Chapter 1

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NOTES AND QUERIES:

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

"When found, make a note of."--CAPTAIN CUTTLE.

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No. 196.] SATURDAY, JULY 30. 1853.. [Price Fourpence. Stamped Edition 5d.

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CONTENTS.

NOTES:-- Page Books chained to Desks in Churches: Font Inscription: Parochial Libraries, by W. Sparrow Simpson, B.A. 93 Real Signatures _versus_ Pseudo-names, by the Rev. James Graves 94 Popular Stories of the English Peasantry, by Vincent T. Sternberg 94 Shakspeare Correspondence, by Cecil Harbottle, &c. 95 Epitaph and Monuments in Wingfield Church, Suffolk 98 Original Royal Letters to the Grand Masters of Malta 99

MINOR NOTES:--Meaning of "Clipper"--Anathema, Maran-atha--Convocation and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts--Pigs said to see the Wind--Anecdote of the Duke of Gloucester 100

QUERIES:-- Lord William Russell 100 Ancient Furniture--Prie-Dieu 101

MINOR QUERIES:--Reynolds' Nephew--Sir Isaac Newton--Limerick, Dublin, and Cork--Praying to the West--Mulciber--Captain Booth of Stockport--"A saint in crape"--French Abbes--What Day is it at our Antipodes?--"Spendthrift"--Second Growth of Grass-- The Laird of Brodie--Mrs. Tighe, Author of "Psyche"-- Bishop Ferrar--Sir Thomas de Longueville--Quotations wanted--Symon Patrick, Bishop of Ely: Durham: Weston: Jephson--The Heveninghams of Suffolk and Norfolk-- Lady Percy, Wife of Hotspur (Daughter of Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March)--Shape of Coffins--St. George Family Pictures--Caley (John), "Ecclesiastical Survey of the Possessions, &c. of the Bishop of St. David's," &c.--Adamson's "Lusitania Illustrata"--Blotting-paper-- Poetical Versions of the Fragments in Athenaeus 102

REPLIES:-- Robert Drury 104 The Termination -by 105 The Rosicrucians, by William Bates 106 Inscriptions on Bells, by W. Sparrow Simpson, B.A. 108 Was Cook the Discoverer of the Sandwich Islands? by C. E. Bagot 108 Megatherium Americanum, by W. Pinkerton 109

Photographic Correspondence:--Stereoscopic Angles--Yellow Bottles for Photographic Chemicals 109

REPLIES TO MINOR QUERIES:--Earth upon Earth, &c.--Picalyly--Mr. Justice Newton--Manners of the Irish--Arms of the See of York--"Up, Guards, and at 'em!"--Coleridge's Christabel: the 3rd Part--Mitigation of Capital Punishment--The Man with the Iron Mask-- Gentleman executed for Murder of a Slave--Jahn's Jahrbuch--Character of the Song of the Nightingale, &c. 110

MISCELLANEOUS:-- Books and Odd Volumes wanted 114 Notices to Correspondents 114 Advertisements 115

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Notes.

BOOKS CHAINED TO DESKS IN CHURCHES: FONT INSCRIPTION: PAROCHIAL LIBRARIES.

