Read Ebook: Notes and Queries Number 171 February 5 1853 A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men Artists Antiquaries Genealogists etc. by Various Bell George Editor

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It is a circumstance not generally known, but believed by the army which served under General Wolfe, that his death-wound was not received by the common chance of war, but given by a deserter from his own regiment. The circumstances are thus related:--The General perceived one of the sergeants of his regiment strike a man under arms , and knowing the man to be a good soldier, reprehended the aggressor with much warmth, and threatened to reduce him to the ranks. This so far incensed the sergeant, that he took the first opportunity of deserting to the enemy, where he meditated the means of destroying the General, which he effected by being placed in the enemy's left wing, which was directly opposite the right of the British line, where Wolfe commanded in person, and where he was marked out by the miscreant, who was provided with a rifle piece, and, unfortunately for this country, effected his purpose. After the defeat of the French army, the deserters were all removed to Crown Point, which being afterwards suddenly invested and taken by the British army, the whole of the garrison fell into the hands of the captors; when the sergeant of whom we have been speaking was hanged for desertion, but before the execution of his sentence confessed the facts above recited."

A portrait of Wolfe by Sir Joshua Reynolds is in possession of Mr. Cole of Worcester.

"Enough for him That Chatham's language was his mother-tongue, And Wolfe's great name compatriot with his own."

H. G. D.

Knightsbridge.

INSCRIPTIONS IN BOOKS.

"THIS BOOK Belongs to . . . . . .

"If thou art borrowed by a friend, Right welcome shall he be To read, to study--not to lend, But to return to me.

"Not that imparted knowledge doth Diminish learning's store; But books, I find, if often lent, Return to me no more.

. . . . . .

"Sancte Liber! venerande Liber! Liber optime, salve! O Animae nostrae, Biblia dimidium!"

A very common formula, in works of a devotional nature, is as follows:

"This is Giles Wilkinson his book. God give him grace therein to look."

We now come to some of a menacing description:

"Si quis hunc furto rapiet libellum, Reddat:--aut collo dabitur capistrum, Carnifex ejus tunicas habebit, Terra cadaver."

And again:

"Si quis hunc librum rapiat scelestus, Atque furtivis manibus prehendat, Pergat ad tetras Acherontis undas Non rediturus."

These last partake somewhat of the character of the dirae and anathemas which are sometimes found at the end of old MSS., and were prompted, doubtless, by the great scarcity and consequent value of books before the invention of printing.

BALLIOLENSIS.

FOLK LORE.

RT.

Warmington.

"The times have been When the brains were out the man would die, That there an end."

But at Raleigh, they say, the old church-bells still ring at Christmas time, deep, deep in earth; and that it was a Christmas-morning custom for the people to go out into the valley, and put their ears to the ground to listen to the mysterious chimes of the subterranean temple. Is this a tradition peculiar to this locality? I fancy not, and seem to have a faint remembrance of a similar belief in other parts. Can any of your correspondents favour "N. & Q." with information hereon?

J. J. S.

W. A.

Drinking-cups made from the wood of the common ivy, and used by children affected with this complaint, for taking therefrom all they require to drink, is current in the county of Salop as an infallible remedy; and I once knew an old gentleman who being fond of turning as an amusement, was accustomed to supply his neighbours with them, and whose brother always supplied him with the wood, cut from his own plantations. It is necessary, in order to be effective, that the ivy from which the cups are made should be cut at some particular change of the moon, or hour of the night, &c., which I am now unable to ascertain: but perhaps some of your readers could give you the exact period.

J. B. WHITBORNE.

Minor Notes.

KIRKWALLENSIS.

"The Earl of Shaftesbury has given notice that he will call the attention of the House to the subject of Convocation after the recess. The exact terms of his lordship's motion have not as yet been announced; but it is understood that it will be in the form of an abstract resolution, somewhat to the following effect:--

"'That this House, considering the consanguinity and concordant consociation of Gog and Magog to be concludent to, and confirmatory of, a consimilar connatural conjunction and concatenation between Convocation and Confession with its concomitant contaminations, and conceiving the congregating, confabulating, and consulting of Convocation to be conducive to controversy and contention, and consequent conflicts, confusion and convulsion, concurs in the conviction that to convene, and to continue Convocation, is a contumacious contravention of the Constitution, and a contrivance for constraint of conscience, and that the contemptible conspiracy, concocted for concerting the constituting and conserving of the continuous concorporal consession and conciliar conference of Convocation, is to be contumeliously conculcated by the consentient and condign condemnation of this House.'"

AGRIPPA.

HENRY H. BREEN.

St. Lucia.

I have never seen, in the ancient accounts of churchwardens, any mention made of a "town plough," which GASTROS notices .

S. S. S.

J. S. WARDEN.

KIRKWALLENSIS.

Queries.

EXCESSIVE RAINFALL.

The following quotation induces me to put a Query to the numerous scientific readers of your widely-circulated publication:

"It is a remarkable circumstance that an unprecedented quantity of rain has fallen during the last year all over the world,--England, Ireland, Europe generally, Africa, India, and even in Australia."

The question of general equality and local excesses may now, through our commerce, have that attention given to it which has hitherto been impossible. It is well worthy of study.

ROBERT RAWLINSON.

BAPTIST VINCENT LAVALL.

I have in my possession a manuscript of about six hundred pages, entitled "Lavall's Tour across the American Continent, from the North Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean, in a more southern Latitude than any yet attempted: performed in the Years 1809 and 1810." A map of the route accompanies it.

The accounts of the country, and of the Indian tribes, correspond with what we learn from other sources; and gentlemen of information in Indian affairs believe the work to be the genuine production of a person who has been over the ground described.

According to this work, Lavall was a native of Philadelphia, and born in 1774. His father, who was a royalist, settled in Upper Canada, and engaged in the fur trade. In 1809 Baptist Vincent Lavall visited England to receive a legacy left him by a relation. Here he was persuaded to join a vessel fitting out for the purpose of trading in the North Pacific. It was a schooner of about two hundred tons, called the Sea Otter, commanded by Captain Niles. This vessel was lost upon the coast of Oregon, on the 15th of August, 1809, whilst Lavall and three of the crew were on shore hunting. They made their way across the continent to New Orleans.

Can any information be furnished from any custom-house in England as to the Sea Otter, Captain Niles?

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