the metropolis. The MS. in question was a copy of the rules of the Order of the Garter as it was intended to be by certain of the advanced reformers. The whole was apparently in the handwriting of Edward VI. But whether this was so or not, the marginal notes and corrections were undoubtedly in his hand. The little book has now found, I am told, its most fitting restingplace in Her Majesty's library; but, lest by any accident so interesting a document should be again lost sight of, I send you a few lines to indicate something of its character from my recollection of a hasty perusal of it. I am not certain of dates and days, but the chapter was summoned for a certain day, which was specified in the illuminated no doubt under the idea that the whole reformation of the order would be quite plain sailing, and settled at a sitting. But the event proved otherwise, and an adjournment for a fortnight or so took place; and then all the principal alterations ended in a compromise, very amusing. The recommendation that such an ungodly motto as "Honi soit qui mal y pense" should be biblified into "Verbum Dei manet in æternum" was simply negatived and the old words reinstated.

copy

Then came the great fight of all. As it was derogatory to the majesty of God that honour should be paid to saints, it was to be ordained that the figures of St. George and the dragon should no longer be the badge of the order; but that, in his place, a simple cross should be substituted. This was not so entirely negatived as in the case of the motto; but the difficulty was got over thus: Suffice it that there is to be on the badge, " a man on horseback,"-not St. George, of course, but whatever you please, my little dears. I am only quoting from a cursory glance; but I think I have shown that we have here a little historical incident not generally known, - that however pliant the nobility might be in church matters, in their own great order they refused to follow the ultra-reformationists. The joke of the "man on horseback" is very rich. The MS. would be well worth printing. J. C. J.

A CORNISH FOLK-SONG.

Now, of all the birds that keep the tree, Which is the wittiest fowl?

O! the cuckoo! the cuckoo's the one, for he Is wiser than the owl!

He dresses his wife in her Sunday's best,
And they never have rent to pay:
For she folds her feathers in a neighbour's nest,
And thither she goes to lay!

He wink'd with his eye, and he button'd his

purse,

When the breeding time began:

For he'd put his children out to nurse

In the house of another man!

BALLAD SOCIETY.-As your notice of this new society (antè, p. 428) has frightened one or two intending subscribers by insinuating that an enormous number of volumes will be issued by us, I beg to state that we do not mean to print all the English ballads, new as well as old, but only the comparatively old ones in the known collections, like the Roxburghe, Bagford, Rawlinson, &c. According to the calculation that DR. RIMBAULT and I made, thirty stout 8vos will hold these collections; and if we can get enough subscribers to enable us to issue three volumes a year, the society's work will be done in ten years. Considering that the Camden has one hundred volumes printed, and the Early English Text already about thirty-five, the Ballad Society will have a most moderate issue, and be exactly fitted for the "moderate library" which you fear it will F. J. FURNIVALL.

swamp.

TEMPLE BAR.-Very shortly I shall issue from the press a cheap little volume, entitled Memorials of Temple Bar, which, divided into six chapters, will give the progressive history of the structure; a brief notice of the ancient highway of Fleet various ceremonials and pageants which have been Street and the Strand; concise accounts of the so intimately connected with the Bar's history; a notice of the building as the modern "Traitors' Gate"; and lastly, "A Ramble round Temple Bar," briefly noting men, time, and things, which have made the neighbourhood so noted in history.

I have received much valuable assistance from many literary friends, and made many references to the Guildhall Library collection; but as many of the readers of "N. & Q." may have curious volumes (not otherwise accessible) in which mention is made of Temple Bar, through the long period of its chequered history, I shall feel very much obliged for any early notes or transcripts upon the subject. T. C. NOBLE. Leicester House, Great Dover Street, S.E.

INTERPOLATIONS IN HORACE.-In the Appendix to the third edition of my Mythology of Greece and Italy, there is a brief essay on this subject, in which such stanzas of the Odes are enumerated as have appeared suspicious in the eyes of various critics. To these I should now feel inclined to add the following, namely, i. 2, 17-20; iii. 6. 9-16; 16, 29-32. I must also confess that I

regard i. 2, 33-40 as being rather suspicious. Horace had, I think, too much taste and tact to represent Augustus as the incarnation of a goddess, and that goddess Venus, not Minerva. This is also the only place in which he terms her Erycina, and gives her Jocus as an attendant; he also only once elsewhere uses Cupido in the singular. The making Augustus to be Mars, though rather strange, is more excusable; for after a career of war, he had laid aside the martial character, and become a prince of peace.

