Vol. V.—No. 128. NOTES AND QUERIES: A MEDIUM OF INTER-COMMUNICATION FOR LITERARY MEN, ARTISTS, ANTIQUARIES, GENEALOGISTS, ETC.

VOL. V.—No. 128.

SATURDAY, APRIL 10. 1852.

Price Fourpence. Stamped Edition, 5d.

CONTENTS.

NOTES:—

QUERIES:—

REPLIES:—

MISCELLANEOUS:—

Notes.

UNPUBLISHED SONG BY THOMAS OTWAY.

In turning over a quantity of miscellaneous papers in MS. (some originals and some copies) of the latter half of the seventeenth century (which chance lately threw in my way), I stumbled upon the following song by the unfortunate author of Venice Preserved. It may, possibly, have been printed in one, or more, of the numerous volumes of "miscellany poems" which teemed from the press at the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the following century; but in looking over a tolerable assemblage which time has accumulated on my shelves, I have not been able to discover it. The MS. does not appear to be an original, although the handwriting is of the author's period. The punctuation is as I found it:—

That poor Otway was a lover of the "juice of the grape," is too well known; and it seems from his biography in Cibber's Lives of the Poets, that he was for some time a soldier, and served in Flanders. The half-bacchanalian, half-military [338] character of this song, seems to identify it with the poet. The popular story, that Otway died for want at an ale-house on Tower Hill, is, it is to be hoped, not strictly true. Dennis, the critic (as he is called), tells us that—

"Otway had an intimate friend (one Blackstone), who was shot; the murderer fled towards Dover, and Otway pursued him. In his return he drank water when violently heated, and so got a fever, which was the death of him."

This story is creditable to the warmth of Otway's friendship, and I should be glad to meet with any additional authority to give it confirmation.

EDWARD F. RIMBAULT.

SHAKSPEARE'S "WE THREE."

In Shakspeare's Twelfth Night, a passage occurs upon which some observations may be bestowed in the way of illustration, because, as it is usually printed, no signification seems attributed to it, whereas in reality it is a scrap of satire very appropriate to the character in whose mouth it is placed. In Act II. Sc. 2., the clown, entering to the two drunken knights, Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Ague-cheek, exclaims,—

Of the innumerable editions of Shakspeare, I have examined only twelve, my own and my neighbours', all which, without exception, present the last two words of the quotation as above, without the slightest difference from the remainder of the sentence; and, when annotations are given, without any explanatory remark save in three instances, which will hereafter be noticed. From this circumstance and this coincidence it may be inferred, that the editors generally did not imagine the words in question to contain any special meaning, but possibly understood them as merely an illiterate blunder for "us three." Any such idea, however, would be a misapprehension. For although the clown is introduced as an allowed fool, and so entitled, it is evident he was designed to represent a person not totally devoid of at least some smattering of learning, as well as to be, what one of his brethren is styled, "a shrewd knave;" as such, being manifestly quite capable of duly appreciating his two knightly patrons. Which knowledge on the part of the clown increases the probability that such an "all licensed" personage should, under the disguise of a jest, insinuate the contempt he really felt, and which the others so richly deserve; for this, it will speedily appear, is the sense now contended for of the passage above cited. Secondly, if the words are to stand as already read, "Did you never see the picture of we three?" intimating no allusion to any idea, hinted at but not expressed, they are simply an inquiry respecting a painting of the knights and the clown, to the existence of which there is not another reference throughout the entire play, neither does the story require or suggest that the notion of any such painting should ever have entered the author's mind.

In Theobald's Shakspeare, the sentence we are considering is unnoticed, but, as previously stated, that is not the case in three of the twelve editions consulted. In one, a single volume with glossary, &c., by Nicholas Rowe, to the words "we three," a foot note is appended, supplying, as the conclusion of the phrase, "loggerheads be." The same note is similarly given in another copy in nine volumes. The third instance is an edition in two volumes, with explanatory notes at the end, among which we find this respecting Twelfth Night:—"Did you never see the picture of we three? an allusion to an old print frequently pasted on alehouse walls, representing two, but under which the spectator reads, We three are asses;" the name of Malone being added as the authority for this interpretation.[1] Without denying that Malone may have possessed sufficient grounds for his statement, it may be permitted to deliver an opinion, and to subjoin the following remarks as a reason for thinking that Rowe's explanation is the better of the two.

In the town of Tonbridge in Kent, south of the bridge over the Medway, on the western side of the street, stands (or did recently) a public-house, the sign of which I have long believed to illustrate the passage before us. When first I observed the sign, from forty-five to fifty years ago, and for long afterwards, one side, if not both, presented two grotesque heads, the painting being not modern, so far as my (rather vivid) recollection serves, with the legend "We three Loggerheads be." The sign having been renovated, the old painting is obliterated: but whatever may have replaced it, the old name, the Loggerheads, most probably is still used; and inasmuch as the aspect of the house was venerable when I first remember it, we may, without a violent stretch of imagination, carry back the use of the above-described conceit of the three loggerheads, as an alehouse sign, at least a considerable portion of the period intervening between our time and that of Shakspeare. Whether more examples, besides that at Tonbridge, of this sign may still exist, is unknown, but I do not recollect seeing a second in any part of the kingdom. [339] Possibly others might be discovered, though they cannot be common; and perhaps the suggestion will be admitted, that the above-mentioned little public-house is not altogether unworthy of consideration, as assisting, in however slight a degree, in illustrating the language of our great national dramatist.

ARTHUR HUSSEY.

Rottingdean.

[1] [Had our correspondent had the opportunity of consulting Malone's own edition, he would have found that after what is here quoted Malone proceeds: "I believe Shakspeare had in his thoughts a common sign, in which two wooden heads are exhibited, with the inscription under it, 'We three Loggerheads be:' the spectator or reader is supposed to make the third." Our correspondent therefore agrees with Malone, and confirms his note.]

COWLEY'S PROSE WORKS.

As Cowley's name has been brought before the public in the disquisition on his monument by MR. H. CAMPKIN ("N. & Q." Vol. v., pp. 267-8.), may I be allowed, now that his character and merits are revived, to direct attention to his prose works in preference to his poetical; although, as MR. CAMPKIN remarks, "his beautiful lyrics in praise of a country life will always keep his name before us."

Miss Mitford, in her recent publication, Recollections of a Literary Life, has done good service to Cowley's character, and her criticisms will doubtless direct attention, as they have done to the septuagenarian who is now writing, to a re-perusal of his prose works. With my school-fellow Charles Lamb, and his sister, Cowley's prose essays were always especial favourites, and were esteemed by them as some of the best specimens of the "well of English undefiled." A tyro in literature could not, I am persuaded, form a better style of composition, than by taking Cowley's prose essays for his model. I consider the prose writings both of Cowley and Dryden master-pieces. "Praised in his day as a great poet, the head of the school of poets called metaphysical, Cowley will now be chiefly known," says Miss Mitford, "by those prose essays, all too short and all too few, which, whether for thought or for expression, have rarely been excelled by any writer in any language. They are eminently distinguished for the grace, the finish, and the clearness which his verse too often wants." "His thoughts," also says Dr. Johnson, "are natural; and his style has a smooth and placid equability, which has never yet obtained its due commendation."

As the columns of "N. & Q." do not admit of long quotations, I would respectfully direct attention to the beautiful essays, "Of Obscurity," "The Garden," "Of Solitude," and "Of Liberty." Southey and Cobbett, as writers of pure English, are, in my opinion, the only two modern authors who can be compared with Cowley.

J. M. G.

Worcester.

NOTE ON COLERIDGE'S CHRISTABEL.

Should the English language ever become after the lapse of years a dead language, it is a curious question, whether the works of our poets and prose writers would present such difficulties to students at that remote period, as the pages of the Greek and Roman authors present to ourselves. Our text, it is to be hoped, would not prove so corrupt as theirs, or afford so much scope to the ingenuity of scholars; but the lax phraseology now in vogue would amply supply its place. As to downright inherent obscurity, I think it is not at all clear that we are a whit behind the ancients. More than one, even of our living poets, would require a Delphin interpretation. As a fair sample of what English poetry is able to offer in the way of difficulty, I would refer to the "conclusion" of Coleridge's unfinished poem of Christabel.

The few lines, of which this conclusion consists, form an unquestionably difficult passage. How many persons, and they of no mean abilities, read it over and over again, and, after all, confess they can make nothing of it! How many are there, who have come to regard it in the light of a quaint enigma, and "give it up!" The passage certainly seems to possess one property of the enigma, inasmuch as it requires a key to elucidate it; but, as soon as this is obtained it becomes not only perfectly plain, but, I think, forces an acknowledgment from the reader, that it could hardly have been more clearly or more justly expressed.

To say that this conclusion is the most beautiful and the most valuable portion of the poem of Christabel, may appear to savour a little of extravagance; still, I cannot but think that it is, and that the author intended to convey by it far more than is usually contained in the common-place "moral." In support of this opinion I will briefly discuss these two-and-twenty lines.

Of the first six lines I will only remark, where shall we find, in the whole range of English poetry, a more exquisite picture than is here contained in this small compass?

The poet then proceeds to unite in a manner true in nature and in fact, yet equally strange and startling, two opposite and contending feelings:

The habit, if it may be so called, alluded to in these lines, must be more or less familiar to most persons as an anomaly in our nature; the habit, I mean, ridiculous as it may appear, of applying evil, though "unmeant" names to children in a transport of affection. This is a trait in the human character which, slight, and faint, and trifling as it [340] may seem, the acute mind of Coleridge has seized, and analysed, and exhibited in its legitimate development. Whether the propensity, thus delicately described, be really innocent in itself, or whether it be only the παρεκβασις, or excess, which the poet held to be the guilty state, it is hardly worth while stopping to inquire; still we cannot avoid his own startling suggestion,

springs generally from some evil source, implies the existence of some evil principle. Familiar as this habit, this instance of "giddiness of heart and brain," is to most of us, I am not aware that it has ever been expressed in poetry, or even in prose, by any other writer; if so, this passage is a rarity, similar to those four stanzas in Gray's Elegy, beginning, "Yet e'en these bones," &c., of which Dr. Johnson says, "they are to me original; I have never seen the notions in any other place; yet he that reads them here persuades himself that he has always felt them."

The author then endeavours to offer some explanation of this phenomenon, and carries out the germ of ill to its full extent, as exemplified in Sir Leoline:

It appears to me that the third line in this passage, from its being introduced too early (if I may venture to say so), on this account unnecessarily increases the difficulty; it occurs before the idea has been sufficiently developed; while it belongs rather to the result of this evil leaven than to the explanation of it, with which the poet is here engaged. The "charm" to which he alludes is, of course, the tie that binds us to the object of affection, and which forbids us to speak any but words of love and tenderness.

