {613}acted in any one of these but once in a fortnight, the house was filled as at a new play, especially Alexander; he acting that with such grandeur and agreeable majesty, that one of the Court was pleased to honour him with this commendation; that Hart might teach any king on earth how to comport himself."^[5]

In Rymer's Dissertation on Tragedy he is thus noticed:

"The eyes of the audience are prepossessed and charmed by his action, before aught of the poet can approach their ears; and to the most wretched of characters Hart gives a lustre which dazzles the sight, that the deformities of the poet cannot be perceived."

"He was no less inferior in Comedy; as Mosca, in the Fox; Don John, in the Chances; Wildblood, in the Mock Astrologer; with sundry other parts. In all the Comedies and Tragedies he was concerned, he perform'd with that exactness and perfection that not any of his successors have equall'd him."^[6]

It would seem that through Hart's "excellent action" alone Ben Jonson's Catiline (his own favourite play), which had been condemned on its first representation, was kept on the stage during the reign of Charles II. With Hart this play died.

Previous to Nell Gwyn's elevation to royal favour, it is said, upon the authority of Sir George Etherge, in Lives of the most celebrated Beauties, &c., 1715, she was "protected" by Lacy, and afterwards by Hart. Whether this be true or not, it is certain that she received instructions in the Thespian art from both of these gentlemen.

The cause of Hart retiring from the stage was in consequence of his being dreadfully afflicted with the stone and gravel, "of which he died sometime after, having a salary of forty shillings a week to the day of his death."

Hart's Christian name was Charles. He is believed by Malone to have been Shakspeare's great nephew.^[7]

Major Mohun remained in the "United Company" after Hart's retirement.

"He was eminent for Volpone; Face, in the Alchemist; Melantius, in the Maid's Tragedy; Mardonius, in King and no King; Cassius, in Julius Cæsar; Clytus, in Alexander; Mithridates, &c. An eminent poet^[8] seeing him act this last, vented suddenly this saying: 'Oh, Mohun, Mohun! thou little man of mettle, if I should write 100 plays, I'd write a part for thy mouth.' In short, in all his parts, he was most accurate and correct."^[9]

Rymer remarks:

"We may remember (however we find this scene of Melanthius and Amintor written in the book) that at the Theater we have a good scene acted; there is work cut out, and both our Æsopus and Roscius are on the stage together. Whatever defect may be in Amintor and Melanthius, Mr. Hart and Mr. Mohun are wanting in nothing. To these we owe what is pleasing in the scene; and to this scene we may impute the success of the 'Maid's Tragedy.'"

Major Mohun's Christian name was Michael.

W. H. Ln.

Berwick-on-Tweed.

BURIAL WITHOUT RELIGIOUS SERVICE—BURIAL.

(Vol. v., pp. 466. 549.)

There can be no doubt, I think, that a burial ground, whether parish churchyard or cemetery, so long as it has been consecrated, or even licensed by the bishop, is only legally useable for interments performed according to "the ecclesiastical laws of this realm;" i.e. the burial service, as rubrically directed, must be read by a clergyman over the corpse. Whether the bishop would have proceeded by law against the clergyman in Carlile's case, supposing he had desisted from the service under the protests of the sons, may be questioned; but that he could have done so is beyond a doubt. The sixty-eighth canon says, that "no minister shall refuse or delay to bury any corpse that is brought to the church or churchyard ... in such manner and form as is prescribed in the Book of Common Prayer. And if he shall refuse, &c., he shall be suspended by the bishop of the diocese from his ministry by the space of three months." The consecration, or episcopal licence, seems to tie the burial ground to the burial service, except in the three cases of persons who die excommunicated, unbaptised, or by their own hands; and I imagine that a clergyman would render himself liable to suspension by his bishop, who either allowed interments to take place in the churchyard without the burial service, or, on the other hand, used the service in unconsecrated or unlicensed ground. By the 3 Ja. I. c. 5., there is a penalty for burying a corpse away from the church; but this law is either repealed or obsolete. If any services of the church be used by a clergyman, except "according to order," I imagine that he renders himself liable to penal consequences; but it may be sometimes thought best to omit them. Sometimes, however, as in the case of baptisms being allowed in drawing-rooms, there is such an intentional oversight as is quite indefensible.

The story which I have heard of Baskerville's burial is as follows;—He died at Birmingham, but was not interred, and his corpse was kept in the house in which he had lived. After a time this house was sold, and the purchaser of it became embarrassed by the unexpected discovery that he was in possession of the old printer's mortal remains. He applied to the clergyman of {614}the parish for release from his difficulty; and this gentleman, being a man of the world, said that he was the last person who ought to have been consulted, but since it was so, the churchyard and the shades of evening afforded a remedy.

Perhaps it is worth adding, that when Sir W. Page Wood, the late Solicitor-General, would have brought a bill into parliament to relieve dissenters from the payment of church rates, on condition that they consented to forego all claim upon the services of the church, including of course the burial service, the bargain was declined by them.

Alfred Gatty.

"QUOD NON FECERUNT BARBARI," ETC.

(Vol. v., p. 559.)

Your correspondent Mr. Breen is mistaken in supposing this "epigram" to refer to the Barberini spoliation of the Coliseum; it was an equally important and more sacrilegious theft that aroused Pasquin's satire and indignation.

Urban VIII. (Matteo Barberini), 1623-44, had just stripped the dome of the Pantheon of the bronze that adorned it, to construct therewith the baldacchino over the high altar in St. Peter's. The amount of metal obtained, says Venuti, was upwards of 450,250 pounds weight; and upon the principle of robbing Peter to pay Paul, the material thus stolen from the Madonna was dedicated to the service of San Pietro. Bernini was the artist employed, from whose taste, perhaps, little better was to be expected; and the baldacchino, though highly ornamented, richly gilt, and of imposing dimensions, certainly makes the beholder regret that the metal was moved from its original position. It was costly enough too, upwards of 20,000l. having been expended upon its production.

Urban evidently had a practical turn for warfare by no means unusual to the possessors of the "holy see," for we find that the surplusage of the metal was cast into cannon for the defence of St. Angelo.