English scholars, who are generally ultra-conservative in these matters, will of course be disposed to pooh-pooh all this; but such names as those of Buttman, Hermann, Lachmann, Meineke, and such like, are, I think, deserving of respect. I should, for my own part, be apt to suspect of a want of the critical faculty any one who could not see that i. 1, 1 & 2, 35 & 36; iii. 17, 2-5; iv. 4, 19-22, could never have been written by Horace. THOS. KEIGHTLEY. SACK.-Allow me to make a note on the word sack, which has been discussed, I believe, in some of your foregoing numbers (3rd S. v. 328, 488; vi. 20, 55).

Sack was a general term used with most wines. "Your best sackes," says Gervase Markham, "are of Xeres in Spain; your smaller, of Gallicia and Portugal; your strong sackes are of the Canaries and Malliga." Sack, in brief, is "nothing but whiskey," a solution which may cause a smile for a moment. Whiskey is from esca, Irish for water or liquor, and swig and suck are from the same root. Isek, as well as bir or beer, is Hebrew for

water or well; and shuke and shkin Chaldean for

liquor or water. Sack, whiskey, and beer, then, mean simply drink. All true etymologies tend to prove themselves in this easy way.

Sec, dry, in French-derived, probably, like ashes, from sheq, the Coptic, and esc, the Hebrew, for fire and heat-is a very out-of-the-way kind of etymon in this case. The French have attached the meaning of dry to some qualities of wine; but they impose upon themselves, being led astray by a false interpretation of the true old phrase. W. D.

New York.

THE "FAVOURITE OF NATURE," written by Miss Kelty, the daughter of a surgeon at Cambridge, was published during my undergraduateship, when I remember being told that the authoress had intended to call her novel by the name of the heroine of it, "Alice Rivers." It was, however, shown in MS. to the late Professor Smyth, at whose suggestion the present title was adopted. The expression "favourites of Nature occurs in the Rambler, of the author of which the professor says in one of his "Lectures" that " no one ever looked into his pages, though but for a moment,

99

Cheapinghaven, Denmark. SHAKESPEARE'S "KING HENRY IV." Part II., Act III. Sc. 2.

"6

Falstaff. Shadow, whose son art thou?

"Shadow. My mother's son, sir.

66

father's shadow! so the son of the female is the shadow Falstaff. Thy mother's son ! Like enough; and the of the male: it is often so indeed; but much of the father's substance."

This is the reading of the old Quartos. The Folios have "but not much." The modern editors, who adopt the older reading, place a note of admiration after the word "substance," as the Cambridge editors have done, "understanding much' in an ironical sense." This ironical sense seems rather out of place here. The old reading is plain enough if we understand but in the sense of without, as in the old motto of the Mackintosh family, "Touch not the cat but the glove." C. G. PROWETT.

Garrick Club.

A SUPPOSED AMERICANISM.-Vanbrugh, in his play of The Mistake (Act I. Sc. 1) uses the verb "to guess" in a way which has been supposed peculiar to the Americans:

1

"If I were, I might find more cause, I guess, than your mistress has given our master here.”

UNEDA.

Philadelphia. EASTER.

There is, in Yorkshire, this singular proper name, which has challenged my attention for a number of years. It is a very uncommon Leeds. I have no doubt that educated persons, one, and seems to be confined to a locality about meaning particularly clergymen at the font, confound it with Esther, but, from a knowledge of the habits of the people who cling to the name, I should say wrongly, and it would be a totally exceptional pronunciation. In some memoranda I have belonging to a person of some intelligence, who employed the dialect orally, but did not af fect it in writing, there is a spelling of the word in the way it is pronounced; and very lately I observed it in print, and for the first time, in a marriage notice in one of the Leeds papers. I remember the name as belonging to several people in the very old locality having Aberford (ten miles from Leeds) for its centre. Does the name exist

in

any other county? It seems to have its duplicate in the festival of Easter, and at least as inti

mate an association with the Saxon mythology. The proper name and the time of Easter have here, too, an identical pronunciation, the a in each case being accented as above. There is further ground for the assumption in that the Saxon pronunciation of Saxon words has been greatly preserved in the locality alluded to. C. C. R.

Queries.

IRISH SONG WANTED.