The poet, then, from the aspect of this strange anomaly, as exemplified in Sir Leoline, is forced to the following conclusion:

If we turn now to the last two paragraphs of the poem, we find all this illustrated; in these two paragraphs the poet has

In the former are enumerated all those memorials which could move the Baron to "love and pity;" in the latter we are told of the "rage and pain" of his heart; and on this strange union the poet soliloquises in the conclusion.

A full discussion of this subject would be perhaps unsuited to the pages of "N. & Q.;" for, various as are the subjects to which they are open, ethics can hardly be reckoned one of them. I will conclude, therefore, with the following suggestion, viz. that the delicacy, the acuteness, and the truth evinced in this last scene of Christabel and its conclusion, tell of a deeper mind than has, perhaps, fallen to the lot of any English poet since the days of William Shakspeare.

H. C. K.

—— Rectory, Hereford.

CONVERTIBILITY OF THE WORDS "GRIN" AND "GIN".

Will some more learned readers than your present querist be so good as to tell us how it came to pass that the word grin became changed in our modern Bibles for gin (sometimes spelled ginn), with which it would seem there can be no cognation? In the sense of a trap or snare grin occurs in Job xviii. 9., Ps. cxl. 5., and Ps. cxli. 9., in two Bibles which I have, viz., one "printed at London by Robert Barker, printer to the King's most excellent Majestie, 1640," and the other "printed by John Hayes, printer to the University of Cambridge, 1677."

In Cruden's Concordance, 1737, 1761, and 1769, it is given as grin in these instances; neither in the modern editions of that valuable book have they noticed the word gin as now used in the said three texts which would indicate that it is only within some eighty years, at any rate, that the change was adopted by the king's printer, and Oxford and Cambridge. Singularly enough, in these old editions of 1640 and 1677, while grin is used in Job and Psalms, gin is given in the side-note of Job xl. 24., in the text of Isa. viii. 14., and Amos iii. 5.

Now to grin (from the Saxon grinian) means, according to philologists, to show the teeth set together; the act of closing the teeth; so that we may suppose an allusion to the barbarous instrument called a man-trap, unless the idea is negatived by the side-note Job xl. 24., on the impossibility of boring Behemoth's nose with a gin, which would hardly be the word adopted to convey the idea of boring; an awl or gimlet better suiting the conditions of the case. Some commentators read ring—this may be illustrated by the ring we see even now frequently in the noses of our bulls. Be this as it may, the reasonable conjecture is, that the same word, conveying the same meaning, is appropriate in all the six places quoted. [341]

It is therefore asked, 1. Why, in the sacred volume, a century ago it should have been spelled grin in the three first-mentioned passages, and gin in the three others? and 2. Why it should have been altered in the three first-quoted verses from grin to gin? In short, if they are cognate words (which the separate use of them in various editions formerly seems to render doubtful), what advantage resulted from changing the word which more familiarly explains itself by the action of the teeth for a much less forcible term?

B. B.

FOLK LORE.

Game Feathers.

—I do not see that any of your numerous correspondents have mentioned the common belief among the poor in this county (Sussex), that a person cannot die if his bed is stuffed with game feathers. A friend of mine a little time back was talking to a labourer on the absurdity of such a belief; but he failed to convince the good man, who, as a proof of the correctness of his belief brought forward the case of a poor man who had lately died after a lingering illness. "Look at poor Muster S——, how hard he were a dying; poor soul, he could not die ony way, till neighbour Puttick found out how it wer,—'Muster S——,' says he, 'ye be lying on geame feathers, mon, surely;' and so he wer. So we took'n out o'bed, and laid'n on the floore, and he pretty soon died then!"

NEDLAM.

Isle of Man Folk Lore.

—A young person from Castletown tells me as follows:—

A woman walking over Barrule met two fairy armies going to battle, which was to begin on the ringing of a bell; she pulled the bell, and in consequence both armies attacked her, and kept her prisoner for three years, when she escaped.

A little girl, walking over a bridge, was offered by three little men (one after the other) a farthing, which she persevered in refusing; knowing that, if accepted, she would have been carried off.

A labouring man, passing by a house which is said to be haunted by soldiers, saw a soldier from Castletown sitting on a stile; and, on going up to tell him that the bugle had sounded, the soldier vanished into air, and the man saw a ball of fire before him all the way home.

A white lady walked through a room one evening when the doors were bolted and barred, and could not be found anywhere; a murder was once committed in a room of this house, and, although the boards have been moved, blood will come again.

At Peel, a witch with a basin of water said that the herring fleet would never return; every ship was lost, and she was put in a barrel with spikes, and rolled down the hill, the grass never having grown since; "and I saw the mark all down."

Women are turned into hares, and can only be shot with a silver sixpence.

A white lady was seen every night after dark; and one night, when all were in bed, a servant heard a knock at the door, put her head out of window, and saw a little doll hop round the house and knock three times; she was so frightened that she could not get her head in, till others pulled her. The house was then suddenly illuminated, and, when quite dark again, the bed-clothes pulled off.

The fairies are seen to hop from trees: a man took one home for a doll, and became very ill; but on the advice of a woman, he returned it where found, and then quite recovered.

Fairies change children; a woman had one for eighteen years, and could not make it walk or speak. A woman, shearing corn, laid her child down; a man saw a fairy come and change it: the fairy-child screamed, and the woman, going to take it up, was prevented by the man. The fairy seeing that no one touched it, returned the woman's child.

People are pulled off horses by black dogs. Three stone coffins were lately dug up, and the place not since haunted.

Our woman servant told me that her father (who used to drink), and others, chased a black dog, which kept howling and screaming round the town, up as far as the gallows post; but did not dare to go beyond, and came back as fast as they could.

A tradesman told me that lying on a sofa at an inn, a white lady whispered and told him where some money was to be found; he fell off the sofa, was ill for six months, and has been lame ever since. The owner of the house would give him half if he tells; but he will not tell, or the white lady would haunt him.

They say that fairies are the fallen angels.

A. C.

Minor Notes.

Epitaph at King Stanley.

—Epitaph engraved on brass let into a large flagstone in King Stanley churchyard, Gloucestershire. Copied 15th July, 1846.

E. D.

Monuments of De la Beche Family.

—Among the interesting communications relating to monuments and trees, I see no mention made of some fine effigies of the De la Beche family, in an old church near which are the largest yew-trees I ever saw, [342] on the edge of the Downs, about four miles above the road which runs from Reading in Berkshire to Wallingford, through Pangbourne and Streatley. I quite forget the name of this remote village, but it is above Basildon Park and Streatley; and a trip there would repay an archæologist for the time and outlay.

ÆGROTUS.

Cousinship.

—There appear to be various ways of computing relationship. The following is the mode which I have usually adopted, and I should be glad to know whether or not it is strictly correct:

In the above pedigree Thomas and Henry are second cousins; Edward and Robert third cousins; and so on. If I am asked what relation Henry is to David, I reply they are first and second cousins; or else I invert the answer, and say that David is Henry's first cousin once removed: on the principle of making the relationship as near as possible by stating the degree of the older ascendant: in other words, I do not say that Henry is David's second cousin once removed. In like manner, David and Robert are first and third cousins; or David is Robert's first cousin twice removed.

E. N.

Borrowing Days.

—In a communication in "N. & Q." (Vol. v., p. 278.) regarding Sir Alexander Cumming, there occurs the following statement:

"The last three days of March are called the 'Borrowing Days' in Scotland, on account of their being generally attended with very blustering weather, which inclines people to say that they would wish to borrow three days from the month of April in exchange for those last three days of the month of March."

I remember to have heard, when a child, in the north of Ireland, a far more poetical, if not a more rational, explanation of what is undoubtedly a very common interchange of character between March and April, for a few successive days towards the close of the former, and commencement of the latter, month. "Give me (says March) three days of warmth and sunshine for my poor young lambs whilst they are yet too tender to bear the roughness of my wind and rain, and you shall have them repaid when the wool is grown." An attentive observer of the weather will seldom find the recurrence of this accommodation loan to fail. This day (the 24th) and the two last days have been of a temperature very unusual so early in the year, and I have little doubt that before the 1st of May there will be a per contrà of three successive days of cold and bluster carried to the credit side of April's account with Æolus and Co.

MCC.

March 24.

Monumental Plate at Lewes Castle.

—The following is an exact copy of an inscription in raised characters on a plate now at Lewes Castle:—

The size of the plate is three feet by two feet Can any of the readers of "N. & Q." inform me whence this plate was taken, and what occasioned its removal?

A. W.

Junius and the Quarterly Review.

—The writer in the Quarterly Review who has attributed the Letters of Junius to Thomas Lyttelton, seems to have overlooked that passage in the Lyttelton Letters in which the writer confesses his deficiency in the principal "rhetorical figure," which at once rendered "the style of Junius" so popular:

"Irony is not my talent, and B—— says I have too much impudence to make use of it. It is a fine rhetorical figure; and if there were a chance of attaining the manner in which Junius has employed it, its cultivation will be worth my attention."

Letter 36. p. 131.

In my researches to "set this question at rest," I have found the Discoverers of Junius invariably inclined to withhold some fact or circumstance, which, if published with the proofs, must have overthrown their hypotheses. This may be good policy in an advocate pleading before a jury, or in an orator addressing a popular assembly, where an object may be attained by "making out a good case." On the question of Junius it is not only disingenuous, but highly reprehensible, since it proves that the writer thinks more of gratifying his own vanity, than in satisfying the public.

W. CRAMP.

Handwriting.

—In my last communication (Vol. v., p. 235.), in consecutive lines, when was printed where, and second was printed record. This is not wholly the printer's fault: in the common current hands, n and re are much alike; and n and r, s and r, are like enough to cause mistake. I have more than once got as far as a second proof, containing what might, if it had been printed, have been interpreted as a reflection on the dimensions of the clergy, which was far from my intention; namely, allusion to the area of a circular rector, in which the first r should have been s. What I want to make a note on, is this: no current hand is taught at schools: the so-called [343] small hand is nothing but the larger hand written smaller. If any one would publish some specimens of current hand, in which all the letters are perfectly distinguishable from each other, he would do good service. And the (?) might go the length of a woodcut (which imitates writing better than copper): for no persons write so badly as writers. The task should not be undertaken by a writing-master: for there are few who will go through thick and thin in their calligraphy. What is wanted is a good skewer-hand, in which there are none of those upstrokes and downstrokes which, in former days, used to subject boys to certain other upstrokes and downstrokes, of which it can only be said that the former were more bearable than the latter.

M.

Queries.

DUTCH MANUFACTORIES OF PORCELAIN.

What manufactories of porcelain were established in Holland?

When, by whom, and at what places were they established, and when did they cease to exist?

What marks were used to indicate the different manufactories, and had the manufactures any distinctive character?

The mark M. O. L. is frequently found on Dutch porcelain, and occasionally the word Amstel; what is the meaning of these marks, and when were they employed?

A stork is also found as a mark on Dutch porcelain, which is said to have been made at the Hague. Is this correct? and if so, what is the history of the manufactory?