This pope certainly was one of the most unsparing despoilers of the Coliseum, inasmuch as the huge pile of the Palazzo Barbarini was erected by him with stone supplied solely from that convenient and inexpensive quarry. If, however, we reflect that he did but follow the example of many of his predecessors (Paul II. built the Palazzo di Venezia, and Paul III. the Farnese, from the same exhaustless supply), and that the Coliseum was not only much ruined by the "barbarians" during the various sieges of Rome, but was used as a fortress by the Frangipani in the Middle Ages, the pasquinade quoted by Mr. Breen would hardly have been applicable to Urban's misdeeds in that quarter. Nor was the Coliseum at that time consecrated ground, as it was not till the year 1750 that Benedict XIV., with a view to protect it from future depredation, dedicated it to the memory of the Christian martyrs who had perished in its arena. But the Pantheon, consecrated as early as A.D. 608, under the name of S. Maria Rotonda, had been respected and spared by all, whether Arian or barb-"arian;" and it was reserved for a "Santo Padre" of the seventeenth century to despoil a Christian Church, and himself set an example of sacrilege to the Christian world. Urban was the sole member of the Barberini family (of Florentine extraction) that ever attained the papal tiara. The amount of wealth stated to have been amassed by him during his pontificate appears almost fabulous.

The author of the pasquinade in question is, I believe, unknown.

A. P.

Bayswater.

RESTIVE.

(Vol. v., p. 535.)

I am inclined to think that your correspondents, however deeply they may be versed in "Folk-Lore," are generally not much acquainted with "Horse-Lore." Such, at least, is the opinion that is warranted by the extraordinary nature of the questions (not many in number, it is true) which have been put in relation to that subject, and of the replies that have been given to them. In the case now before us, J. R. has only superficially considered the matter. He takes one out of many definitions "in our dictionaries," and on that takes his stand. He is manifestly in error. The tempting facility of referring all words similar in appearance to the same etymon lies at the root of his mistake; for restive, as he will find on more patient investigation, is by our lexicographers (Richardson, for example) classed under a different root from rest, used to express quiescence, or repose. Restive, or more properly restiff, is equivalent to the French rétif, or Italian restio; and, as applied to horses, means those which resist the will of their rider. Hence, whether in standing stock still, in running away, in rearing, in plunging, or in kicking, they employ their natural means of defence against the control of the cavalier, and may equally be called restiff. In support of this view, take the following quotation, to which others might be added. It is from Grisone, Ordini di Cavalcare, 4to., 1550:

"Se il cavallo è restio, il più delle volte procede per colpa del Cavaliero, per una di questi ragioni. Overo il Cavallo è vile, e di poca forza, e essendo troppo molestato si abandona e avvilisce di sorte che accorando non vuole caminare avante; over è superbo, e gagliardo, e dandogli fatica, egli mancandogli un poco di lena, si prevalerà con salti, e con aggrupparsi, e con altre malignità, ò fara pur questo dal principio che si cavalca, di maniera che se allora conoscerà chi il Cavaliero lo teme, {615}prenderà tant' animo, che usando molte ribalderie, si fermerà contra la volontà sua; e di queste due Specie di Restii [which J. R. will be pleased to note], la peggior è quella che nasce da viltà, e da poca forza."—Folio 92, verso.

Thus much for the equestrian part of the subject. With regard to the use of the word restive by the author of the Eclipse of Faith, that is purely a matter of taste, which it is unnecessary here to discuss; but I hope that the foregoing opinion of one who in his day passed for the most accomplished horseman of Europe, will suffice to show that, in the passage quoted, the term is not so entirely misapplied as J. R. supposes.

F. S. Q.

MEN OF KENT AND KENTISH MEN.

(Vol. v., p. 321.)

In your answers to Minor Queries (Vol. v., p. 321.) I find it stated, that the inhabitants of the part of Kent lying between Rochester and London being invicti, have ever since (the Norman Conquest) been designated as Men of Kent; while those to the eastward, through whose district the Conqueror marched unopposed, are only "Kentish Men."

As I have always understood that the contrary is the case, and that the inhabitants of East Kent are called "Men of Kent," and those in West Kent, "Kentish Men"—because in East Kent the people are less intermixed with strangers than in West Kent, from its proximity to the metropolis—I was desirous of correcting what appeared to me to be a manifest error: but not finding any direct authority on the point, I consulted my friend Charles Sandys, Esq., of Canterbury, as a Kentish antiquary, on the subject. And I now send you a letter from that gentleman, which you are at liberty to print.

Geo. R. Corner.

Eltham.

"'MEN OF KENT,' AND 'KENTISH MEN.'

"I am not aware that any professed treatise has been written or published upon our provincial distinction of 'Men of Kent' and 'Kentish Men.' That some such traditionary distinction, however, (whatever it may be) has existed from time immemorial in our county, cannot be disputed, and I think it has an undoubted and unquestionable historic origin, which I will endeavour briefly to illustrate.

"The West Kent Men, according to the tradition, are styled 'Kentish Men;' whilst those of East Kent are more emphatically denominated 'Men of Kent.'

"And now for my historical authorities:—

"That the East Kent people were denominated from ancient time 'Men of Kent,' may, I think, be inferred from the ancient Saxon name of its metropolis, [Canterbury], literally, 'The City of the Men of Kent;' the royal city and seat of government of King Ethelbert at the time of the arrival of St. Augustine (A.D. 597) to convert our idolatrous Saxon ancestors from the worship of Woden and his kindred deities to that of the Saviour of the world.

"St. Augustine, having succeeded in his holy mission, and having been consecrated Archbishop of the Saxons and Angles in Britain, fixed his metropolitical see in the royal city of Canterbury, which had been granted to him by King Ethelbert on his conversion (who thereupon retired to his royal fortress, or Castrum, of Regulbium, Reculver). And in that city it has ever since continued for a period of more than twelve centuries.

