Read Ebook: Notes and Queries Number 139 June 26 1852 A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men Artists Antiquaries Genealogists etc. by Various Bell George Editor

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NOTES:-- Page

Dr. Thomas Morell's Copy of H. Stephens' Edition of AEschylus, 1557, with MSS. Notes, by Richard Hooper 604

Episode of the French Revolution, by Philip S. King 605

Milton indebted to Tacitus, by Thomas H. Gill 606

Minor Notes:--Note by Warton on Aristotle's "Poetics"-- Misappropriated Quotation--The God Arciacon--Gat-tothed-- Goujere--The Ten Commandments in Ten Lines--Vellum-bound Books 606

QUERIES:--

Thomas Gill, the Blind Man of St. Edmundsbury 608

Bronze Medals, by John J. A. Boase 608

Acworth Queries 608

Minor Queries:--"Row the boat, Norman"--The Hereditary Standard Bearer--Walton's Angler; Seth's Pillars; May-butter; English Guzman--Radish Feast--What Kind of Drink is Whit?--"Felix natu," &c.--"Gutta cavat lapidem"--Punch and Judy--Sir John Darnall--The Chevalier St. George--Declaration of 2000 Clergymen--MS. "De Humilitate"--MS. Work on Seals--Sir George Carew--Docking Horses' Tails--St. Albans, William, Abbot of--Jeremy Taylor on Friendship--Colonel or Major-General Lee-- "Roses and all that's fair adorn" 609

MINOR QUERIES ANSWERED:--Donne--Dr. Evans 611

REPLIES:--

Carling Sunday; Roman Funeral Pile 611

Hart and Mohun 612

Burial without Religious Service--Burial, by Alfred Gatty 613

"Quod non fecerunt Barbari," &c. 614

Restive 614

Men of Kent and Kentish Men, by George R. Corner 615

Replies to Minor Queries:--Speculum Christianorum, &c.-- Smyth's MSS. relating to Gloucestershire--M. Barri?re and the Quarterly Review--"I do not know what the truth may be"--Optical Phenomena--Stoup--Seventh Son of a Seventh Son--The Number Seven--Commentators--Banning or Bayning Family--Tortoiseshell Tom Cat--A Tombstone cut by Baskerville--Shakspeare, Tennyson, &c.--Rhymes on Places--Birthplace of Josephine--The Curse of Scotland--Waller Family--"After me the Deluge"--Sun-Dial Motto--Lines by Lord Palmerston--Indian Jugglers--Sons of the Conqueror--Saint Wilfrid's Needle--Frebord-- Royd--Spy Wednesday--Book of Jasher--Stearne's Confirmation and Discovery of Witchcraft--Lines on Chaucer--Fairlop Oak--Boy Bishop at Eton--Plague Stones; Mr. Mompesson--Raleigh's Ring--Pandecte, an entire Copy of the Bible 616

MISCELLANEOUS:--

Notes on Books, &c. 622

Books and Odd Volumes wanted 622

Notices to Correspondents 623

Advertisements 623

Notes.

POPULAR STORIES OF THE ENGLISH PEASANTRY,

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

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

"Mad as Christians used to be About the seventeenth century, There's others to be had In this the nineteenth just as bad."

"Jesus the name, high over all, In hell, or earth, or sky, Angels and men before Him fall, And devils fear and fly!"

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

T. STERNBERG.

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

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

RICHARD HOOPER.

St. Stephen's, Westminster.

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

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

S. W. SINGER.

EPISODE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

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

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

Victor Hugo's lines are the following:--

"S'?lan?ant au travers des armes: --Mes amis, respectez ses jours! --Crois-tu nous fl?chir par tes larmes? --Oh! je vous b?nirai toujours! C'est sa fille qui vous implore; Rendez-le moi; qu'il vive encore! --Vois-tu le fer d?j? lev?; Crains d'irriter notre col?re; Et si tu veux sauver ton p?re, Bois ce sang....--Mon p?re est sauv?!"

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

PHILIP S. KING.

MILTON INDEBTED TO TACITUS.

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

"Fame is the spur which the clear spirit doth raise To scorn delights, and live laborious days."

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

"Erant, quibus appetentior famae videretur, quando etiam sapientibus cupido gloriae novissima exuitur."

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