Was any porcelain made at Arnheim? and if so, what was the distinguishing mark?

O. M.

[We beg to recommend these Queries to the especial attention of our Dutch contemporary DE NAVORSCHER; and we have little doubt that some of the learned contributors to that Journal will be able to throw light upon what is at present a very obscure portion in any history of manufactures which we possess in this country.—ED.]

SALMON FISHERIES.

Grievous complaints are now making of the scarcity of salmon, and consequently of the depressed state of the salmon fisheries, both in Scotland and Ireland. As the statistics of the produce of the principal rivers of those countries for some years past are known, it would be curious to contrast their returns in the present century with any accounts which may exist of their produce in former times.

For example, the Earl of Strafford wrote, in 1638, that the fishery at Derry produced to the crown that year 240 tons of salmon, which sold at 15l. per ton. In 1845 the seven years average of the Foyle (Derry) was 140 tons, and the price ranged at about 100l. per ton. Pennant states that as much as 320 tons were taken in the Bann in 1760; and Stanihurst, writing about the year 1584, declares that the fishermen of Lough Neagh, and of the "noble northerne river, the Banne, complain more often for bursting of their nets with the over great take of fish, than for anie want," so that the Irish grievance of that day lay in the very glut of the commodity.

The famous "salmon-leap" at Ballyshannon, on the Erne, was formerly very productive. It belonged to the O'Donels, Lords of Tyrconnel. Sir George Carew, in a MS. pedigree of that family, observes that

"O'Donell is the best lorde of fishe in Ireland, and exchangeth fishe allwayes with foreign merchants for wyne, by which his call in other countryes the kinge of fishe."

In Roman Catholic times our national salmon fisheries were of much value, for they supplied an article of food which was necessary for fast days; there are, accordingly, many ancient acts of parliament in the statute books for the preservation of the salmon, and still more in the Scotch statutes, in one of which, indeed, a jubilee was ordained for the benefit of the finny tribe, by making it penal to take any salmon for the space of three years. Not only did private and religious houses rely upon a supply of salted fish for fast days, and for the winter's consumption, but armies at that time could not be marched or subsisted without them. There is in Rymer an order of Edward II. to provide 3000 dried salmon for this very purpose.

All our mouths water at hearing of "kippered salmon," especially at breakfast-time; but it seems from old Izaak Walton's use of the word that the origin of the delicacy is not the very best, for he uses the word as expressive of a "sprat," or spawned cock-salmon, out of season, and it is verily to be believed that the dainty is produced by preserving the fish when in a state that it could not be eaten if fresh.

Travellers in the colder latitudes of the new and old world, agree in representing the rivers of those countries as literally swarming with noble salmon. The increase of man, and the advances of civilisation, have led to the decrease of salmon in the British Islands, and this fish will probably, in a century or so more, rank among other exterminated animals, as the bustard, &c.

Any of your readers would oblige me by reference to authorities in which statements may be found as to the ancient productiveness of the salmon fisheries of Great Britain and Ireland; in fact, to any information or curious details on the subject.

H. T. H.

Wexford. [344]

THOMAS CRAWFURD.

Can any of your readers inform me when Mr. Thomas Crawfurd was the Professor of Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh? In a Scotch Peerage, by Mr. George Crawfurd, published in 1716, there is a Latin epigram by him on the armorial bearings of the Crawfurds of Kilbirny in Ayrshire, one of whom was created Viscount Garnock by Queen Anne, in the second year of her reign. The description of the armorial bearings is as follows in the same peerage, under the head Crawfurd, Viscount of Garnock—

"Quarterly 1st and 4th gules, a fess ermine. 2nd and 3rd azure, a Cheveron betwixt three Cross Patées Or, supported by two Grayhounds. Crest, an ermine Argent. Motto, 'Sine labe nota.'"

The author then adds,—

"A learned gentleman of this name[2] paraphrased this coat of arms in these fine elegiacs—

[2] Mr. Thomas Crawfurd, Professor of Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh.

I subjoin the following translation:

C. S. T. P.

Oxford.

Minor Queries.

The Chronologic Institute.

—Should not this society, as a preliminary, protest against the architectural anachronisms of these days—the building churches, for instance, in every, any, or no style of architecture? In one parish the priest erects an Early English church, copied from the Oxford Glossary; in the next, something very like a conventicle, with no chancel and no chimes, is built by subscription; in another, the architect is a disciple of Ruskin, and tries the Byzantine style, with a tower like St. Mark's of Venice;—a nice Gordian knot for coming chronologists!

MORTIMER COLLINS.

Mother Carey's Chickens.

—In Hawkesworth's Voyages there occurs the following passage: "The petrels, to which sailors have given the name of Mother Carey's chickens." Who was "Mother Carey;" why was her name given to the petrel; and why have sailors so great an objection to their being killed?

W. B. M.

Dee Side.

Suwich Priory.

—What is known of the Priory of Suwich in Hampshire, of which a handsome seal records the former prosperity?

E. A. S.

Anthony Babington.

—Can any of your correspondents inform me whether William Kempe's Dutiful Invective against the moste Haynous Treasons of Ballard and Babington, &c. &c., has been reprinted in any collection of rare tracts, or otherwise? and also whether his Censure of a loyall Subiect upon certaine noted Speeches and Behaviour of those 14 notable Traitors (Ballard, Babington, &c.), has also been reprinted?

I should also be glad of references to any other tracts or ballads referring to Babington and his conspiracy.

L. J.

Sir Isaac Newton, Cicero, and Gravitation.

—How is it that Sir Isaac Newton has obtained so world-wide a renown for his discovery of the law of gravitation, when the following passage in the Tusculan Disputations proves it to have been well known to Cicero?

"Qua omnia delata gravitate medium mundi locum semper expetant."

See lib. v. cap. 24.

S. E. B.

Trinity College, Oxford.

Diotrophes.

—Can any of your readers say, on what authority the Abbé Masscot calls Diotrophes, mentioned in 3 St. John, ver. 9., Bishop of Corinth. The Abbé has left the Roman Church, and joined the branch of Mr. Henry Drummond's Church in France, and is the editor of Le Recueil Catholique, to advocate the cause of the new church. The passage to which I refer is in the October Number, p. 208., and is given as a proof of his theory: "L'Apostolat supplanté, absorbé par l'Episcopat;" this first order of ministry in the Christian Church having been in abeyance, till it was revived in the person of Mr. Drummond and the other eleven apostles of that Church! In Mant and D'Oyley's Bible it is said that Diotrophes is unknown; and Grotius and Doddridge entertain different opinions about him, but neither speak of him as being a bishop.

ER.

Grisly.

—Can any of your readers inform me why a person in a fretful state is said to be grisly? the far-famed Guzzle being a pattern of meekness and patience. I am aware that Johnson gives the meaning—fearfully, horribly; but this does not seem satisfactory. Infants are often said by their nurses to be "very grisly."

RUBY.

Birthplace of St. Patrick.

—Can the disputed question of the birthplace of St. Patrick be settled? [345] Some writers assign Scotland, others England, and others France, as his fatherland. He himself informs us (Confess. sub init.) that he was born at Bonavem-Taberniæ. This locality has been supposed by some writers to be Kilpatrick, on the mouth of the Clyde, and by others Boulogne-sur-Mer.

CEYREP.

Motto on Chimney-piece.

—There is a carved oak chimney-piece in my possession, of the time of James I., from a mansion at Newcastle-upon-Tyne occupied as the Turk's Head Inn, and taken down about fifteen years ago. In the central compartment is a shield, but the crest is wanting. The quarterings are three stags' heads, and checky; and as the motto has puzzled wiser heads than mine, I beg leave to produce it. One or two of the letters are doubtful, but there is no omission:

"VITATRANOVULAESTOLIM."

I should feel much obliged to any one for deciphering the motto, and still more for discovering the original possessor of this interesting piece of antiquity.

Another motto, under a coat of arms on some old china, cannot meet with an interpreter:

"VE DAL AM DARO."

C. T.

Curious Bequest.

—In the parish of Eardisland in Herefordshire, I am informed that some charitable person, whose name I could not ascertain, left to certain poor persons, parishioners, the following singular bequest, viz., to each poor person—

This was to be distributed on Maunday Thursday. Can any of your correspondents throw light upon this, or mention similar instances of such singular bequests?

H. C. K.

Wilkie's Blind Fiddler.

—I should be much obliged if you, or any of your correspondents, could give me some information respecting Sir David Wilkie's picture of "The Blind Fiddler." I believe he painted as many as four, if not more, copies of the original, and that the first picture was finished by him in the year 1807; that in the National Gallery is dated, as I am informed, 1808. What I wish to ascertain is, the real number of the pictures of this subject that Wilkie painted, with their dates; and if possible, in whose hands they are at present.

H. C. K.

—— Rectory, Hereford.

Lode.

—It seems to be a provincial word, according to Forby, and means "an artificial water-course," from A.-S. lodian, haurire; he also adduces the instance I have named, and also a water-course in Fincham, called in old writings "the Lode ditch." It would be interesting to know if it is used elsewhere than in Norfolk, and it may be Suffolk; but, at all events, I should much like to come at the real meaning.

J. N. C.

Ballad quoted by Sir Walter Scott.

—Effie Deans, in the Heart of Mid-Lothian, sings this stanza of a ballad:

There is a traditional ballad, very similar, of which the following is the only stanza preserved:

Sir Walter Scott delighted in preserving scraps of old ballads; and perhaps the two fragments above quoted may be part and parcel of the same original. Some friend in the "north countrie" may perhaps settle this point.

EDWARD F. RIMBAULT.

Ann Stewart, Wife of Christopher Hall.

—Can any of your readers inform me, by referring to an old work called Stewart's History of the Stewarts, page 156., whether Ann Stewart therein mentioned, who married Christopher Hall, was a descendant of the daughter of Henry VII.?

JOHN OF GAUNT.

Moveable Organs and Pulpits.

—In looking over a small pamphlet, entitled The Temple Church, an Account of its Restoration and Repairs, by William Burge, Esq. (8vo. 1843, Pickering), I met with the following passage, which serves me for a peg on which to hang a Query:

"Mr Etty justly observes that 'in St. Peter's at the present day, the organ is a very small one comparatively to the building, and is wheeled about, like the ancient pulpits, to different parts of the church!'"—P. 34.

Are movable organs common in Italy or elsewhere? With regard to pulpits, the chapel of King's College, Cambridge, has two at the present time, placed in one of the small chapels on the north side. They are moved into the choir when required. Besides these, the neighbouring church at Grantchester has a large pulpit, which, tradition says, also once belonged to the same noble edifice. Can any of your correspondents mention other examples of churches or chapels so well supplied?

W. SPARROW SIMPSON, B.A.

Nobleman alluded to by Bishop Berkeley.