It would be interesting to have a complete list of the various books still to be found chained to desks in our ancient churches. The "Bible of the largest volume," the "Books of Homilies allowed by authority," and the Book of Common Prayer, are ordered by Canon 80. to be provided for every church. In some places this regulation is still complied with: at Oakington, Cambridgeshire, a copy of a recent (1825) edition of the Homilies lies on a small desk in the nave. But besides these authoritative works, other books are found _chained_ to their ancient desks: at Impington, Cambridgeshire are, or were, "three black-letter volumes of Fox's _Martyrs_ chained to a stall in the chancel." (Paley's _Ecclesiologist's Guide, &c._) At St. Nicholas, Rochester, chained to a small bracket desk at the south side of the west door, is a copy of _A Collection of Cases and other Discourses to recover Dissenters to the Church of England_, small 8vo., 1718. The _Paraphrase_ of Erasmus may probably be added to the list (see Professor Blunt's _Sketch of the History of the Reformation_, 10th edit., p. 130.), though I cannot call to mind any church in which a copy of this work may now be found. In the noble minster church at Wimborne, Dorsetshire, is a rather large collection of books, comprising some old and valuable editions: all these books were, and many still are, chained to their shelves; an iron rod runs along the front of each shelf, on which rings attached to the chains fastened to the covers of the works have free play; these volumes are preserved in an upper chamber on the south side of the chancel. The parochial library at St. Margaret's, Lynn, Norfolk, is one of considerable interest and importance; amongst other treasures are a curious little manuscript of the New Testament very neatly written, a (mutilated) black-letter copy of the _Sarum Missal_, and many fine copies of the works of the Fathers, and also of the Reformers; these are preserved in the south aisle of the chancel, which is fitted up as a library, and are in very good order. At Margate Church are a few volumes, of what kind my note-book does {94} not inform me. I may also mention, in connexion with St. Nicholas, Rochester, that the font is octagonal, and inscribed with the following capital letters, the first surmounted by a crown:

C . R . I . * . * . * . A . N.

The large panel on each side contains one of the letters; the font is placed close to the wall, so that the remaining letters, indicated by asterisks, cannot now be read: the sexton said that the whole word was supposed to be "Christian," or rather "Cristian." Beside the font is a very quaint iron bracket-stand, painted blue and gold, "constructed to carry" two candles.

W. SPARROW SIMPSON.

P. S.--Permit me to correct an error of the press in my communication at p. 8. of your present volume, col. 1. l. 10. from bottom; for "worn," read "won."

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REAL SIGNATURES VERSUS PSEUDO-NAMES.

It is pleasant to see so many of the correspondents of "N. & Q." joining in the remonstrance against the anonymous system. Were one to set about accumulating the reasons for the abandonment of pseudo-names and initials, many of the valuable columns of this periodical might be easily filled; such an essay it is not, however, my intention to inflict on its readers, who by a little thought can easily do for themselves more than a large effusion of ink on the part of any correspondent could effect. I shall content myself with recounting the good which, in one instance, has resulted from a knowledge of the real name and address of a contributor.

The REV. H. T. ELLACOMBE (one of the first to raise his voice against the use of pseudo-names) having observed in "N. & Q." many communications evincing no ordinary acquaintance with the national Records of Ireland, and wishing to enter into direct communication with the writer (who merely signed himself J. F. F.), put a Query in the "Notices to Correspondents," begging J. F. F. to communicate his real name and address. There in all probability the matter would have ended, as J. F. F. did not happen to take "N. & Q.," but that the writer of these lines chanced to be aware, that under the above given initials lurked the name of the worthy, the courteous, the erudite, and, yet more strange still, the _unpaid_ guardian of the Irish Exchequer Records--James Frederick Ferguson,--a name which many a student of Irish history will recognise with warm gratitude and unfeigned respect. Now it had so happened that by a strange fortune MR. ELLACOMBE was the repository of information as to the whereabouts of certain of the ancient Records of Ireland (see MR. ELLACOMBE'S notice of the matter, Vol. viii., p. 5.), abstracted at some former period from the "legal custody" of some heedless keeper, and sold by a Jew to a German gentleman, and the result of his communicating this knowledge to Mr. Ferguson, has been the latter gentleman's "chivalrous" and successful expedition for their recovery. The _English Quarterly Review_ (not _Magazine_, as MR. ELLACOMBE inadvertently writes), in a forthcoming article on the Records of Ireland, will, it is to be hoped, give the full details of this exciting record hunt, and thus exemplify the _great utility_, not to speak of the _manliness_, of real names and addresses, _versus_ false names and equally Will-o'-the-Wisp initials.

JAMES GRAVES.

Kilkenny.

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POPULAR STORIES OF THE ENGLISH PEASANTRY.

(Vol. v., p. 363. &c.)

