Volume 4 — Notes.

RICHARD ROLLE OF HAMPOLE.

If the following "Notes" do not demand too much of your valuable space, they may possibly interest the philological reader, and elicit a number of learned illustrations. They are drawn from a MS. belonging to this University (Dd. I. 1.), of which the main part is a course of metrical sermons upon the Gospels throughout the year. The author of most, if not all, of the pieces, was the famous solitary, Richard Rolle, of Hampole, near Doncaster, who died in 1348.

1. The first sample I shall give is a curious illustration of the way in which the preachers of that age were wont to represent the harshness of the great in their dealings with the poor:

2. The word keling (cod-fish) occurs again in the following passage, where the subject of the preacher is the Incarnation of our Lord:

3. At p. 352. a rebuke is administered to the gourmet in the following terms:

4. The following passage is curious in more respects than one:

5. At p. 372. we have an interesting picture of a nun persecuted by the rest of the sisterhood on account of her stricter living:

6. I will add, in conclusion, a sample from one of the prose treatises contained in the same volume (p. 464.):

"Oþere spices þer ben of pride whiche men & women ben founden inne, & it encresiþ fro day to day, of dyuers atire about þe bodi: as ofte streyte clothes & schorte daggid hodis, chaunsemlees (i.e. shoes) disgised & teyde op strayt in v. or vi. stedis: women with schorte clothis unneþe to þe hipes, booses & lokettes about þe heed, & vile stynkend hornes longe & brode, & oþer dyuers atire, þt I can nought witen ne discryen of surche þinges. Eueri man & woman be his owne juge & loke weel if it be nought þus."

C. H.

St. Catharine's Hall, Cambridge.

NOTES AND QUERIES MSS.

The commencement of a new volume appears to be the signal for new suggestions. May I fire one off as well as others?

In p. 282. of the Third, and in p. 19 of your present volume, you have printed two MSS. relating to Cromwell, which I sent you. No doubt there are many MSS. equally, or indeed more curious and interesting, scattered throughout the country, which would be worthy of preservation in type in your valuable columns, and which may possibly be so preserved. But what shall become of the originals? Would not the possessors of twos or threes of such documents be glad to place them in a safe and useful repository, where they might be preserved and be made available to all who take an interest in our history, whether social or political? And how could this be better effected than by opening a book for their reception and safe custody at your office; such book to be open to the inspection of all applicants, under proper regulations; and, when full, to be deposited in the British Museum as Vol. I. of the "NOTES AND QUERIES MSS.?"

With regard to the two which you have thought worth printing, I would by far prefer such a mode of disposing of them, to consigning them, as trifles, to what might prove the bottomless pit of the Museum, or to returning them to the snug dormitory in which I found them, between the leaves of Bishop Kennett's History of England.

Should this hint find favour in the eyes of yourself and your learned correspondents, not only are these at your service, but I might find another or two to add to them. I think, however, that none should be admitted into the collection but such as were considered worthy of being also preserved in print in "NOTES AND QUERIES."

S. H. H.

St. John's Wood.

[It can scarcely be necessary for us to add that we shall be very glad to do our part towards carrying out the very sensible and practical suggestion of our Correspondent. We shall indeed be glad to show the sense we entertain of the obligations which we, in common with all lovers of literature in this country, owe to the British Museum, by aiding in this or any other well connected scheme for enriching that storehouse of learning, and increasing, if possible, its present usefulness.]

MS. FRAGMENTS OF OLD POETRY.

I have before me a sheet of vellum, part of old tale or tales in verse, which has been used as the cover of a manuscript book. I conceive it to be about the time of Henry VI. Can any of your correspondents, from the following extracts, give me any information as to the author, or the work of which it is a part? There would appear to be parts of two tales, at least.

G. H. D.

[The first of these fragments is obviously a portion of a religious tale (similar to the French Contes Dévots, from one of which it is probably borrowed).

The second is a portion of the Legend of St. Eustace, otherwise named Placidas, which occurs in an earlier metrical English form among the Collections of Lives of Saints in MS. Laud. 108. art. 59.; MS. Digby 86.; MS. Bodl. 779. art. 64.; MS. Vernon, fol. 170; MS. Ashm. 43. art. 73.; and MS. Cott. Cal. A. II. It occurs as prose in the Golden Legend.]

FOLK LORE.

Medical Use of Mice.