—Bishop Berkeley, in his Minute Philosopher (Dialogue II. vol. i.), makes mention of "an English nobleman who in the prime of life professeth a [346] liberal art, and is the first man of his profession in the world." Who was this nobleman?

J. M.

Chelwoldesbury.

—I shall be glad to have the opinion of your readers on the derivation of the name of a village, which in early records is spelt "Chalwoldesbury," "Chelwardesbury," "Chilwardesbury," "Chedwoldesby," &c. It is partly on the site of a British or Danish encampment, in a good state of preservation. The soil is chalky, and the country for some short distance round may have been open, but more probably the woods closely surrounded the camp. These particulars may assist in arriving at the derivation of the name, now corrupted into Cholesbury.

W. H. K.

Swallows' Nests.—

May I ask for information respecting the allusion contained in these lines?

W. S. T.

Quotation from Arthur Hopton.

—Arthur Hopton (Baculum Geodæticum, 1610, preface) says:

"If this hold, it is time to ... take the globe out of the king Ptolomies hand, and there place a poore Siquis, such as forlorne forreiners use to have in Paul's Church."

What does this mean?

M.

Group at Prague.

—I have in my possession a print representing Mercury in a flying attitude, bearing a female figure in his arms: the latter figure carries a cyathus in her right hand.

The inscription at the bottom of the print is—

"IVSSV RVDOLPHI · II · CÆSARIS AVGVSTI,

ADRIANVS DE VRIES HAGIENSIS FACIEBAT. PRAGUÆ.

OPVS ALTITVDINIS PEDVM OCTO EX ÆRE. 1.5.9.3."

I apply to "N. & Q." in hopes that this "Q." may meet the eye of some erudite correspondent, and draw forth a satisfactory "N."

Was Prague ever decorated with such a group? If the group in question be not a myth, what is the meaning of it? Who is meant by the first line of the inscription?

TECEDE.

Cards prohibited to Apprentices.

—When was the prohibition to play at cards or dice first introduced into apprentices' indentures? It occurs in the form of an indenture for an apprentice in A Book of Presidents, printed about 1566, and compiled by Thomas Phaer, who describes himself as "Solicitour to the King and Queenes Majesties."

EDWARD F. RIMBAULT.

Cursitor Barons.

—Can any of your correspondents guide me to a list of the Cursitor Barons, or refer me to any account of their origin and history? I find no such officer named up to the reign of Henry VIII., beyond which I have not yet inquired; nor does any notice occur of them in Madox's History of the Exchequer.

EDWARD FOSS.

Phelps's Gloucestershire Collections.

—The late John Delafield Phelps, Esq., who died in December, 1842, was well known among the literati as an ardent bibliophile, and a great investigator and accumulator of antiquities. He was one of the original members of the Roxburghe Club, established nearly forty years ago, and had devoted a long life to his favourite pursuits. Having been a native of Gloucestershire, he felt a particular interest in everything which regarded that county, and had in his lifetime collected a great mass of materials for the elucidation of its history, antiquities, &c., in every respect. It is understood that an ample catalogue (raisonné perhaps) was printed under his direction for circulation among his particular friends, giving great evidence of his assiduity and talents, and of the value of the collection. Participating to a great extent the interest which actuated Mr. Phelps to ascertain a local knowledge of Gloucestershire, I should feel obliged if any reader of the "N. & Q." could inform me what has become of Mr. Phelps's collection; if it remains entire, and if it be accessible by any recommendation to the present possessor?

Δ. (2).

Huant Le Puisné.

—I have in my possession a small gold bonbonnière exquisitely enamelled with portraits and landscapes, and bearing the following inscription:

"Huant Le puisné pinxit à Berlin."

Can any of your readers refer me to a work where I shall find any account of this painter?

A. O. O. D.

Arms of Roberson.

—What is the meaning of a man, chained hand and foot, placed horizontally beneath the arms of Roberson?

R. S. B.

Minor Queries Answered.

Winterton.

—Information is requested of John [Ralph] Winterton, Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, who translated, revised, and published Gerard's Meditations and Prayers, Cambridge, 1674, dedicated to John (Dolben), Lord Bishop of Rochester: the second part is called on the title-page the tenth edition. This book measures only four by two inches, and one inch in thickness, and contains 560 pages.

E. D.

[Ralph Winterton, in 1632, translated the Considerations of Drexelius upon Eternity, in the Preface to which he says, "I left the temple of Hippocrates and the Muses, and betook myself into the sanctuary, to [347] which consisteth in the due numbering of the days of this short life, by comparing them with the years of eternity; and so I fell upon translating this book of eternity. And this I found, by daily experience, to be the best hypnoticon that ever I used; for it brought me to my rest better than if had taken diacodion." In 1634 he was nominated Professor of Physic in the University of Cambridge; and in 1635 published an edition of the minor Greek poets. The first edition of his translation of Gerard's Meditations and Prayers was published in 1631, and in 1640 he translated Gerard's Summe of Christian Doctrine, 8vo. There is a Latin distich by Winterton among the Additional MSS. in the British Museum, No. 5955.]

Emblems of a Saint.

—At the sale of the late Mr. Cottingham's Museum of medieval art was sold on the seventh day "a corbel with a figure of a saint with a basket of birds in one hand, in the other a staff." Will you allow me to inquire, through your valuable columns, the name of this saint?

BURIENSIS.

[Joachim, the Father of Mary, is sometimes represented as holding in his hand a basket with two turtle doves in it.—See Die Attribute der Heiligen, &c., Hanover, 1843.]

Quack.

—Why are certain members of the medical profession so called? I have seen "in print" that the Egyptian hieroglyphic for a doctor was a duck. Does this afford a clue?

A. A. D.

[Our English Quack, or Quacksalver as it was originally written, is from the German Quacksalber, or rather the Dutch Kwaksalver; which Bilderdijk, in his Geslachtlijst der Naamwoorden, states should be more properly Kwabzalver (Iatroliptes), from Kwab, a wen, and zalver, to salve or anoint.]

Dr. Hieron Mercurialis.

—Who was Dr. Hieron Mercurialis, the author of a book having the following title: Medicina Practica, seu de cognoscendis, discernendis, et curandis, omnibus humani corporis affectibus, earumque causis indagandis?

W. S.

[Hieron Mercurialis, an eminent and learned physician, was born at Forli, in Romagna, in 1530. During a sojourn of seven years at Rome, he paid great attention to classical literature and the monuments of antiquity, and composed the learned and elegant work which first rendered him celebrated in the literary world, De Arte Gymnastica Libr. sex, printed in 1567. After filling the Professor's chair at Padua for eighteen years, he removed, in 1587, to Bologna, and subsequently to Pisa. He died in his native place in 1606. See Rose's Biographical Dict.]

The Book of Sports.

—This celebrated royal indulgence of Sabbath-breaking was first issued in 1617, and again in 1633. On its first promulgation, Archbishop Abbott forbad the reading of it in the parish church of Croydon; but in 1637 many clergymen were deprived of their livings for not complying with the royal ordinance. In that year, at least, Lawrence Snelling, Rector of Paul's Cray, was for that offence excommunicated and then deprived.

In 1643 it was ordered by the Lords and Commons that this book should be burnt by the common hangman in Cheapside and other usual places. The Sheriffs of London and Middlesex were required "to assist effectually" in the execution of the order; and all persons were required forthwith to deliver up all copies to the sheriff. The 10th of May was the day fixed for putting this order into execution. Was it complied with generally? I cannot find that any penalty was attached to disobedience. Is the book now scarce? I presume it is accessible in public libraries.

S. S. S.

[The earlier editions of The Book of Sports are now scarce, but may be seen in most public libraries. It was reprinted in 1709, with the following title: The Book of Sports, set forth by James I. and Charles I., with remarks upon the same in vindication of Charles I. 4to. It was also reprinted in the Harleian Miscellany, and in The Phœnix, vol. i.]

Replies.

MEANING OF GROOM.
(Vol. v., p. 57.)

Several of the recent articles of the "N. & Q." having had relation to the word groom, I may be allowed to submit to you a most ludicrous misconception of the duties attributed by our continental neighbours to our court-office of "Groom of the Stole," which struck me some years ago. One of the most laborious, and, from his extensive historical knowledge, one of the most competent editors of French memoirs, is M. F. Barrière, whose introductory discourses have been used so frequently by the writers on French subjects in the Quarterly Review, though not always with frank avowal of the obligation. In 1828 he published Les Mémoires du Comte de Brienne, a distinguished public man during the minority and early reign of Louis XIV., and there, at p. 372. of the second volume, referring to Brienne's father's Mémoires, tome i. p. 407. (Amsterdam, 1719, 8vo.), produces the following singular misapprehension of our habits and language. In 1624 the elder of these noblemen, it seems, was deputed by Louis XIII. to adjust the preparatory arrangements of our Charles I.'s marriage with Henrietta Maria, the French monarch's sister, who, it was stipulated, should be attended equally by French and English ladies. Among the former are named the Duchess of Chevreuse, the Maréchale de Thémines (wife of the Marshal), and Madame de Saint-Georges, who had been the princess's governess and lady of honour,—a title unknown, it is said, at the English court, but for which the [348] Duke of Buckingham, the representative of Charles, proposed as an equivalent, that of Groom of the Stool (sic) "qui revient assez bien à ce qu'on appelerait dans notre langue, le gentilhomme, ou la dame de la chaise-percée. Cette charge est très considérable; elle fait jouir de très grands privilèges," &c. A natural expression of surprise follows this portraiture of a high and regular functionary, whose attributes not even majesty could ennoble or strip of indignity. The transposition of the name and duties of Groom of the Stole has caused this most ridiculous blunder—a double one, indeed, for the office does not belong to female majesty, though it may, as of course at present, form part of a royal consort's household. The living editor of De Brienne, who dwells on these "étranges usages de nos voisins d'outremer," tells us, and it is confirmed by De Brienne himself, that this nobleman felt proud and honoured at the familiarity and confidence of Louis XIV., who often conferred with him on state affairs, enthroned "sur sa chaise-percée." The Duchess of Burgundy, mother of Louis XV., it is known, never hesitated to administer to herself a relieving remedy, not to be pronounced by name in English society, in presence of Louis XIV. and his attendant courtiers; so that these violations of decorum, falsely imputed to our court, were of historical truth at Versailles.

J. R. (Cork).

May not groom be the literal English of the French écuyer, and have in the places quoted the same meaning as esquire, which is evidently the Anglicised French?

W. C. TREVELYAN.

Wallington.

BALLAD OF LORD DELAWARE.
(Vol. ii., pp. 104. 158.; Vol. v., p. 243.)

As I have reason to believe that several of your readers are interested in this old ballad, I send you an exact transcript of the oral version contained in Mr. Lyle's (not Lyte's, as incorrectly printed in my former communication) now rare little volume.

