Read Ebook: Notes and Queries Number 196 July 30 1853 A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men Artists Antiquaries Genealogists etc. by Various Bell George Editor

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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

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

Notes.

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

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."

REAL SIGNATURES VERSUS PSEUDO-NAMES.

JAMES GRAVES.

Kilkenny.

POPULAR STORIES OF THE ENGLISH PEASANTRY.

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 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.

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 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 , 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.

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 ; 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--

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.

SHAKSPEARE CORRESPONDENCE.

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

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

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,"--

" . . . 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--

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

The transformation of the last-mentioned line into--

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!

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?"

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;"

The reading of the old corrector--

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

CECIL HARBOTTLE.

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

I should not object to your correspondent A. E. B.'s conjectural emendation, "recuse" for "secure," but that, unless my memory and Ayscough are both deceptive, the word "recuse" is nowhere to be found in Shakspeare; nor, as far as I know, in any dramatist of the age. If it be used by any of the latter, it is probably only in the strict legal meaning, which is quite different from that which A. E. B. would attach to it. This is conclusive with me; for I hold that there is no sounder canon in Shakspearian criticism than never to introduce by conjecture a word of which the poet does not himself elsewhere make use, or which is not at least strongly sanctioned by contemporary employment.

I therefore, as the passage is flat nonsense, return to the well-abused "corrector's" much modester emendation, "wants" for "means."

And now permit one word in defence of this deceased and untoward personage.

I think much of the unpopularity into which he has fallen with a certain class of critics, is owing to their not allowing him fair play.

That text is abominably corrupt beyond a doubt; it contains many impossible readings, which must be misprints or otherwise erroneous; it contains also many improbable readings, harsh, strained, mean, inadequate, and the like.

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