Will you allow me, through the medium of "N. & Q.," to say how much obliged I should be for any communications on this subject. Since I last addressed you (about a year ago) I have received many interesting contributions towards my proposed collection; but not, I regret to say, quite to the extent I had anticipated. My own researches have been principally confined to the midland counties, and I have very little from the north or east. Such a large field requires many gleaners, and I hope your correspondents learned in Folklore will not be backward in lending their aid to complete a work which Scott, Southey, and a host of illustrious names, have considered a desideratum in our national antiquities.

I propose to divide the tales into three classes--Mythological, Humorous, and Nurse-tales. Of the mythological I have already given several specimens in your journal, but I will give the following, as it illustrates another link in the transmission of MR. KEIGHTLEY'S Hindustani legend, which appeared in a recent Number. It is from Northamptonshire.

_The Bogie and the Farmer._

Once upon a time a Bogie asserted a claim to a field which had been hitherto in the possession of a farmer; and after a great deal of disputing, they came to an arrangement by agreeing to divide its produce between them. At seed time, the farmer asks the Bogie what part of the crop he will have, "tops or bottoms." "Bottoms," said the spirit: upon which the crafty farmer sows the field with wheat, so that when harvest arrives the corn falls to his share, while the poor Bogie is obliged to content himself with the stubble. Next year the spirit, finding he had made such an unfortunate selection in the bottoms, chose the tops; whereupon cunning Hodge set the field with turnips, thus again outwitting the simple {95} claimant. Tired of this unprofitable farming, the Bogie agrees to hazard his claims on a mowing-match, thinking that his supernatural strength would give him an easy victory; but before the day of meeting, the cunning earth-tiller procures a number of iron bars which he stows among the grass to be mown by his opponent; and when the trial commences, the unsuspecting goblin finds his progress retarded by his scythe coming into contact with these obstacles, which he takes to be some very hard--very hard--species of dock. "Mortal hard docks, these," said he; "Nation hard docks!" His blunted scythe soon brings him to a stand still, and as, in such cases, it is not allowed for one to sharpen without the other, he turns to his antagonist, now far ahead, and inquires, in a tone of despair, "When d'ye wiffle-waffle (whet), mate?" "Waffle!" said the farmer, with a well-feigned stare of amazement, "O, about noon mebby." "Then," said the despairing spirit, "That thief of a Christian has done me;" and so saying, he disappeared and was never heard of more.

Under _Nurse-tales_, I include the extremely puerile stories of the nursery, often (as in the German ones) interlaced with rhymes. The following, from the banks of the Avon, sounds like an echo from a German story-book.

_Little Elly._

In the old time, a certain good king laid all the ghosts, and hanged all the witches and wizards save one, who fell into a bad way, and kept a school in a small village. One day Little Elly looked through a chink-hole, and saw him eating man's flesh and drinking man's blood; but Little Elly kept it all to herself, and went to school as before. And when school was over the Ogee fixed his eyes upon her, and said--

"All go home but Elly, And Elly come to me."

And when they were gone he said, "What did you see me eat, Elly?"

"O something did I see, But nothing will I tell, Unto my dying day."

And so he pulled off her shoes, and whipped her till she bled (this repeated three days); and the third day he took her up, and put her into a rose-bush, where the rain rained, and the snow snowed, and the hail hailed, and the wind blew upon her all night. Quickly her tiny spirit crept out of her tiny body and hovered round the bed of her parents, where it sung in mournful voice for evermore--

"Dark, weary, and cold am I, Little knoweth Gammie where am I."

Of the Humorous stories I have already given a specimen in Vol. v., p. 363.

Any notes of legends, or suggestions of any kind, forwarded to my address as below, will be thankfully received and acknowledged.

VINCENT T. STERNBERG.

15. Store Street, Bedford Square.

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SHAKSPEARE CORRESPONDENCE.