Your correspondent C. W. G. thinks that it relates to some transaction much later than 1622; and possibly he may be right. It may be as well, however, to mention that Mr. J. H. Dixon, who inserted the ballad in his Ancient Poems, Ballads, and Songs of the Peasantry of England (Percy Society, No. LXII.), thinks otherwise, and, indeed, claims for it an antiquity as high as the reign of Edward III., A.D. 1377. He suggests that for De la Ware we should read De la Mare, and believes Sir Thomas De la Mare, Speaker of the House of Commons, to have been the hero. Mr. Dixon says:

"All historians are agreed in representing him as a person using 'great freedom of speech,' and which, indeed, he carried to such an extent as to endanger his personal liberty. As bearing somewhat upon the subject of the ballad, it may be observed that De la Mare was a great advocate of popular rights, and particularly protested against the inhabitants of England being subject to 'purveyance;' asserting that 'if the royal revenue was faithfully administered, there could be no necessity for laying burdens on the people.'"

The title of the "Welsh lord, the brave Duke of Devonshire," offers some opposition to Mr. Dixon's hypothesis, as no Duke of Devonshire was created before 1694; but, as Sir Walter Scott observed, upon a friend pointing out an inaccuracy in his "Bonnets of bonnie Dundee," "We cannot always be particular in a ballad." Possibly the name of some other country or place should be substituted for that of "Devonshire." Indeed I remember, some ten years ago, hearing a version of this ballad sung at a village in Staffordshire, where the "minstrel" (for he was a true descendant of the wandering tribe) used Hereford in the place of Devonshire.

There is an old ballad in Deloney's Garland of Good Will, upon the quarrel between the two Dukes of Hereford and Norfolk, in the reign of Richard II. See Hume's Hist. of Eng., chap. xvii., A.D. 1398, for a full account of the transaction. There seems to be some "relationship" between this "combat" and that of the Lord Delaware. At any rate, the following ballad smacks wonderfully (allowing for the march of time, and Mr. Lyle's "smoothing down") of the style of the "ballading silk-weaver," and his cotemporary poetasters.

EDWARD F. RIMBAULT.

FAMILY LIKENESSES.
(Vol. v., p. 260.)

To most persons the discovery by VOKAROS of a family likeness existing between the face on the brass of the Abbess of Elstow, and the portrait of the Marquis of Bristol, after a lapse of three centuries, would probably seem moderately far-fetched; but when this is adduced as "valuable evidence on the disputed point, whether portraits were attempted in sepulchral brasses," a very great demand indeed is made upon our credulity. I have not the means now of referring to the works of Fisher and Rokewode; but I have before me a rubbing of the Elstow brass. Any person tolerably familiar with the subject will at once see that the face of the lady is identical with that which is repeatedly to be found on numerous brass effigies of persons of both sexes at the beginning of the sixteenth century; in fact, it is not very dissimilar to that of the fellow brass of the Abbot at Dorchester, Oxon. If, therefore, we might judge by the likeness, very many brazen-faced gentry of olden time might claim the honour of being ancestors of the noble lord. And so far from its being a disputed point, whether the faces on brasses are attempted likenesses, no one, I think, who has at all studied our monumental brasses, can fail to have come to the conclusion that they were not intended to be portraits. The great proof of this lies in the obvious similarity in the faces of cotemporary figures which have been produced by the same artists, who, probably from their residing in London, and perhaps in a few other places, very rarely had an opportunity of seeing the persons to be commemorated. The instructions forwarded to the engravers would seem to have been confined to the inscription and other details, chiefly the costume, at least if we may judge from the large brasses at Digswell, Herts, and other similar figures. The ready adoption of unaltered palimpsest effigies may also be cited as an additional proof of the likeness being entirely a matter of indifference; and it is not improbable that many brasses were kept ready made, half-length figures of priests for instance; and files of children, all bearing a strong family likeness, may have been engraved, ready to be cut off on the shortest notice, and laid down at so much per foot. The only approach towards a likeness, if it may be termed such, seems to be the distinction between youth and age, and even that was almost wholly neglected in the fifteenth and earlier half of the sixteenth centuries. The foregoing remarks apply chiefly to brasses before the latter end of the sixteenth century; after that period portraits were evidently not unfrequently attempted. Very rare instances, however, before this time, may be found. I may specify the effigy of Nich. Canteys, 1431, Margate, Kent.

Mr. Doyle, in his able painting of Caxton submitting his proof-sheet to Abbot Estney (noticed in "N. & Q." No. 54. p. 398.) has taken the likeness of the Abbot from his brass in Westminster Abbey, which is, I suppose, as good a likeness of the original as any other that can be found; but the members of Queen's College, Oxford, have not been so fortunate. Several years ago, while hunting up a likeness of their founder (Robt. Egglesfield, 1340), they stumbled upon an old brass in the College Chapel, from which a painting and engraving was made purporting to be that of the founder. Recent researches have unfortunately fatally dispelled this illusion, as the effigy [350] in question undoubtedly commemorates Dr. Robt. Langton, who deceased 1518.

H. H.

EARL OF ERROLL.
(Vol. v., p. 297.)

According to Burke's Peerage for 1850, the present Lord Erroll is "the twenty-second High Constable of Scotland; and as such is, by birth, the first subject in Scotland after the blood-royal, having a right to take place of every hereditary honour, which was granted to his lordship's father on the visit of George IV. to North Britain" (in 1822).

In a small treatise, De Jure Prelationis Nobilium Scotiæ, printed by the Bannatyne Club in 1827, from a manuscript in the Advocates' Library, with a preface and numerous additions by Sir Alexander Seton, Lord Pitmedden, I find the following remark, under the head of "Comes de Erroll":—

"The Earle of Erroll claims precedency of all the nobilitie of Scotland nixt to the Chancellour, though of ane ancienter creation than himself, be vertue of his office of Constabulary, of the which that precedency is a priviledge; and to instruct that it is a priviledge, he produces a Report of a Commission that was granted be the King under the Great Seal anno 1631, to take tryall of the priviledges of the Constable; which Report, in the second article thereof, bears that the precedency is due to the Constable next to the Chancellor, but he has never been in possession of it, but only takes place by his antiquity as Earle."

The report here referred to is given in Nisbet's Heraldry, vol. ii. p. 67. In the eighth chapter of Sir George Mackenzie's treatise on "Precedency" (p. 534. of the second volume of his works), your correspondent will find some interesting information regarding the ancient office of High Constable. In the course of his remarks the learned author says:

"Next to these (i.e. the Chancellor, Justice-General, Chamberlain, High Steward, Panetarius, and Buttelarius) are named, in the laws of King Malcolm Canmore (1057-1093), the Constable and Marishal; but now the Constable and Marishal take not place as officers of the Crown, but according to their creation as Earls: the reason thereof I conceive to be, because of old offices did not prefer those who possessed them, but they took place according to their creation; whereas now the Privy Seal precedes all Dukes, and the Secretary takes place before all of his own rank; but the Constable and Marishal, being now the only two officers of the Crown that are heritable in Scotland, continue to possess as they did formerly. But in France, England, and all other places, the Constable and Marishal take place as officers of the Crown; and it seems very strange that these, who ride upon the King's right and left hand when he returns from his Parliaments, and who guard the Parliament itself, and the honours, should have no precedency by their offices; and yet I cannot deny, but that of old other Earls were placed before them; for in the former Charter granted by King Alexander, Malcolm Earl of Fife is placed before them. And I conceive their precedency has not risen of late to the same proportion with others, because, of late, our armies have been commanded by other officers, and so there was little use for the Constable and Marishal."

E. N.

THE BOWYER BIBLE. (Vol. v., pp. 248. 309.)

Seeing a fresh notice of this great book in No. 124. of "N. & Q.," I venture to forward a few particulars concerning Bowyer, who was an old friend, even of between thirty and forty years' standing. He is long since gone to his rest; he has left neither widow nor child, scarcely a distant relative, so that the following can neither "give offence nor grieve." He has often told me particulars of his early career. Being a poor youth in search of employment, and withal moody enough at his prospects, he was one day walking down Newgate Street, and pausing to look at a print or two in a shop-window, it struck him he could take a likeness; so he went home to his indifferent lodging, having procured implements suitable, seated himself before a glass, and took his own portrait, which he considered was as successful as a first effort could be. Encouraged thereby, he was soon employed to paint others, and such note did he acquire that his miniatures were carried into court-circles, so that he became a sort of celebrity in that line, and Queen Charlotte appointed him her official miniature-painter—if such be the proper term.

He soon struck out much more important occupation, planning various publications, the most promising of which was his large edition of Hume's History of England; and this was so ponderous an undertaking that it was only at last disposed of by a lottery. His fondness for taking portraits never left him, and a very few years before his death he gratified my family by volunteering to paint a miniature of my father, and a capital likeness it was. He was much pleased with one of his successes, of which he has more than once told me with great glee. Just before George III. was secluded finally from public view, he and another artist, an old acquaintance, went one Sunday together to the Chapel-Royal at Windsor, and during the service each sketched the King on one of his nails: they adjourned to an inn, and while the impression was yet fresh, transferred to a sheet of paper the likeness of the venerable monarch. On returning with it to London, Bowyer sent it for the inspection of the Prince Regent, who was so pleased with this rough pencil-drawing, that he sent word back he would never part with it, and begged to know Bowyer's price. The latter said [351] 105l., which the Prince Regent immediately forwarded.

I once found Bowyer drawing at a table, a wig placed on a stick before him, and he was taking the likeness of a very old friend, who was dead and gone, from memory. In this attempt he entirely succeeded, even to the surprise of all who knew the deceased.

About ten years ago a little book, called Henry VIII. and his Contemporaries, by B. Bensley, contained, concerning the earlier impressions of the Bible, the following note:—

"I trust to be pardoned for introducing a little anecdote relative to the Bible, exactly three hundred years after the period about which I am writing, that is not the less appropriate for being likewise illustrative of episcopal shrewdness. [The text is recording an instance of the then Bishop of London being bitten in an arrangement with a bookseller.] The most splendid Bible ever issued was that published by Macklin, printed by my late father, and the execution of which even his son may say, would alone hand down his name to posterity. Bowyer, publisher of another great national work—the folio edition of Hume's History of England, also a splendid specimen of my father's typography—had a copy of Macklin's Bible, which he employed his leisure during many years to illustrate, having the best opportunities, from his pursuits as an artist, publisher of prints, &c. On the completion of his labours, he valued the massy product, consisting of an immense number of prints, at 2500l.; and, after unsuccessful efforts to procure a purchaser, he put it up to be raffled for, issuing proposals to the nobility and gentry, &c. Among others, an aged bishop sent his name as a subscriber to this kind of lottery, and shortly after called at the rooms in Pall Mall to pay the two guineas; but, before he did so, he drew Mr. Bowyer apart, and gravely told him he could not quite make out how, by paying that sum, he could ensure possession of the great work. Upon its being explained to his lordship, that he could only take a chance with 1249 others, he expressed surprise and vexation, and declined to pay two guineas for the chance, which he then, probably, saw was objectionable in a moral point of view, as a species of gambling! The parties are all long since dead."