I possess one verse of an old Irish song, and am desirous of obtaining a correct copy of the remaining stanzas. In the second volume of the Collection of Ancient Music of Ireland, the publication of which was begun by the late Dr. Petrie of Dublin, at p. 10 he has given a setting of an ancient melody most generally known in connection with another song, of which he gives the words as supplied to him by the late eminent Celtic scholar Eugene O'Curry, from a manuscript written in 1780 by a distinguished and wellknown Irish scribe of the county of Clare, named Peter Connell. Dr. Petrie proceeds to say, that as the song is one of Munster origin, so probably is the tune to which it is thus united; and states that it appears to be but a modified form of the popular old Munster melody called "Cad e sin don te sin, nuem-bain ne ann sin do?" or "What's that to him whom it does not concern ?" Writing of the Jacobite relics of Ireland, Dr. Petrie expressed an opinion that although they, to some extent, have contributed to the preservation of many of our fine melodies, yet possibly they have also tended to the extinction of some of the older and possibly better songs to which they had been

united.

Of this ballad, of which Dr. Petrie has given but the popular name, one quatrain only was dictated to me by the late lamented Professor Eugene O'Curry. For the aid of those unacquainted with the characters of the language, I subjoin the pronunciation in English characters, which I take to be that of the county of Clare, of which O'Curry was a native :

"Dha poshamshi lebish na danfad mo ghno, Do suifeadh la ghreinia na pearla a' m' orp; Dha leireen le Watha ne' nuaree shan lo Go dheshin, donteshin na bannan shin dho ?" which is to be thus translated "If I married a slattern who would not do my work,

Who would sit a whole sunny day," a pearl before me; If I welted her with a stick nine times in the day, What is that to the person whom it does not touch?"

I shall not venture to offer any observation on the want of gallantry of the husband who would resort to the argumentum baculinum towards a fair lady whose only delinquency, so far as the

* I. e. for the length of a summer's day.

song informs us, was simply an undue amount of indolence; but, in defence of my countrymen, I may be allowed to say that their leaning has been generally allowed to be rather towards over indulgence than severity to the fairer portion of their kind. And indeed no one who, with a well regulated mind, will read over the genuinely Irish love songs of the true Celtic peasant class, can fail to be struck forcibly with the tenderness and delicacy of feeling which they exhibit, contradistinguished from the modern Anglo-Irish and foreign ribaldry displayed in the cheap productions so liberally imported, and forced often on most reluctant ears in the corrupted atmosphere of the pot-houses, and minor theatres, and low concert rooms of the present day. Of their grossly demoralizing effect it is painful to speak as it deserves. Of this truth the examples so thickly crowd on the reader of Dr. Petrie's charming volumes that it is hard to select a suitable specimen, but, on chance, two might be chosen from among the love songs: one at p. 11 and another at p. 24 of the first volume; or perhaps the exquisitely poetical fairy song at p. 74, which, however, are rather too long to be quoted in these pages.

Sometimes, it must be admitted, they sink a little into feebleness; as, for example, in such as the one which begins thus"Sweet shining daisy, I loved you dearly When I was really

But very young."

But they are never found to degenerate into licentiousness, brutality, or profaneness. Some modern songs are well known to Irish scholars to have been originally written in English, and translated from bad English into worse Irish, and are therefore below criticism. Such, for example, as the well-known street ballad of "Ma Colleen dhas cruthen na mo," or the "Pretty Girl milking her Cow."

But we must not lose sight of the query to which I desire an answer-or, more correctly to speak, answers-namely, the remaining verses of the song first mentioned, its age, and its authorship; as well as that of the air or melody of the same name. A reply from some of your numerous correspondents will oblige GOBBANACH.

BROWNING'S "LOST LEADER."-If it is not an

improper question to ask, seeing that it refers to a living poet, I should be very glad to know who is meant by the "Lost Leader," in Mr. Browning's little poem of this name? Remembering Shelley's sonnet to Wordsworth, in which he reproaches the great poet of nature (unjustly, I think) with being untrue to himself, I think it possible that Mr. Browning may also allude to Wordsworth. An ardent student of Browning, however, tells me

it formerly written "Le Littester," alias "Litster," and sometimes "Lydster"? Ishould be glad to learn from what occupation it may be derived. J. L.

Brasenose College, Oxford.

THE LIVING SKELETON, CLAUDE AMBROISE SEURAT (4th S. i. 138, 256.)-Will any reader oblige by giving, or referring to, some further account than Hone's Every Day Book (vol. i. pp. 1017-1034), of the above Seurat and time of his death, &c.? GLWYSIG.