_The old Corrector on "The Winter's Tale."_--I am glad to find that you have another correspondent, and a very able one too, under the signature of A. E. B., who takes the same view of "Aristotle's checks" as I have done; though I think he might have paid me the compliment of _just_ noticing my prior remonstrance on this subject. It is to be lamented, that MR. COLLIER should have hurried out his new edition of Shakspeare, adopting all the sweeping _emendations_ of his newly-found commentator, without paying the slightest heed to any of the suggestions which have been offered to him in a friendly spirit, or affording time for the farther objections which are continually pouring in. At the risk of probably wearying some of your readers, I cannot forbear submitting to you a few more remarks; but I shall confine them on this occasion to one play, _The Winter's Tale_: which contains, perhaps, as many poetical beauties as any single work of our great dramatic bard. With reference to the passage quoted in p. 437., I can hardly believe that Shakspeare ever wrote such a poor unmeaning line as--

" . . . they are false as _dead blacks_."

nor can I perceive any possible objection to the original words "o'er dyed blacks." They may either mean false mourners, putting an _over_ dark semblance of grief; or they may allude figuratively to the material of mourning, the colours of which if _over-dyed_ will not stand. In either of these senses, the passage is poetical; but there is nothing like poetry in "_our dead blacks_."

In p. 450. the alteration of the word "and" to "heaven" may be right, though it is difficult to conceive how the one can have been mistaken for the other. At all events, the sense is improved by the change; but I do not see that anything is gained by the substitution in the next line of "dream" for "theme." Whatever the king said in his ravings about Hermione, might as aptly be called part of his "theme" as part of his "dream." The subject of his _dream_ was in fact his _theme_!

Neither can I discover any good reason for changing, in p. 452.,

" . . . and one may drink, depart, And yet partake no venom,"

into "drink a part." The context clearly shows the author's meaning to have been, that if any one _departed_ at once after tasting of the beverage, he would have no knowledge of what he had drunk; {96} but if he remained, some one present might point out to him the spider in the cup, and _then_ "he cracks his gorge," &c.

In p. 460. MR. COLLIER says that the passage, "dangerous, unsafe lunes i' the king," is mere tautology, and _therefore_ he follows the old corrector in substituting "_unsane lunes_." Now it strikes me that there is quite as much _tautology_ in "_unsane lunes_" as in the double epithet, "dangerous, unsafe." It is, in fact, equivalent to "insane madness;" and, moreover, drags in quite needlessly a very unusual and uncouth word.

In p. 481. we have the last word of the following passage--

"I never saw a vessel of like sorrow, So fill'd and so becoming,"--

converted into "_o'er-running_." This may possibly be the correct reading; but, seeing that it is immediately followed by the words--

" . . . in pure white robes, Like very sanctity,"

I question whether "becoming" is not the more natural expression.

"There weep--and leave it crying,"

is made--

"There _wend_--and leave it crying,"

which I submit is decidedly wrong. I will not be hypercritical, or I might suggest that in that case the words would have been "_thither_ wend;" but I maintain that the change is contrary to the _sense_. The spirit of Hermione never could have been intended to say that the _child_ should be left _crying_. She would rather wish that it might _not cry_! The meaning, as it seems to me, is, that Antigonus should _weep_ over the babe, and leave it while so _weeping_.

In p. 487. the words "missingly noted" are altered to "_musingly_ noted," which is a very questionable improvement. Camillo, _missing_ Florigel from court, would naturally _note_ his absence; and he may have _mused_ over the causes of it, but there could be no necessity for _musing_ to note the fact of his absence: and I cannot help thinking that the word _missingly_ is more in Shakspeare's style.

I cannot subscribe at all to the alteration in p. 492. of the word "unrolled" to "enrolled." To be enrolled _and placed_ in the book of virtue is very like tautology; but I conceive Shakspeare meant Autolycus to wish that his name might be _unrolled_ from the company of thieves and gypsies with whom he was associated, and transferred to the book of virtue.