B. B.

Pembroke.

Replies to Minor Queries.

Exeter Controversy (Vol. v., p. 126.).

—Your correspondent A. N. will find, probably, that the "Exeter Controversy," to which Gifford alludes, was that between John Agate, of St. Mary Arches Church, in Exeter, and John Withers, a Presbyterian. The controversy commenced in 1707, and was carried on with great violence till 1715. The tracts are numerous, but many very scarce. Agate's chief tract was entitled Plain Truth, and is in three parts, Exon, 1708. Withers replied in a work of three parts also: Truth Try'd, or Mr. Agate's pretended Plain Truth proved an Untruth, Exon, 1708-9-10. This of course called forth a rejoinder, and so on. Although carried on with great personalities, the controversy shows considerable ability on both sides. I possess almost all the tracts, and shall be happy to send a list to A. N., if required. Withers, Trosse, and Pierce are all well-known Dissenting names in the history of Exeter at the beginning of last century, when that city was the stronghold of Arianism.

RICHARD HOOPER.

Coleridge's "Friend" (Vol. v., p. 297.).

—The passage quoted by your correspondent J. M. can refer to one man only, viz. Thomas Wedgewood. His introduction to that gentleman, and his brother Josiah, is related by Cottle. (Recollections of Coleridge, 1837, vol. i. p. 305.) Coleridge might well call the former his "munificent co-patron;" for we learn from Cottle that these brothers, soon after making the poet's acquaintance, settled upon him 150l. per annum, in order to prevent him sinking the man of letters in the Unitarian minister. Cottle adds:

"Mr. C. was oppressed with grateful emotions to these his liberal benefactors. He always spoke, in particular, of the late Mr. Thomas Wedgewood as being one of the best talkers, and as possessing one of the acutest minds of any man he had known."

The following details, which J. M. will not find in any book, may be interesting, to him:—Joseph Wedgewood, the illustrious potter, lived at Etruria, in Staffordshire; for such was the appropriate name of the house he built for himself. He had six children,—three sons, John, Thomas, and Josiah; and three daughters, Sarah, Catherine, and ****. John married a Miss Allen (one of four Devonshire lasses), who was accounted one of the most accomplished and excellent ladies in the county. Joshua married another of the sisters. Thomas never married. He was indisposed, both from ill health and taste, towards the pottery business, and took to philosophy. He was endowed with a rare genius, and enjoyed the society of the first literati of his day. But he died while he was still a man of promise.

Of his sisters, Sarah was an accomplished lady with a strong intellect, which captivated Basil Montagu, without reciprocity. Catherine was a first-rate horse-woman. The third daughter married the celebrated Dr. Darwin, of Shrewsbury. All of them, I believe, are dead.

C. MANSFIELD INGLEBY.

Birmingham.

Praying to the Devil (Vol. v., p. 273.).

—Bishop Hall, in his Cases of Conscience (Decade iii. Case 2. Lond. 1654), alludes to the fact of Satanic compacts, as indeed do many others of our old divines. [352] The master work on the subject is, I believe, that entitled Disquisitiones Magicæ by Martinus Delrio. Let me particularly refer your correspondent R. S. F. to Lib. ii. of said volume, Quæst. 4. pp. 99., &c., and to Lib. v. sect. xvi. pp. 759., &c. (Coloniæ Agrippinæ, 1633, 4to.)

In turning over the leaves fortuitously, I stumbled upon the name of Catherine de Medicis, and perhaps in a connexion that will render the legend of the steel box not incredible:

"Sic ille ipse, Bodino non ignotus, faciebat Italus Parisiis, tam carus Catharinæ Mediceæ, qui chirothecis, globulis, vel pulveribus suave fragrantibus, alios solo necabat odore illæsus ipse, et hoc pacto à se interfectam Navarræ Reginam Albretham, veneni vi per nares in cerebrum penetrante, gloriabatur. Vera causa est, hæc ex pacto fieri per dæmonem," &c.

Lib. iii. pars i. quæst. 3. sect. 2. p. 394.

RT.

Warmington.

The Word "shunt" (Vol. iii., p. 204.).

—I can confirm what MR. WAY says on this word. I have looked for the word in all the dictionaries and glossaries I could lay my hands upon, both in this country and abroad, but in vain. Singular enough, however, I have found it in the small edition of Bailey, and in Dr. Ash's Dictionary.

In reading the other day Victor Hugo's Notre Dame, I met with the word Pignon, which has exactly the same signification as the Welsh word Piniwn, the gable or pine end of a house. Is the French word derived from the Welsh, or the Welsh from the French? or is the coincidence in sound and sense purely accidental? Perhaps some of your Welsh correspondents can explain this.

E. JONES.

Aberayron, Cardiganshire.

St. Paul's Quotation of Heathen Writers (Vol. v., p. 278.).

—Acts xiv. 17. Ὑετὸς does not occur, according to the Indexes, in Sophocles, Euripides, or Pindar.

The style of the Hellenizing Jews was sometimes very poetical, as in the Wisdom of Solomon: but in one of the most inflated passages in that book, it does not go so far as οὐρανόθεν. It says only ἀπ' οὐρανῶν. Nor does Wetstein quote οὐρανόθεν from any author but Homer. Hesiod might have been added (Passow), but that is the same thing. It seems a word unfit for prose.

Καιρὸς καρποφόρος is quoted by Wetstein from Achmet.

C. B.

Rex Lucifer.—It would be a most horrid barbarism to impute to such a Latin poet as Milton the use of this word for the devil; although in his theological poem he may have adopted that popular and discreditable gloss upon Isaiah xiv. The palace of the light-bringing king is no other than that known to our earliest school-days, in Ovid 1. ad fin. 2. ad init. Phaëthon passes the "positos sub ignibus Indos," and then "patrios adit impiger ortus," where

Milton uses the word as an adjective, as in Ovid, "luciferos, Luna regebat equos." Otherwise it would necessarily signify the Planet Venus, or morning star.

A. N.

Sir Edward Seaward's Narrative (Vol. v., p. 185.).

—Miss Porter's letter speaks of the piety and domestic concord of the Seawards. Your readers may be amused to know that this piety affords one proof of the fiction of the narrative. They sometimes give the dates both of the day of month and week, and derive together much comfort from the singular applicability of passages in the lessons for the day. When I was reading the book, the days of the month and week fell the same as in the narrative, and as it happened to be at the same time of year too, I made the unpalatable discovery, that, however suitable the passages might be, they were not as they professed to be, at least not always, from the lesson of the day.

P. P.

Spanish Verses on the Invasion of England (Vol. v., p. 294.).—

L. H. J. T. will find the Spanish verses which form the subject of his Query in Southey's Quarterly Review article on Lord Holland's Life and Writings of Lope de Vega (Quarterly Review, vol. xviii. p. 6.), together with the following lively version:

Southey's reference is, Romancero General. Medina del Campo, 1602, ff. 35. The lines form part of "a child's poem, or, more properly, a poem written in the character of a child (a species of playful composition at that time popular among the Spaniards)," and are quoted by Southey, together with an Ode by Luis de Gongora, to show the exultant anticipation with which the success of the Armada, in which expedition Lope de Vega had entered himself as a volunteer, was expected by the Spaniards.

E. V.

In the second volume of Mr. Ticknor's admirable History of Spanish Literature will be found an English translation of the Spanish ballad referred to by your correspondent L. H. J. T. I am [353] not quite sure whether the Spanish ballad is given by Mr. Ticknor or not; but the following is a part of the English translation:—

These stanzas are cited by Mr. Ticknor to illustrate the state of public feeling which prevailed in Spain respecting Sir Francis Drake and his countrymen. Lope de Vega was also, it will be remembered, the author of a poem on Drake's last expedition and death, entitled La Dragontea.

F. L.

Temple.

Templars (Vol. v., p. 295.).

—With respect to the somewhat modern imposture of the Paris Templars, E. A. H. L. had better consult Thilo's Codex Apocryphus. In the generality of foreign masonic books he will find the derivation of the Freemasons from the Templars asserted as being their tradition. As to "the succession of Grand Masters kept up" by them, I question whether that is asserted by them, or elsewhere than in the Parisian imposture. The masonic formularies called Thuileur, and M. de Bonneville's Maçonnerie Ecossaise, may be consulted. But the history of the order subsequent to that worthy, Jacques de Molai, will not there, or elsewhere, be traced. The facts of common external history which relate to the abolition of that order, such as the foundation of the Portuguese Order of Christ, will all be found in Wilke's German History of the Temple Order.

A. N.

E. A. H. L. will find a valuable Note, with reference to the principal authorities, in Hallam's Supplemental Notes, p. 48. ff. See also Mill's History of Chivalry. The Grand Masters, since the suppression, seem to have been principally Frenchmen. The chief authority is, I believe, the Manuel des Templiers, which is only sold to members of the society.

E. S. JACKSON.

Saffron-Walden.

Story of the Greek referred to by Jeremy Taylor (Vol. iv., pp. 208. 262. 326.).

—It may interest those correspondents of "N. & Q." who, in answer to my Query on the above point, have given references to similar stories in Don Quixote, and the life of St. Nicholas in the Legenda Aurea, to learn that I have lately traced the story to its real source, on which probably the parallel versions in question were based. The name of the Greek was Archetimus of Erythræa; that of the victim of the artifice Cydias of Tenedos. The story is given at length in the Loci Communes J. Stobæi, Antonii Melissæ, et Maximi Monachi, cura Gesner, Serm. cxvi. p. 362. ed. fol. Francof. 1581.

ALEXANDER TAYLOR.

Emaciated Monumental Effigies (Vol. v., p. 247.).

—The legend repeated to me whilst viewing the tomb of John Baret, some few years since, is somewhat different from that related by your correspondent BURIENSIS. A portion of the roof over the tomb is elaborately diapered with stars of lead gilt, collars of SS., and a monogram of the letters I.B., together with the motto, "Grace me governe." (A specimen of the diaper is given in Collings' Gothic Ornaments, 4to., London, 1848.) The sexton informed me that the person commemorated by the emaciated figure had undertaken to diaper the whole roof of the church in a manner similar to the work above his tomb; but, on discovering that his life would be insufficient for the task, was so affected that he starved himself to death. I presume that Bant is a misprint for Baret, in p. 247. of your present volume.

The tradition alluded to by your correspondent has been, I believe, attached by some to the emaciated figure at St. Saviour's, Southwark. A good example of this kind of memorial is found in the ante-chapel of St. John's College Chapel, Cambridge.

What foundation is there for the account, that the superb roof of St. Mary's, Bury St. Edmund's, was constructed in France, and put together after it was brought to England?

W. SPARROW SIMPSON.

Deaths from Fasting (Vol. v., pp. 247. 301.).