"The conversion of the Pagan inhabitants of Kent proceeded so rapidly that St. Augustine, with the assistance of King Ethelbert, soon founded another episcopal see at Rochester, and thus divided the Kentish kingdom into two dioceses: the eastern, or diocese of Canterbury; the western, or diocese of Rochester. And thus, I conceive, originated the divisions of East and West Kent: the men of the former retaining their ancient name of 'Men of Kent;' whilst those of the latter adopted that of 'Kentish Men.'

"The Saxon (or Jutish) kingdom of Kent continued a separate and independent kingdom of the Octarchy from the time of Hengist (A.D. 455) until its subjugation by Offa, King of Mercia, in the eighth century, to which it continued tributary until King Egbert reduced all the kingdoms of the Octarchy under his dominion, at the commencement of the ninth century,—and thus became the first King of all England.

"That Kent was separated at an early period into the two divisions of East and West Kent, may be inferred from a charter (Kemble, Cod. Dipl. ii. 19.) relating to some property withheld from the church of Canterbury, and which is specially described as having been that "of Oswulf, duke and prince of the province of East Kent" ('dux atque princeps provinciæ Orientalis Cantiæ') c. A.D. 844.

"The Saxon Chronicle also confirms this view of the matter, thus:

A.D. 853. "Ealhere with the 'Men of Kent' fought in Thanet against the heathen army (Danes)."—Thanet is in East Kent.

A.D. 865. "The heathen army sate down in Thanet, and made peace with the 'Men of Kent.' And the 'Men of Kent' promised them money for the peace."

A.D. 902. ... "Battle at the Holmes, between the 'Kentish Men' and the 'Danish Men.'—This, I take it, occurred in West Kent.

A.D. 999. "The army (Danes) went up along the Medway to Rochester, and then the 'Kentish forces' stoutly joined battle ... and full nigh {616}all the 'West Kentish men' they ruined and plundered."

A.D. 1009. "Then came the vast hostile army (Danes) to Sandwich, and they soon went their way to Canterbury; and all the people of 'East Kent' made peace with the army, and gave them 3000 pounds."

"Thus, I trust, I have satisfactorily shown from our ancient annals, that the distinction between 'Kentish Men' and 'Men of Kent,' existed at a period long anterior to the Norman Conquest, and is distinctly recognised in the foregoing historical passages. And its origin may, I think, be attributed to the ancient division of the Jutish kingdom of Kent into the two dioceses of Canterbury and Rochester.

"Our Gavelkind Tenure and free Kentish customs, of which I have attempted a history in my recently published Consuetudines Kanciæ, gave rise to our well-known old provincial song of 'The Man of Kent,' its burthen being:

Charles Sandys, F.S.A.

Canterbury.

Replies to Minor Queries.

Speculum Christianorum, &c. (Vol. v., p. 558.).—In case no fuller information should be forthcoming on this tract, allow me to refer Mr. Simpson to Ames's Typographical Dictionary, p. 113., where is an account of what is apparently another edition of the above, printed by William Machlinia, or Macklyn, about the year 1480. The title runs thus: Incipit liber qui vocatur Speculum Xpristiani. It is a short exposition of the common topics of divinity of that time, for the most part in Latin, but there is some English which is chiefly in rhyme. The first English lines are—

At the end, after—

"Explicit liber qui vocatur speculū Xprīani, Sequitur exposicio oracionis dominice cū quodam bono notabili et septē capitalia vicia cū aliquibus ramis eorū."

Afterwards—

"Sequuntur monita de verbis beati Ysidori extracta ad instruendū hominē qualiter vicia valeat euitare et in bonis se debeat informare."

The whole concludes with this colophon:

"Jste Libellus impressus est ī opulentissima Ciuitate Londoniarum per me Willelmum de Machlinia ad instanciam necnon expensas Henrici Vrankenbergh mercatoris."

The author is said to be John Watton in the Catalogue of MSS. in England and Ireland, C.C.C., Oxon. n. clv. p. 53.

J. Eastwood.

Smyth's MSS. relating to Gloucestershire (Vol. v., p. 512.).—A querist writes to know where any of these may be seen.

The original manuscript (three vols. folio) was given to the library of the College of Arms, through the hands of Sir Charles Young, by the Rev. R. W. Huntley of Boxwell Court, about 1835, who became possessed of it by a legacy from a descendant of Mr. Smyth. There is another copy in the "Evidence Room," at Berkeley Castle; and another in the library of Smyth Owen, Esq., a descendant from the author, at Condover Hall, Shropshire. There is another copy in the possession of the Hon. Robert Berkeley at Spetchley Park, Worcestershire. And an imperfect copy was sold at the sale at Hill Court, Gloucester, in 1846. It was bought by a bookseller for Mr. Pigott of Brockley; it was resold in 1849, but to whom I could never find out. This last is also in three vols.; two of these match in the binding, but the third does not: the leather of this odd vol. is thickly studded with the portcullis. The imperfection of this set consists in being unfinished in many parts. Mr. Huntley's is considered the first copy of that at the castle; and that at Condover was probably Mr. Smyth's own. The Hill Court copy seems to be about the same date.

The Abstracts and Extracts of these MSS. as published by Fosbroke in 1821, are but a tantalising meagre sample of the very rich store of genealogical and historical information which the originals contain.

H. T. Ellacombe.

Clyst St. George, Devon.

M. Barrière and the Quarterly Review (Vol. v., pp. 347. 402.).—As I see that J. R. (of Cork) has resumed his correspondence with "N. & Q.," I beg leave to call his attention to his statement, and to my inquiry under the above references: any one or two instances of what is stated to be "so frequent" a practice will suffice.

C.

"I do not know what the truth may be" (Vol. v., p. 560.).—The lines run thus in the Lay of the Last Minstrel, Canto II. 22.:

J. Eastwood.

Optical Phenomena (Vol. v., p. 441.).—You have not yet published any satisfactory reply to the optical Query of N. B., at p. 441. of the present volume. I apprehend there is not much difficulty in finding the solution. I attribute the phenomenon to the refraction of light through a stratum of air that is more dense than the surrounding air. Every solid is coated by such a stratum. This is the well-known fact of adhesion {617}alluded to by Liebig, in his Letters on Chemistry, 1st series [2nd edit. by Gardner, p. 16.]