MR. WILLIAM LOTHIAN witnesses a baptism at Edinburgh in 1735. I am anxious to obtain some information about him. I fancy he was connected with the Russells of Slipperfield and Kingside. Perhaps Mr. Kennedy of Bath can kindly assist me? F. M. S.

8, Inverness Terrace, Kensington Gardens. MEDALS OF NAPOLEON I.-According to a descriptive book of the medals struck at the national mint of France, "by order of Napoleon Bonaparte, by Capt. Laskey, printed for H. R. Young, Paternoster Row, 1818," p. 236, the original die of the medal "for the Princess Elisa broke on being "proved; and M. Andrieu received orders to proceed with a second." Before he had finished it, the battle of Waterloo was fought, and the work was put aside.

At a later period, M. Andrieu sold this second die to two gentlemen visiting Paris, and they sold it "to the publisher."

Can any of your readers inform me what has become of this die-in whose possession it is? Also, is there any instance of a die being sold at the English mint? Is such a transaction al

lowed ?

F. J. J.

Liverpool.

NEEDLEWORK BY MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS: GRAYSTOCK CASTLE.- In the fire which burnt Graystock Castle a few days ago was destroyed a Crucifixion, the work of Mary Queen of Scots, thus described by Lysons, Magna Britannia, vol. iv. ("Cumberland") p. 106:—

"In one of the rooms is the Crucifixion in needlework, by Mary Queen of Scots."

Hutchinson, in his History of the County of Cumberland (vol. i. p. 350), mentions Queen Mary's work

"A small picture in silk embroidery, representing the crucifixion of our Saviour between the two thieves; the work of Mary Queen of Scots, given by her mother, the Duchess of Guise, to a Countess of Arundel, of which there is an account in the handwriting of Henry Charles Howard, on the back of the picture."

Lysons also mentions the certification. Is this Crucifixion by Mary Queen of Scots engraved, and where ? C. Y. RELIGIOUS CEREMONIES.-I have a book en

titled

"The Ceremonies and Religious Customs of the VariousNations of the Known World; with Additions and Remarks omitted by the French Author: whereby the Reader will be informed (in a Concise and Intelligible Style) of the Customs and Ceremonies; in what Manner, and under what Forms Representations, Signs, &c., the several Nations under both Hemispheres worship a Supreme Being."

Can anyone tell me who wrote the above book P It was published in 1741. T. T. DYER.

SUBAH OF BENGAL.

"Bungaleh, originally, was called Bung; it derived the additional al from that being the name given to the mounds of earth which the ancient râjas caused to be raised in the lowlands at the foot of the hills; their breadth was usually twenty cubits, and height ten cubits. The periodical rains commence in April, and continue for somewhat more than six months. During this season the lowlands are sometimes overflowed excepting the mounds of earth above referred to."-Gladwin's Ayin Akbari, vol. ii. p. 4-5.

the râajas of Banga were the als or mounds above In what year, and during the reign of which of described constructed? Would not canal embankments be a more intelligible rendering of the al than mounds? Is it Bengali ?

R. R. W. ELLIS.

Starcross, near Exeter.

*

SYLLABUB: RARE.-Will any of your writers be so good as to tell me the derivation of syllabus, and rare in the sense of underdone, as I have heard it used in the United States, and in England also when I was young?

UMBRA.

UPTON-ON-SEVERN.

Does any history of the Roses, mention the town of Upton-on-Severn, or wars in Stephen's reign, or during the wars of the allude to it as having the only bridge on the Severn between Gloucester and Worcester? Any information about this town, or its immediate neighbourhood, will be very acceptable. E. M. Q.

Rectory, Upton-on-Severn.

known to be extant of Sir Cornelius Vermuyden, PORTRAIT OF VERMUYDEN.-Is any portrait Hatfield Chase, in the counties of Lincoln and the Dutch engineer who drained the Level of York, in the reign of Charles I.?

K. P. D. E.

CEREMONIALS AT THE INDUCTION OF A VICAR, At the induction of the Vicar of Blackburn a few days ago it is said that "the sexton placed the key of the church in the north door, which was locked." Canon Richson having read the mandate " took the hand of Canon Birch," the new vicar, "and placed it on the key;" having opened the door, they entered; and after the service the new vicar "ascended the tower and tolled one of the bells four times in order to announce his in

Surely this is only another form of raw. — "N. & Q."

- ED.