—In the Oxford Manual of Sepulchral Brasses, pp. 168-175., will be found a curious list of monumental representations of skeletons and emaciated figures in shrouds (1472-1598), which may, perhaps, prove interesting to BURIENSIS. It is by no means improbable that some of the examples are intended to commemorate persons whose deaths occurred in consequence of fasting.

E. N.

London Genealogical Society (Vol. v., p. 297.).

—I presume your correspondent W. P. A. refers to the Heraldic and Genealogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland for the Elucidation of Family Antiquity, which issued a prospectus a few years ago; but whether or not it is still in existence I am unable to say. Gentlemen desirous of joining the society were requested to transmit their names [354] to the secretary, "William Downing Bruce, Esq., K.C.J., F.S.A., United Service Institution, Whitehall, London," to whom all communications respecting it were to be addressed.

E. N.

Shortly after its establishment, I was appointed corresponding member to the London Genealogical Society, but on going to their rooms one morning, found the concern had "vanished into thin air."

METAOUO.

Martinique (Vol. v., p. 11.).

—There must be some inaccuracy in the reply of MR. PHILIP S. KING (p. 165.) to the Query of your correspondent W. J. C.

A reference to the few authorities to which I have access leads me to suppose that the period of the actual discovery of this island is involved in some obscurity. Washington Irving assumes its identity with the island called by its inhabitants "Mantinino," and that it was the first land made by Columbus on his fourth voyage to the West Indies in 1502. Mr. Major, in his Introduction to the Select Letters of Columbus, published for the Hakluyt Society, inclines to the same opinion. It is extremely probable that Columbus had heard reports of this island when he was among the group of the Caribbees in 1493, but he does not appear to have been then further south than the latitude of Dominica. Peter Martyr, however, alludes to Mantinino, an island of Amazons, as having been passed by the admiral to the north of Guadaloupe, when on his course to Hispaniola. Assuming this to be an error of position, and that the discovery of the island did not really take place until the year 1502, the period at which Columbus was there (June) could have had no influence on its new name, since the days of the two Saints Martin are in November.

I am inclined to think that the name "Martinico" may have been conferred by the Spaniards at some subsequent period; and, supposing it to be a diminutive of Martin, in honour of the lesser St. Martin, pope and martyr, and not him of Tours. Martinique is, of course, the same word Gallicised.

R. W. C.

"The Delicate Investigation," &c. (Vol. v., p. 201.).

—In answer to the Query of ELGINENSIS, as to the book which he calls The Trial of the Princess of Wales, meaning, I presume, the book generally known at the time by the name of The Delicate Investigation, I beg to inform him, that several years ago I was present when the sum of five hundred pounds was paid for a copy of it by an officer high in the service of the then government.

H. B.

Miserrimus (Vol. iv., p. 37.).

—It may be interesting to your correspondent F. R. A. to learn that there is a notice of the demise of the Rev. Thomas Maurice, not Morris, in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1748; but whether this is a typographical error of our old friend Sylvanus Urban or not I am unable to discover, although I have made every research in my power. The celebrated Wordsworth, with other minor poets, have drawn fanciful pictures of the old divine; but, from what little may be learned of his history in the paragraph of his decease above referred to, it is quite evident that all are very far from depicting the real character of the individual who chose such an eccentric epitaph as the sole word

"MISERRIMUS;"

for he is there said to have been "a gentleman very charitable to the poor, and much esteemed."

The original stone which covered his remains, having the word "Miserrimus" spelt with a single r, being nearly obliterated, was renewed many years since by, I believe, one of the gentlemen connected with the cathedral. Your correspondent is correct in stating the work alluded to as being written by the late F. M. Reynolds. I should feel obliged if any one could furnish further particulars of this individual.

J. B. WHITBORNE.

Cynthia's Dragon-yoke (Vol. v., p. 297.).

—For the satisfaction of your Boston correspondent H. T. P., I have been unable to find anything but the following note from Bishop Newton's edition of Milton's works:—

"Dragon-yoke.—This office is attributed to dragons on account of their watchfulness."

So Shakspeare, in Cymbeline, Act II. Sc. 2.:

And in Troilus and Cressida, Act V. Sc. 14.:

Milton has somewhat of the same thought again in his Latin poem, In Obitum Præsulis Eliensis:

TYRO.

Dublin.

I apprehend that Cynthia's Dragon-team is given to her as the reward of her concern in magical rites; of which especially she is the goddess, and the dragon the beast of burden and locomotion.

SAX.

Cromwell's Skull (Vol. v., p. 275.).

—I believe that, by inquiry at Mr. Donovan's the phrenologist, in or near the Strand, something may be heard of Cromwell's skull. I saw, sometime ago, a drawing of it in his window, in a serial publication on phrenology with which he was concerned.

SAX.

Almas-Cliffe (Vol. v., p. 296.).

—In the parish of Innerwick, East Lothian, is a farm named [355] Aimlescleugh, supposed to be a corruption of Elms-cleugh, which may possibly have a common origin with the locality referred to by your Harrowgate correspondent. Strange to say, the first meaning of the word cleugh, or cleuch, as given in Jamieson's Dictionary, is "a precipice, or rugged ascent."

E. N.

Artificial Memory (Vol. v., p. 305.).

—The hexameters on English counties given by C. S. P. remind me of the following verses, which used to assist the oblivious student at Oxford when preparing for an examination on Scripture history. It will be observed that the prosody is not strictly correct.

1. The five Cities of the Philistines. (Josh. xiii. 3.)

Askelon, Azotus, Gath, Gazæque additur Ekron. (Azotus is the same as Ashdod.)

2. The six Cities of Refuge. (Josh. xx. 7-9.)

Bezer, Golan, Gilead, urbes oriente locatæ; Solis ab occasu, Kadesh, Hebronque, Shechem.

3. The seven Deacons. (Acts vi. 5.)

Diaconi Septem, Stephanus, Philipque, Nicanor, Parmenas et Prochorus, Nicholas atque Timon.

4. The seven Churches of Asia. (Rev. i. 11.)

Septem Smyrna, Ephesus, Philadelphia, Laodicea; Pergamos et Sardis, nec Thyatira deest.

E. N.

Punishment of Boiling to Death (Vol. v., pp. 32. 112. 184.).

—It may not be uninteresting to adduce an instance in this town:

"1531. This year here was a maid boiled to death in the Market-place for poisoning her mistress."

J. N. C.

King's Lynn.

Barnard's Church Music (Vol. v., p. 176.).

—In addition to the "odd parts" mentioned by your correspondent AMANUENSIS, may be included a tenor, and a counter-tenor part, in my possession.

MR. BERIAH BOTFIELD, in his Notes on the Cathedral Libraries of England, p. 439., mentioning the music-books in the Library of the Dean and Chapter of Westminster, says:

"I may here notice Day's Service Book, 1565, with music; the tenor, Morning and Evening Prayer, imperfect, but of which only three or four copies are known; Barnard's Cathedral Music, only found elsewhere at Berlin; and several English Music Books of great rarity."

I am tolerably well acquainted with the contents of the Westminster Library, but have not been fortunate enough to discover the copy here mentioned. Perhaps AMANUENSIS may be more lucky. At present I am under the impression that MR. BOTFIELD is in error as to the existence of a copy of Barnard at Westminster.

EDWARD F. RIMBAULT.

Portrait of Baskerville (Vol. iv., p. 211.).

—For the information of your correspondent W. CORNISH, I am enabled to inform him that there is a beautiful portrait of that celebrated typographist Baskerville in the possession of the Messrs. Longman of Paternoster Row, and painted too by that most exquisite of English artists, Gainsborough. Of this portrait there is also a private plate (copper), from which I happen to possess, through the kindness of a very old friend, an impression to add to a collection of Worcestershire portraits.

A former correspondent, Vol. iv., p. 40., states that Mr. Merridew assured him there was no portrait of Baskerville; but Mr. M., in his catalogue of Engraved Warwickshire Portraits, p. 4., notices a "woodcut" from an original picture in the possession of the late Thomas Knott, Esq.

J. B. WHITBORNE.

Autograph Music by Handel (Vol. v., p. 247.).

—I have the pleasure to inform the Rev. W. SPARROW SIMPSON, that the duet mentioned by him:

forms the Fifth Number of Handel's celebrated Chamber Duets, and was first printed, I believe, by the late Dr. Samuel Arnold, in his noble edition of the Works of Handel.

The circumstances attending the composition of these chamber duets are thus alluded to in the anonymous Memoirs of Handel, 8vo., 1759, p. 85.:

"Soon after his [Handel's] return to Hanover [in the year 1711], he made twelve Chamber Duettos, for the practice of the late Queen, then Electoral Princess. The character of these is well known to the judges in music. The words for them were written by the Abbate Mauro Hortensio, who had not disdained on other occasions to minister to the masters of harmony."

I must, however, beg leave to express my opinion that MR. SPARROW's MS. is not an autograph of the great composer, on the ground that the original MSS. of the Chamber Duets are preserved in the Queen's library at Buckingham Palace. Handel used not to make more than one copy of his various pieces, unless (as was seldom the case) he made additions or alterations.

I should mention that a new edition of the Chamber Duets is now in the course of publication by the Handel Society.

EDWARD F. RIMBAULT.

Dr. Fell (Vol. v., p. 296.).

—Your correspondent, who inquires about the lines of which the above is the subject, may find some answer to his question in Life of Canning, by R. Bell, p. 193., where, after describing the various attempts of the Pitt party to get Addington to resign the premiership, it is said: "In vain Sheridan exhausted his wit upon Addington, and threw the House into convulsions by his parody on Martial:

E. B.

The author of the lines is Tom Brown, the witty and facetious writer of [356] Dialogues of the Dead, in imitation of Lucian, &c., who being about to be expelled the University of Oxford for some fault, was pardoned by the Dean of Christchurch on the condition that he should translate extempore the epigram from Martial, xxxiii.:

which he instantly rendered:

R. I. S.

[We are indebted to BOSQUECILLIO VIEGO, and other correspondents, for similar replies.]

Fernseed (Vol. v., p. 172.).

—This was considered a charm of the highest potency. It not only preserved the fortunate possessor against the malignant influences of demon, witch, and sorcerer, but enabled him to render himself invisible at pleasure:

quoth honest Gadshill (Henry IV., Part I. Act II. Sc. 1.). The difficulty and danger with which it could only be obtained, apparently tended much to enhance its magical value in the estimation of the cabalist. It was to be gathered, after solemn fasting, and the performance of mystic ceremonies now unknown, on Midsummer Eve, at the very instant in which the Baptist's birth took place. The spiritual world was arrayed in fierce hostility against the daring gatherer. The fairies used every effort to preserve it from human possession, with an inveteracy which showed what high value they put upon it. As to the danger resulting from their hostility, Richard Bovet, in his Pandæmonium (p. 217., London, 1684), gives curious evidence:—

"Much discourse hath been about gathering of fern-seed (which is looked upon as a magical herb) on the night of Midsummer Eve; and I remember I was told of one who went to gather it, and the spirits whisk't by his ears like bullets, and sometimes struck his hat, and other parts of his body; in fine, though he apprehended he had gotten a quantity of it, and secured it in papers, and a box besides, when he came home he found all empty. But, most probable, this appointing of times and hours is of the devil's own institution, as well as the fast; that having once ensnared people to an obedience to his rules, he may with more facility oblige them to stricter vassalage."