I am entirely at issue with the old corrector upon his _emendation_ in p. 498.:

" . . . Nothing she does or _seems_, But smacks of something greater than herself;"

he says, ought to be: "Nothing she does or _says_." And how does MR. COLLIER explain this misprint? Why, by stating that formerly "says" was often written "saies." Now, I cannot for the life of me discover why the word "saies" should have been mistaken for "seems," any more than the word "says." But surely the phrase, "nothing she does or seems," is far more poetical and elegant than the other. It says in effect: there is nothing either in her acts or her carriage, "but smacks of something greater than herself." We have positive evidence, however, that the passage could not have been "nothing she does or says," viz. that this speech of Polixenes immediately follows a long dialogue between Florizel and Perdita, which could not have been overheard, because Camillo directly afterwards says to the king:

" . . . He tells her something, That makes her blood look out."

Thereby clearly proving, that the king could not have been remarking on what _she said_.

The transformation of the last-mentioned line into--

"That _wakes_ her blood--look out!"

cannot, I think, be justified on any ground. He tells her something which "makes her blood look out." That is, something which makes her blush rush to the surface to look out upon it! What can be more natural? The proposed alteration is not only unnecessary, but awkward!

In p. 499., if the words "unbraided wares" must be altered, I see no reason for the change to "_embroided_" wares. It seems to me that _embraided_ would be the most proper word.

What possible reason can there be for converting "force and knowledge," in p. 506., to "sense and knowledge?" If I may be excused a play upon the words, I should say the _sense_ of the passage is not at all improved, and the _force_ is entirely lost.

I must protest most decidedly against the correction of the following lines, p. 507.:

" . . . Can he speak? hear? Know man from man? dispute his own estate?"

Dispute his own estate means, _defend_ his property, dispute with any one who questions his rights. The original passage expresses the sense quite perfectly, while "dispose his own estate" appears to me poor and insipid in comparison.

MR. COLLIER'S objection to the speech of Camillo, in p. 514.,

" . . . it shall be so my care To have you royally appointed, as if The scene you play were mine;"

is, that to make the scene appear as if it were Camillo's, could be of no service to the young prince. Now Camillo says nothing about the scene _appearing_ as his. He says he will have the prince royally appointed, as if the scene he played _were_ really his own: that is, as if _he_ were the party interested in it, instead of the prince. {97}

The reading of the old corrector--

" . . . . As if The scene you play were true,"

would be nonsense; because, so far as the prince appearing to be Bohemia's son (which was what he was most anxious about), the scene to be played was _really true_!

The last correction I have now to notice is in the soliloquy of Autolycus in p. 522.: where MR. COLLIER proposes to read, "who knows how that may turn _luck_ to my advantage," instead of "may turn _back_ to my advantage." I see no advantage in the change, but the very reverse. "Who knows but my availing myself of the means to do the prince my master a service, may come back to me in the shape of some advancement?" This seems to me to be the author's meaning, and it is legitimately expressed. How frequently it has been said that an evil deed recoils upon the head of the perpetrator! Then why not a good deed _turn back_ to reward the doer?

CECIL HARBOTTLE.

P. S.--It is rather singular that A. E. B., who, as I have already shown, has so completely _shelved_ me in his remarks upon "Aristotle's checks," should now complain of the very same thing himself, and say that his "humble auxilia have been coolly appropriated, without the slightest acknowledgment." However, as our opinions coincide upon the passage in question, I am not disposed to pick a quarrel with him. I cannot, however, at all concur in his alteration of the passage in _King Lear_: "Our means secure us," to "Our means _recuse_ us." I will certainly leave him "in the quiet possession of whatever merit is due to this _restoration_," or rather this invention! Can A. E. B. show any other instance in which Shakspeare has used the verb _recuse_; or will he point out any other author who has adopted it in the sense referred to? Johnson calls it a "juridical word:" and I certainly have no recollection of having met with it, except in judicial proceedings.

I can neither subscribe to the emendation of A. E. B., nor to that of the old commentator, but infinitely prefer the original words, which appear to me perfectly intelligible. The sense, as it strikes me, is, that however we may desire things which we have not, the _means_ we already possess are sufficient for our security; and even our _defects_ prove serviceable. Blindness, for instance, will make a man more careful of himself; and then the other faculties he enjoys will secure him from harm.

_"King Lear," Act IV. Sc. 1._--

"Our means secure us, and our mere defects Prove our commodities."