C. Mansfield Ingleby.

Stoup (Vol. v., p. 560.).—In answer to the inquiry of Cuthbert Bede, I beg to inform him that an exterior stoup, in excellent preservation, is to be found on the outer wall of the south porch of Hungerton Church, Leicestershire. The inquiry confirms the belief I have always entertained, that examples of exterior stoups are rarely met with in the ecclesiastic architecture of England.

Kt.

Aylestone.

Seventh Son of a Seventh Son (Vol. v., p. 532.).—The note which appears in p. 532. has induced me to look out a rare old printed copy of "The Quack Doctor's Speech," which is in my possession, and which was spoken by the witty Lord Rochester, in character, and mounted on a stage; it is altogether a very humorous and lengthy address, partaking of the licence of language not uncommon to the courtiers of that period, abounding in much technical phraseology, and therefore unsuited for an introduction into your pages in extenso. The titles assumed, however, are in character with the pretensions claimed by virtue of being the seventh begotten son of a seventh begotten father; and may perhaps prove an interesting addition to the collection of instances recorded by your correspondent Henry Edwards:

"Gentlemen,

"I, Waltho Van Clauterbauck, High German Doctor, Chymist and Dentrificator—Native of Arabia Deserta, Citizen and Burgomaster of the City of Brandipolis—Seventh son of a Seventh son, unborn Doctor of above sixty years' experience, having studied over Galen, Hypocrates, Albumazer, and Paracelsus, am now become the Æsculapius of this age. Having been educated at twelve Universities, and travelled through fifty-two Kingdoms, and been Counsellor to the Counsellors of several grand Monarchs, natural son of the wonder working chymical Doctor Signior Hanesio, lately arrived from the farthest parts of Utopia, famous throughout all Asia, Europe, Africa, and America, from the Sun's oriental exaltation to his occidental declination, out of mere pity to my own dear self and languishing mortals, have by the earnest prayers and entreaties of several Lords, Dukes, and honourable Personages been at last prevailed upon to oblige the World with this Notice, &c. &c.

"Veniente occurrite morbo—Down with your dust.

Principiis obsta—No cure no money.

Querenda Pecunia Premium—Be not sick too late.

"You that are willing to render yourselves immortal, Buy this pacquet, or else repair to the sign of the Pranceis, in Vico vulgo dicto Ratcliffero, something south-east of Templum Dancicum, in the Square of Profound Close, not far from Titter Tatter Fair; and you may hear, see, and return Re-infecta."

Kt.

Aylestone.

At my father's school was a Yorkshire lad, who was to be educated classically, because he was intended for the medical profession. The cause assigned was, that "he was the seventh son of a seventh son;" and the seventh son of a seventh son "maks the bigg'st o' doctors."

C. C. C.

The Number Seven (Vol. v., p. 533.).—Mr. Henry Edwards is quite right in his conjecture that the number seven, so often used in the Old and New Testament, is generally put to mean "several," "many," or an indefinite number. Hence the number seven was esteemed a sacred, symbolical, and mystical number. There were seven gifts of the Holy Ghost, seven days in the week, seven sacraments, seven branches on the candlestick of Moses, seven liberal arts, seven churches of Asia, seven mysterious seals, seven stars, seven symbolic trumpets, seven heads of the dragon, seven joys and seven sorrows of the blessed Virgin, seven penitential psalms, seven deadly sins, seven canonical hours, &c. &c.

"Septenarius numerus est numerus universitatis," says J. de Voragine. See also, Bede, Duranti, and Rhabanus Maurus, on the mystical explanation of this number. A curious French MS. belonging to the latter part of the thirteenth century has a singular illustration of the number seven. It is a miniature: a wheel cut into seven rays, and composed of seven concentric cordons. The rays form seven compartments, divided into as many cordons, containing in each cordon one of the seven petitions of the Lord's Prayer, one of the seven sacraments, one of the seven spiritual arms of justice, one of the seven works of mercy, one of the seven virtues, one of the seven deadly sins, and one of the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost.

Ceyrep.

Commentators (Vol. v., pp. 512. 570.).—The original verses are Young's:—

L. X. R.

Banning or Bayning Family (Vol. v., p. 536.).—This surname is traced in Ireland on record from the time of Richard II., while the native annalists represent it with that Milesian prefix which old Alvary so ingraciously attaints—"O datur ambiguis." These annalists mark Patrick "O'Bainan" Bishop of Connor in 1152, and Gelasius "O'Banan" Bishop of Clogher in 1316. The records that I have alluded to spell the name "Bannyn," or "Banent." In 1620 Creconnaght "Bannan" was seised of lands in Ulster; and in the army raised for the service of King James, while in this country in 1689, William Bannan was a quartermaster in Colonel Nicholas Purcel's regiment of {618}horse. I have reason myself to know that two families of "Banon" still exist here.

John D'Alton.

Dublin.

Tortoiseshell Tom Cat (Vol. v., p. 465.).—I always thought the tortoiseshell tom cat was an animal of very rare occurrence; but I was not aware, until I read the Note of your correspondent W. R., that it was unknown in natural history. The late (and highly respected) Mr. John Bannister, familiarly called "Jack Bannister," wrote, more than forty years ago, a humorous and witty jeu d'esprit on this subject: this was composed for his "Budget," a species of entertainment from which the late Mr. Matthews took the idea of his "At Home;" an entertainment exhibiting a most extraordinary range of talent, and must be fresh in the memory of most of your readers. It supposes the auctioneer, "Mr. Catseye," in the Great Room in "Cateaton Street," and opens thus:

Having, humorously described the company assembled, and enlarged on the "beauty and rarity" of the animal, it thus concludes:

M. W. B.

A Tombstone cut by Baskerville (Vol. v., p. 209.).—A correspondent complains that on visiting Edgbaston Church he was unable to obtain a sight of the tombstone, which he much wished to see. Since I read his Note, I have met with the following, which I copy from Pye's Modern Birmingham, 1819. After speaking of a monument in Handsworth Church, Birmingham, to the late Matthew Boulton, the writer proceeds:

"The other is a humble tombstone, remarkable as being one of the last works cut by his own hand, with his name at the top of it, of that celebrated typographer, Baskerville; but this, being neglected by the relations of the deceased, has been mutilated, although the inscription is still perfect, but so much overgrown with moss and weeds, that it requires more discrimination than falls to the lot of many passing travellers, to discover the situation of this neglected gem. To those who are curious it will be found close to the wall, immediately under the chancel window. This precious relic of that eminent man is deserving of being removed at the expense of the parish, and preserved with the greatest care, withinside the church.... There is only one other of his cuttings known to be in existence, and that has lately been removed and placed withinside the church at Edgbaston—"

Which is subsequently thus described:

"There was in this churchyard a gravestone cut by the hands of the celebrated typographer Baskerville, which is now removed and placed withinside the church. The stone being of a flaky nature, the inscription is not quite perfect, but whoever takes delight in well-formed letters, may here be highly gratified; it was erected to the memory of Edw. Richards, an idiot, who died 21st September, 1728, with the following inscription:—

'If innocents are the favourites of heaven,

And God but little asks where little's given,

My great Creator has for me in store

Eternal joys; what wise man can have more?'"

I am sorry I cannot just now give any further information, but hope this Note will be new to some of your readers, and interesting to all.

Este.

Shakspeare, Tennyson, &c. (Vol. v., p. 492.).—The editorial note has supplied the Latin parallel, but not "the origin and reason of the idea." This Koenig's note to Persius (I. 40.) will do:

"Nascentur violæ; Hoc inde videtur natum esse quod veteres tumulos mortuorum sparsis floribus et corollis solebant ornate; pertinebat hoc ad religionem manium, qui, ut putabatur, libationibus annuis, coronis, floribus, cet. delectabantur."

This is the first step. Further:

"Beatissima mortui conditio, cui vel natura ipsa inferias agat, floribus in tumulo sponte nascentibus, videtur indicari."

Lastly:

"Videtur quoque privata nonnullorum opinio fuisse, cinerem in flores mutari, idque contingere non nisi probis ac pulchris (Anthol. Lat.); ex fabulis heroum in flores post mortem mutatorum fortasse nata."

This last, and deepest thought, is that seized on by Shakspeare and Tennyson. Koenig gives many parallels.

A. A. D.

Rhymes on Places (Vol. v., pp. 293. 374. 500. 547.).—The following rhymes (if so they can be termed) respecting the exploits of a certain giant named Bell, and his wonderful sorrel horse, whose leaps were each a mile long, are, or were a few {619}years since, prevalent in this neighbourhood among the inhabitants of the villages therein mentioned. The legend has been noticed by Peck:

Leicestriensis.

The following I had years ago from a Buckinghamshire gentleman:

J. Eastwood.

Birthplace of Josephine (Vol. v., p. 220.).—Mr. Breen's able and interesting Note seems to establish beyond dispute that Josephine was born in St. Lucia, and not, as is commonly supposed, in Martinique.

But can Mr. Breen, or any other of your correspondents, speak to this still more curious Query, whether or no she had African blood in her veins? I heard it confidently asserted lately by a gentleman of high standing on this island, who has business relations with Martinique, that such was the case, and that either the grandmother or great-grandmother of the Empress was a negress slave. He had the fact, he said, on good local authority, and appeared satisfied in his own mind of the truth of the statement. The sudden and surprising elevation of her grandson gives some interest to the inquiry.

A. Ker.

Antigua.

The Curse of Scotland (Vol. i., pp. 61. 90.; Vol. iii., pp. 22. 253. 423. 483.).—

"There is a common expression made use of at cards, which I have never heard any explanation of; I mean the nine of diamonds being commonly called the Curse of Scotland.

"Looking lately over a book of heraldry I found nine diamonds, or lozenges, conjoined, or, in the heraldic language, Gules, a cross of lozenges, to be the arms of Packer.

"Colonel Packer appears to have been one of the persons who was on the scaffold when Charles the First was beheaded, and afterwards commanded in Scotland, and is recorded to have acted in his command with considerable severity. It is possible that his arms might, by a very easy metonymy, be called the Curse of Scotland; and the nine of diamonds, at cards, being very similar in figure to them, might have ever since retained the appellation."—Gent. Mag., vol. lvi. p. 301.

"I cannot tell whence he learns that Colonel Packer was on the scaffold when King Charles was beheaded."—Ibid., p. 390.

"When the Duke of York (a little before his succession to the crown) came to Scotland, he and his suite introduced a new game, there called Comet, where the ninth of diamonds is an important card. The Scots who were to learn the game, felt it to their cost: and from that circumstance the ninth of diamonds was nicknamed the Curse of Scotland."—Ibid., p. 538.

"The nine of diamonds is called the Curse of Scotland because it is the great winning card at Comette, which was a game introduced into Scotland by the French attendants of Mary of Lorraine, queen of James V., to the ruin of many Scotch families."—Ibid., p. 968.

The explanation supplied by the game of Pope Joan is doubtless the correct one.

Goodluck.

Waller Family (Vol. v., p. 586.).—Francis Waller, of Amersham, Bucks, grandfather of Edmund Waller the poet, by his will, dated 13th of January, 1548-49, entails his mansion house in Beaconsfield, and other estates in Bucks, Herts, &c., on the child of which his wife Anne is "now pregnant," with remainders to his two brothers, Thomas and Edmund, in tail, with divers remainders over, to Francis Waller, son of his brother Ralph Waller, and the heirs of his "sister Pope" and his sister Davys. The lady in question was of the Beaconsfield branch of the Wallers, and great aunt to the poet. (From the family muniments.)

Lambert H. Larking.

"After me the Deluge" (Vol. iii., pp. 299. 397.).—The modern, whoever he may be, can only lay claim to reviving this proverb of selfishness, which was branded by Cicero long ago:

"Illa vox inhumana et scelerata ducitur, eorum, qui negant se recusare, quò minùs, ipsis mortuis, terrarum omnium deflagratio consequatur, quod vulgari quodam versu Græco [Ἐμοῦ Θανόντος γαῖα μιχθήτω πυρί] pronuntiari solet."