The fern-seed charm is amply discussed in Brand's Popular Antiquities, vol. i. p. 314. (Bohn's edition.)

R. S. F.

Perth.

Any of your readers who have access to an amusing book called The Radical, by Samuel Bamford, may see most appalling account of an adventure connected with the gathering of fern-seed, and other superstitions.

P. P.

Longevity and Rejuvenescency (Vol. v., p. 276.).

—I beg to refer your sceptical correspondent to Fuller's Worthies (county of Northumberland) for a remarkable instance of longevity; viz. Patrick Machell Vivan, Vicar of Lesbury, near Alnwick. Percival Stockdale, in his Memoirs, gives some further particulars respecting his predecessor; and I extract from that work (vol. i. p. 149.) a letter written by the venerable old man, wherein he gives an account of himself. It is dated Oct. 9, 1657, and addressed to one William Lialkus, a citizen of Antwerp.

"Whereas you desired a true and faithful messenger should be sent from Newcastle to the parish of Lesbury, to inquire concerning John Maklin; I gave you to understand that no such man was known ever to be, or hath lived there for these fifty years past, during which time I, Patrick Makel Wian, have been minister of that parish, wherein I have all that time been present, taught, and do yet continue to teach there. But that I may give you some satisfaction, you shall understand that I was born in Galloway in Scotland, in the year 1546, bred up in the University of Edinburgh, where I commenced Master of Arts, whence, travelling into England, I kept school, and sometimes preached, till in the first of King James I was inducted into the church of Lesbury, where I now live. As to what concerns the change of my body, it is now the third year since I had two new teeth, one in my upper, the other in my nether jaw, as is apparent to the touch. My sight, much decayed many years ago, is now, about the 110th year of my age, become clearer; hair adorns me heretofore bald skull. I was never of a fat, but a slender mean habit of body. My diet has ever been moderate, nor was I ever accustomed to feasting and tippling: hunger is the best sauce; nor did I ever use to feed to satiety. All this is most certain and true, which I have seriously, though overhastily, confirmed to you, under the hand of PATRICK MAKEL WIAN, Minister of Lesbury."

Mr. Stockdale adds, that there is a tradition that when the Plague visited Lesbury, in the reign of Charles II., those who were infected were removed to tents on the neighbouring moor, where the venerable pastor attended them with great assiduity, ministering to their wants temporal and spiritual. The date of his death is unknown.

E. H. A.

Indignities on the Bodies of Suicides (Vol. v., p. 272.).

—I much doubt whether burying in cross roads was originally meant as an indignity. I think this is nearly connected with my still unanswered Query, What is a Tye? Vol. iii., p. 263. I suspect suicides were buried in a cross road, because that was a place where a cross or crucifix stood, and only second in sanctity to the churchyard; and the stake driven through the body was perhaps first intended not as an insult, but to keep the ghost of the suicide from walking on the earth again.

I would willingly believe our ancestors were [357] not always such savages as R. S. F. shows us the Scotch once were in this respect. I fear at that time we were not much better.

A. HOLT WHITE.

To my previous Note, I beg leave to append a passage from Arnot's Criminal Trials (p. 368.), which may tend to throw some light on this subject. In speaking of the witch prosecutions in Scotland, this writer says:

"If an unfortunate woman, trembling at a citation for witchcraft, ended her sufferings by her own hand, she was dragged from her house at a horse's tail, and buried under the gallows."

R. S. F.

Perth.

Large Families (Vol. v., pp. 204. 304.).

—To the instances of unusually large numbers of children by one mother given in "N. & Q." may be added that of a Lady Elphinstone, who is said, by tradition, to have had no less than thirty-six children, of whom twenty-seven were living at one time.

There is a story told of this lady and her husband, Lord Elphinstone, which seems to corroborate the tradition; it is, that they once asked a new and somewhat bashful acquaintance to visit them, telling him that he should meet no one but their family circle. Their guest arrived shortly before dinner, and, being shown through the dining-hall on his way to the drawing-room, was much disconcerted at seeing a long table laid for about twenty people. On remonstrating with his host and hostess for having taken him in, as he thought, he was quietly informed that he had been told no more than the truth, for that their family party, when all assembled, only fell short of thirty by one.

I believe that John eighth Lord Elphinstone and his lady, a daughter of the Earl of Lauderdale, who lived in the latter part of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries, are the pair to whom this story refers; and, though the Scotch peerages make no mention of any such phenomenon in the Elphinstone family, yet I am strongly inclined, from the goodness of the authority from which I derive the tradition, to believe it to be true; the more so, as it is now acknowledged that the Scotch peerages, not excepting Douglas's, which has hitherto been the chief book of reference respecting the noble families of Scotland, are so full of errors and omissions, that very little reliance can be placed on them.

Can any of your readers inform me whether any documentary evidence exists that a lady Elphinstone had this extraordinary number of children?

C. E. D.

Twenty-seven Children, &c.

—About fifty years ago, Mrs. Edwards, residing in Quickset Row, New Road, had her twenty-eighth child, each a single birth; they were all born alive, and all lived several months, but she never had more than ten living at a time.

A former pupil of mine knew a lady, of whom he wrote to me, that she had borne thirty children, all single births; seven only of them arrived at the age of manhood. He says, "This statement may be relied upon with the utmost confidence as a fact."

S. M.

The last of the Palæologi (Vol. v., p. 280.).

—This is a most interesting subject; I beg to refer your readers to Archæologia, vol. xviii. p. 93., and to Burn's History of Foreign Refugees, p. 230.

J. S. B.

Miscellaneous.

NOTES ON BOOKS, ETC.

The readers of "N. & Q." who are lovers of Folk Lore are, we well know, very numerous; those who take an interest in that subject, and are at the same time acquainted with the great philological acquirements of the learned editor of the Ancient Laws and Institutes of England, we have no doubt shared our satisfaction at the announcement that Mr. Thorpe had undertaken a work, comprehensive yet not too voluminous, in which he would exhibit the ancient mythology and principal mythologic traditions of Scandinavia and the North of Germany. The book is now before us; and in three small volumes, entitled Northern Mythology, comprising the principal popular Traditions and Superstitions of Scandinavia, North Germany, and the Netherlands, Mr. Thorpe has presented us with such an amount of information illustrative of the intimate connexion subsisting between the heathenism of the Germanic nations of the Continent and that of our Saxon forefathers, gathered from the writings of the best scholars of Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and the Low Countries, as was never before within the reach of the mere English student, and, in so doing, has produced a book which the general reader will devour for the sake of the amusement to be found in it, the philosopher for the view of the human mind which it presents, and the antiquary for the abundance of new light which it throws upon many of the most obscure points in the Folk Lore of Merry England. We shall probably often have occasion to refer to it, in illustration of communications upon a subject which is yet far from exhausted.

We were reminded, by the excellent explanation of the word Bigot, quoted by a correspondent in our last Number (p. 331.) from the Rev. R. Chevenix Trench's Lectures On the Study of Words, of a duty we owed to our readers, namely, that of calling their attention more directly to this admirable little volume. The Lectures, which are "On the Morality in Words," "On the History in Words," "On the Rise of New Words," "On the Distinction of Words," and "The Schoolmaster's Use of Words," may be said to be a continuous and well-digested series of proofs of the truth of the remark, that "there are cases in which more knowledge of more value may be conveyed by the history of a word, than [358] by the history of a campaign." The book is, indeed, altogether a delightful one, calculated not only to delight the understanding, but do so in such a spirit as shall leave the reader a better as well as a wiser man.

Fraser's Magazine for the present month opens with an article on a subject which will doubtless interest many of our readers. It is entitled The Colleges of Oxford, and exhibits, with much clearness, a sketch of their origin and history, and is obviously introductory to the consideration of their future policy.

The Afghans, the Ten Tribes, and the Kings of the East. The Druses, the Moabites, by the Right Hon. Sir G. H. Rose, is, as the ample title shows, an endeavour to establish the identity of the Afghans with the Ten Tribes, and of the Druses with the Moabites; and the argument is carried on in a manner which reflects the highest credit upon the learning and reverent spirit of the writer.

The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero literally translated, by C. D. Yonge, vol. iii., is the new volume of Bohn's Classical Library, and contains the orations for his house, Plancius, Sextius, Cælius, Milo, Ligarius, &c.

A few Remarks on the Emendation "Who Smothers her with Painting," in the Play of Cymbeline, discovered by Mr. Collier in a corrected Copy of the Second Edition of Shakspeare, by J. O. Halliwell. A pamphlet in which Mr. Halliwell defends the old reading,

against the ingenious suggestion of the anonymous emendator of Mr. Collier's second folio.

BOOKS AND ODD VOLUMES
WANTED TO PURCHASE.

BACK'S VOYAGE OF THE TERROR, 8vo.

BACK'S OVERLAND JOURNEY IN THE ARCTIC REGIONS, 8vo.

L'HISTOIRE DE LA SAINCTE BIBLE, par ROYAUMONDE: à Paris, 1701.

JOHNSON'S (DR. S.) WORKS, by MURPHY. Trade Edition of 1816, in 8vo. Vol. XII. only.

SCOTT'S CONTINUATION OF MILNER'S CHURCH HISTORY. Vol. II. Part II. 8vo.

WINKELMAN'S REFLECTIONS ON THE PAINTING OF THE GREEKS, translated by FUSELI. London, 1765, 8vo.

ROYAL PROCLAMATIONS IN ENGLAND IN THE YEAR 1688, EXTENDING TO AND INCLUDING THE YEAR 1707. London, folio.

TYRWITT'S SOLID REASONS FOR PHILOSOPHIZING. Winchester, 1652.

BENTLEY'S MISCELLANY. The first two Volumes. In Numbers preferred.

MARVELL'S WORKS. 3 Vols. 4to.

MARVELL'S (ANDREW) LIFE.

KINGSTON-ON-HULL, any work upon.

EDWIN AND EMMA. Taylor, 1776. 5s. will be given for a perfect copy.

JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. Vol. V. Part I.

—— —— —— —— Vols. VIII. and IX. in Numbers.

POPE'S WORKS, BY WARTON, 1797. Vol. IV.

ROSCOE'S NOVELIST'S LIBRARY.—TRISTRAM SHANDY. Vol. II.

LINGARD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 4to. edit. Vol. VII.

LEBEUF, TRAITE HISTORIQUE SUR LE CHANT ECCLESIASTIQUE.

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