This passage occurs in his treatise De Finibus, III. xix., vol. xiv. p. 341. Valpy's edition, 1830.

Mackenzie Walcott, M.A.

Sun-Dial Motto (Vol. v., p. 499.).—Y. is informed that Hazlitt, in his Sketches and Essays, has an essay on a sun-dial, beginning with these words:

"Horas non numero nisi serenas, is the motto of a sun-dial near Venice."

In La Gnomonique Pratique of François de Celles, 8vo., there is pretty long list of Latin mottos for sun-dials, but I do not find the above amongst them. It scarcely reads like a classical quotation.

Robert Snow.

Lines by Lord Palmerston (Vol. i., p. 382.; Vol. ii., p. 30. Vol. iii., p. 28.).—In Vol. i., p. 328., Indagator inquired whether there was any {620}authority for attributing to the late Lord Palmerston the beautiful lines on the loss of his lady, beginning,—

Indagator says they have been supposed to be Hawksworth's and S. S. S. (Vol. ii., p. 30.) that they have been also attributed to Mason. I can state, from the best authority, that they are Lord Palmerston's. My authority needs no extrinsic confirmation, but I may as well observe that Indagator has himself sufficiently disposed of Hawksworth's claim, as his wife was still alive when the lines appeared; and the conjecture of S. S. S. is obviously a confusion of Lord Palmerston's lines with those of Mason's (whose wife died at Bristol), beginning—

But another of your correspondents, A. B. (Vol. iii., p. 28.), or your printer, has made a mistake on this point which I cannot account for. A. B. says that he inquired after the author of the lines beginning—

and this statement is headed with a reference to Indagator's inquiry about Lord Palmerston, to which it had no reference whatsoever. I do not remember to have seen A. B.'s inquiry, but it assuredly has nothing to do with Indagator's which I have now set at rest.

C.

Indian Jugglers (Vol. iv., p. 472.).—In looking over some former Numbers I find an inquiry under this head. N. will find a full account of some of these wonderful and apparently inexplicable performances in the Dublin University Magazine. I have not a set to refer to, but the papers appeared about three or four years ago.

Este.

Sons of the Conqueror (Vol. v., pp. 512. 570.).—I believe after all that Sir N. Wraxall is right. According to the old chroniclers, three members of the Conqueror's family met their death in the New Forest.

1. Richard, his second son, is said to have been killed by a stag in the New Forest when hunting, and to have been buried at Winchester in the choir of the cathedral there.

2. Henry, youngest son of Robert, Duke of Normandy, and grandson of the Conqueror, was accidentally slain in the New Forest.

3. William Rufus, third son of the Conqueror, fell in a similar way and in the same place.

J. R. W.

Bristol.

Saint Wilfred's Needle (Vol. v., pp. 510. 573.).—A very interesting account of this curious crypt beneath the central tower of Ripon Cathedral will be found in a pamphlet published twelve years ago, entitled "Sepulchri a Romanis Constructi infra Ecclesiam S. Wilfridi in civitate Reponensi Descriptio Auctore Gul. D. Bruce. London 1841." A copy is in the library of the Society of Antiquaries, and another in the British Museum.

D. W.

Frebord (Vol. v., p. 440.).—It may possibly assist the inquiries of your correspondents Spes and P. M. M. to be informed that the right of Frebord belongs to many estates in the midland counties. In some instances in Leicestershire the claim extends from the boundary hedge of one lordship to the extent of twenty-one feet over the land of the adjoining lordship; it is here understood to represent a deer's leap, and is said to have been given with the original grant of the manor, in order to secure to the lord a right to take the deer he happened to shoot when in the act of leaping from his domain into his neighbour's manor.

Kt.

Aylestone.

Royd (Vol. v., p. 571.).—The meaning of this word may be further illustrated by reference to Swiss etymology and history. The great battle of Naefels (April 9, 1388) is celebrated on the first Thursday of every April, on the spot where the fiercest part of the struggle took place. Mount Ruti, the meadow where the liberators of Switzerland met, on the lake of the Four Cantons, and opposite Brunner, is called the Rutli: both words being derived from a common root of common use in the formation of names in German Switzerland, Ruten-defricher, "to clear;" or, Ruthen, "to measure, gauge;" in short, "prepare for clearing;" whence, perhaps, our Ruthyn and Rutland.

H. P. S.

Spy Wednesday (Vol. v., p. 511.).—Your correspondent Mr. Chadwick is informed that the Wednesday in Holy Week, i. e. the Wednesday before Easter Sunday, is called Spy Wednesday. The term has its origin in the fact, that Judas made his compact with the Sanhedrim upon that day for the betrayal of our Blessed Saviour. See Matthew, xxvi. 3, 4, 5. 14, 15, and 16.

Ceyrep.

Book of Jasher (Vol. v., pp. 415. 476. 524.).—Hartwell Horne, in his Introduction (vol. ii. part ii. pp. 132-138. ed. 1839), has with much diligence exposed both Ilive's original forgery (1751) and the "unacknowledged reprint" (1829). He adds:

"There is also extant a Rabbinical Hebrew Book of Jasher printed at Venice in 1625, which is an explanation of the histories contained in the Pentateuch and Joshua. Barlocci, in his Biblioth. Rabbinica, states that it contains some curious but many fabulous things; and particularly that this book was discovered at the time of the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in a certain place, in which an old man was shut up, in whose possession a great number of Hebrew books were found, and among them the Book of Jasher; which was first carried into Spain, and preserved at Seville, whence finally it was taken to Naples, where it was first published."—Vol. iii p. 934.

{621}

Is this the work published at New York in 1840? I suppose so: at least, if "Prof. Noah" has been reproducing the Bristol Book of Jasher (1829), he can claim but little of the justice and perfectness of his great namesake.

A. A. D.

Stearne's (not Hearne's) Confirmation and Discovery of Witchcraft (Vol. v., p. 416.).—Of this tract, inquired after by Mr. Clarke, and which is certainly one of the most extraordinary of all the treatises on Witchcraft, the only copy I ever saw is the one I possess, and which I have fully described in the notes to Pott's Discovery of Witches, printed for the Chetham Society, p. 4. The Rev. Author was no theorist, but a thoroughly practical man; having been an agent in finding and bringing to justice 200 witches in the eastern counties. He has the subject so perfectly at his fingers' ends, and discusses it so scientifically, that Hopkins sinks into insignificance by the side of him. Pity it is that such a philanthropic individual should have had occasion to complain: "In many places I never received penny as yet, nor any am like, except that I should sue!!"

Jas. Crossley.

Lines on Chaucer (Vol. v., p. 586.).—The lines should be quoted:—

They are taken from Hymn cxxiii. of Hymns and Anthems, London, C. Fox, 1841.

Γ.

Fairlop Oak (Vol. v., pp. 114. 471.).—Your correspondents J. B. Colman and Shirley Hibberd will find much information relative to this oak and the fair in a work with the following title:

"Fairlop and its Founder, or Facts and Fun for the Forest Frolickers. By a famed first Friday Fairgoer; contains Memoirs, Anecdotes, Poems, Songs, &c., with the curious Will of Mr. Day, never before printed. A very limited number printed. Tobham, Printed at Charles Clark's Private Press. Fairlop's Friday, 1847."

J. Russell Smith, 30. Soho Square, had several copies on sale some time back.

S. Wiswould.

Boy Bishop at Eton (Vol. v., p. 557.).—The festival of St. Hugh, Bishop (Pontificis) of Lincoln, was kept on November 17.

For "Nihilensis," in the "Consuetudinarium Etonense," should be read "Nicolatensis," as it stands in a Compatus of Winchester College, of the date 1461: the Boy Bishop assuming his title on St. Nicholas' Day, Dec. 6, and then performing his parody of Divine Offices for the first time; St. Nicholas of Myra being, according to the legend, the patron of children.

It is singular that, whereas, as in other foundations, the Feast of the Holy Innocents was appointed for the mummeries of the Boy Bishop at Winchester by the founder, it was forbidden at Eton and King's, although the statutes of the latter were borrowed almost literally from those of Wykeham. It would therefore appear that there was some local reason for the exception.

Mackenzie Walcott, M.A.

Plague Stones—Mr. Mompesson (Vol. v., p. 571.).—I should be sorry that anything inaccurate was recorded in "N. & Q." respecting so eminently worthy a person as the Rev. William Mompesson, Rector of Eyam during the time that it was scourged by the plague in 1666, when, out of a population of only 330, 259 died of the disorder. Mr. M. himself did not fall a victim, as J. G. C. states; but his wife did, and her tomb remains to this day. He was, indeed, an ornament to his sacred profession. He not only stood by his flock in the hour of their visitation, but he obtained such an influence during the panic that they entirely deferred to his judgment, and remained, as he advised, within the village. He preached to them on Sundays in the open air from a sort of natural pulpit in the rock, now called Cucklet Church; and he established the water troughs, or plague stones, into which the people dropped their money, in payment for the victuals that were brought to them from the surrounding country. When in reward for his devotedness the Deanery of Lincoln was offered him, he generously declined it in favour of his friend Dr. Fuller, author of the Worthies of England, who thus obtained the appointment. Mr. Mompesson was subsequently presented to the living of Eakring in Notts, where he died in 1708.

There has recently been discovered on the moor near Fullwood, by Sheffield, a chalybeate spring, which flows into a small covered recess formed of ashlar stone, and this stands just as it did when the wretched inhabitants of Eyam, believing the water to have sanatory virtues, came to drink of it, until a watch was placed on the spot by the Sheffield people, and they were driven back to their infected homes.

Alfred Gatty.

Raleigh's Ring (Vol. v., p. 538.).—Sir Walter Raleigh's ring, which he wore at the time of his execution, is, I believe, in the possession of Capt. Edward James Blanckley, of the 6th Foot, now serving at the Cape of Good Hope. It is an heirloom in the Blanckley family, of which Captain Blanckley is the senior representative, who are directly descended from Sir Walter, and have in their possession several interesting relics of their great ancestor, viz. a curious tea-pot, and a state paper box of iron gilt and red velvet.

A Descendant of Sir Walter's.

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Pandecte, an entire Copy of the Bible (Vol. v., p. 557.).—Your correspondent C. H. has noticed this word; I send you a short account of the Irish MSS. in the Bodleian Library, which I laid some time ago before the Royal Irish Academy, and which is printed in their Proceedings, vol. v. p. 162. I have there noticed a curious work by Oengus Cele De, or Oengus the Culdee, a writer of the eighth century, in which the word Pandecte (or, as the Irish scribe spells it, Pantecte) is used in the same sense as that in which Alcuin employs it, for the Bibliotheca, or Bible of St. Jerome.

I have marked the passage, pp. 9, 10. of the enclosed paper, which if you think it worth while you may insert. But perhaps it may be enough to refer your readers to the above-mentioned volume of the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy.

Jas. H. Todd.

Trin. Coll. Dublin.

Miscellaneous.

NOTES ON BOOKS, ETC.

If among the writers of the present day there is one whose opinion with regard to Robin Hood and the cycle of ballads of which that renowned outlaw is the hero would be looked for with anxiety and received with respect, it is the Rev. Joseph Hunter, a gentleman in whom are happily combined that thorough historical and antiquarian knowledge, and that sound poetic taste which are required to do justice to so interesting a theme. The announcement, therefore, that the fourth of Mr. Hunter's Critical and Historical Tracts is entitled The Great Hero of the Ancient Minstrelsy of England, Robin Hood. His Period, real Character, &c., investigated, and perhaps ascertained, will be received with welcome by all who rejoice "that the world was very guilty of such ballads some three ages since," and who, loving them and their hero, would fain know something of the history on which they are founded. Mr. Hunter dissents, and we think rightly, from two popular and recent theories upon the subject,—the one, that which elevates Robin Hood into the chief of a small body of Saxons impatient of their subjection to the Norman rule; the other, that which reduces him to one among the "personages of the early mythology of the Teutonic people." Mr. Hunter, on the other hand, identifies him with one "Robyn Hood" who entered the service of Edward II. a little before Christmas 1323, and continued therein somewhat less than a twelvemonth:

and the evidence which he adduces in favour of our popular hero having been one of the Contrariantes of the reign of the Second Edward; and the coincidences which he points out between the minstrel testimony of the Little Geste and the testimony of records of different kinds and lying in different places, will, we are sure, be read with great interest even by those who may not think that our author has quite succeeded in unmasking the "Junius" of those olden times.

Richmondshire, its Ancient Lords and Edifices: a Concise Guide to the Localities of Interest to the Tourist and Antiquary; with short Notes of Memorable Men, by W. Hylton Longstaffe, is a pleasant, chatty, and amusing guide to a beautiful locality, which the author describes as "the capital of a land whose riches of romance are scarcely exceeded by any other in England, the chosen seat of its own Earls, the Scropes, Fitzhughs, Marmions; and those setters up and pullers down of kings, the richest, noblest, and most prudent race of the North, the lordly Nevilles:" and which as such may well tempt the tourist and antiquary to visit it during the coming autumn. Those who do will find Mr. Longstaffe's little volume a pleasant companion.

Books Received.—The second volume of Charlotte A. Eaton's Rome in the Nineteenth Century, containing, a Complete Account of the Ruins of the Ancient City, the Remains of the Middle Ages, and the Monuments of Modern Times, which completes this lady's excellent guide to the Eternal City.—The second volume of Miss Thomasina Ross's well-executed translation of Humboldt's Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America during the Years 1799-1804, is the new volume of Bohn's Scientific Library.—The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature; to which are added Two Brief Dissertations; on Personal Identity, and on the Nature of Virtue; and Fifteen Sermons, by Joseph Butler, D.C.L., late Lord Bishop of Durham.—The new volume of Bohn's Standard Library is deserving of especial mention. It is a reprint of Bishop Halifax's Standard Edition, with the addition of Analytical Introductions, and Notes by a Member of the University of Oxford; and we have no doubt will be found a really useful popular edition, such as may allure to the careful study of one of the best works in our language those minds which, without such help, might shrink from the task.

BOOKS AND ODD VOLUMES

WANTED TO PURCHASE.

Mahon's England, 4 Vols.

Scott's Lady of the Lake.

—— Lay of the Last Minstrel.

—— Marmion.

The original 4to. editions in boards.

Flanagan on the Round Towers of Ireland. 4to. 1843.

A Narrative of the Proceedings in the Douglas Cause. London, Griffin. 8vo. 1767.

Clare's Poems. Fcap. 8vo. Last edition.

Mallet's Elvira.

Magna Charta; a Sermon at the Funeral of Lady Farewell, by George Newton. London, 1661.

Chaucer's Poems. Vol. I. Aldine Edition.

Biblia Sacra, Vulg. Edit., cum Commentar. Menochii. Alost and Ghent, 1826. Vol. I.

Barante, Ducs de Bourgogne. Vols. I. and II. 1st, 2nd, or 3rd Edit. Paris. Ladvocat, 1825.

Biographia Americana, by a Gentleman of Philadelphia.

Potgieseri de Conditione Servorum apud Germanos. 8vo. Col. Agrip.

The Comedies of Shadwell may be had on application to the Publisher of "N. & Q."

^*_*^* Letters, stating particulars and lowest price, carriage free, to be sent to Mr. Bell, Publisher of "NOTES AND QUERIES," 186. Fleet Street.

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Notices to Correspondents.

Replies Received.—Optical Phenomenon—The Number Seven—Exterior Stoup (several)—Etymology of Fetch and Haberdasher—Passage in "As You Like It"—The Name Charing—Etymology of Camarthen—Venit ad Euphratem—Mexican Literature—Surname of Devil—Family Likenesses, &c.—Toad Eater—Lines on the Crawford Family—Algernon Sydney—Monody on Death of Sir John Moore—Flanagan on the Round Towers—Use of Slings by Early Britons—Giving the Sack—How the ancient Irish crowned their Kings—Papal Seal—Plague Stones—Wicliffe, &c.—Mother Carey's Chickens—Cranes in Storms—Unicorns, &c.

J. Smyth (Dublin). The line referred to—

is from Prior's Henry and Emma. See, for further illustration of it, "N. & Q.," No. 69., p. 154.

L. H. I. T. will find much illustration of the oft-quoted passage from Sterne, "God tempers the wind," in our 1st Vol., pp. 211. 236. 325. 357. 418.

W. Cl.'s Query respecting a remarkable experiment in our next.

Lines on English History. We have forwarded to An English Mother one of the copies so kindly sent by E. C. One we retain for our own use. The lines forwarded by Sewarg are very generally known: not so those inquired by Mæris, beginning

and of which we should be very glad to receive a copy.

B. B. We shall be very glad to see the Iter to which our Correspondent refers.

H. P. S., who inquires for the author of

is referred to our 1st Vol., pp. 234. 419.

S. S. S. Richard II. inherited the White Hart as a badge from his mother Joan, the Fair Maid of Kent. The Red Rose was the badge of Henry IV.

Sirnames. We have forwarded the curious list sent us by A.C.M., and the Notes by Miss Bockett and E. H. A., to Mr. Lower.

Errata.—Page 477. col. 1. l. 43. and 46. for "Marconcies," read "Marcoucies;" l. 51., for "Montagn" read "Montagu;" col. 2 l. 1., for "Roberti" read "Roberto."

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A MANUAL OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY, from the First to the Twelfth Century inclusive. By the Rev. E. S. FOULKES, M.A., fellow and Tutor of Jesus College, Oxford.

The main plan of the work has been borrowed from Spanheim, a learned, though certainly not unbiassed, writer of the seventeenth century; the matter compiled from Spondanus and Spanheim, Mosheim and Fleury, Gieseler and Döllinger, and others, who have been used too often to be specified, unless when reference to them appeared desirable for the benefit of the reader. Yet I believe I have never once trusted to them on a point involving controversy, without examining their authorities. The one object that I have had before me has been to condense facts, without either garbling or omitting any that should be noticed in a work like the present, and to give a fair and impartial view of the whole state of the case.—Preface.

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