—Seeing some Queries and Replies on this subject, I am induced to send you a few extracts from an old book in my possession (marked "very scarce"), published in 1661. Its title is Panzoologicomineralogia, or a Compleat History of Animals and Minerals. By Richard Lovell, St. C. C. Oxon. It treats chiefly of the medicinal uses of the various objects. I am tempted to tell you the use of a "unicorne," but confine myself to the mouse.

"The flesh eaten causeth oblivion, and corrupteth the meat; yet those of Chalecut eat them; it is hot, soft, and fattish, and expelleth melancholy.... A mouse dissected and applied, draweth out reeds, darts, and other things that stick in the flesh.... Mice bruised, and reduced to the consistence of an acopon (what's that?), with old wine, cause hair on the eyebrows.... Being eaten by children when rosted, they dry up the spittle. The magicians eat them twice a month against the paines of the teeth. The water in which they have been boiled helps against the quinsey. Being boiled and eaten, they help children's pissing in bed. The fresh blood kills warts. The ashes of the skinne, applied with vinegar, help the paines of the head. The head worn in a cloth, helps the headach and epilepsy. The braine being steeped in wine, and applied to the forehead, helpeth the headach. Used with water, it cureth the phrensy. The heart, taken out of a mouse WHEN ALIVE, worne about the arme of a woman, causeth no conception. The fillet of the liver, drunk with austere wine, helpeth quartans. The liver, rosted in the new of the moon, trieth the epilepsy. The dung, is corrosive. Given in any liquor, it helpeth the collicke. It looseneth the body; therefore some nurses use it for children in suppositories(?). It helpeth hollow teeth, being put therein."

There is more of the sort, to the extent of 2-¾ closely printed pages. It should be added that the author quotes authorities, old and new, for the several facts he adduces. Pliny is a great authority with him, and Galen is often cited.

J. K.

Legend of Haydon's Gully.

—In the parish of Hinton-Blewett, North Somersetshire, or immediately adjoining it, in the direction of West Harptree, there is a wooded gorge in the hill-side, through which runs a small stream, and which is called "Haydon's Gully." I have lately heard the following tradition respecting it; viz. that a gentleman named Colonel Haydon, who was accused of high treason, used to spend his nights under his brother's roof, somewhere in the neighbourhood, and every morning came and backed his horse into a hole in the bank, where he spent the day in order to evade his pursuers. You will perhaps agree with me, that this story, which, if it has any truth in it, probably refers to Monmouth's days, is worth inquiring into.

ARTHUR WRIGHT.

The Crow Charm and the Lady-bird Charm.

—The following charms are repeated by children throughout Yorkshire and Lancashire, and, I doubt not, in other parts of the kingdom also. They may be classed with the "Snail Charms" (Vol. iii., pp. 132. 179.):

I remember, as a child, sitting out of doors on an evening of a warm summer or autumn day, and repeating the crow charm to flights of rooks, as they winked home to their rookery. The charm was chaunted so long as a crow remained in sight, the final disappearance of them being to my mind proof "strong as Holy Writ" of the efficacy of the charm.

The lady-bird charm is repeated to the insect (the Coccinella septempunctata of Linnæus)—the common seven-spotted lady-bird—to be found in every field and garden during summer.

The lady-bird is placed upon the child's open hand, and the charm is repeated until the insect takes to flight. The warmth and moisture of the hand no doubt facilitate this, although the child believes fully in the moving power of the charm.

N.B. The lady-bird is also known as lady-cow, cow-lady, and is sometimes addressed as cusha-cow-lady.

ROBERT RAWLINSON.

School Superstitions.

—Several appear to exist in schools from generation to generation: do they exist anywhere else? and whence their origin? For instance "a boy who could not span his own wrist was a bastard;" "if you said the Lords Prayer backwards, the devil would come up," &c.

A. C.

The Nightmare.

—I recently observed a large stone, having a natural hole through it, suspended inside a Suffolk farmer's cow-house. Upon inquiry of a labourer, I was informed this was intended as a preventive of nightmare in the cattle. My informant (who evidently placed great faith in its efficacy) added that a similar stone suspended in a bed-room, or a knife or steel laid under the foot of the bed, was of equal service to the sleeper, and that he had himself frequently made use of this charm.

Is this practice common, and in what does it originate?

J. B. C.

EAST NORFOLK FOLK LORE.

1. Cure for Fits.—A similar superstition on this subject to the one mentioned by D. (Vol. i, p. 11.) is prevalent in this vicinity. Nine or eleven young men or maidens (an odd number is indispensable) contribute each a silver coin for the manufacture of the ring. A friend of the sufferer gives out that he is making a collection for the purpose, and calls on the parties expected to contribute, and the coins must be given unasked, to ensure its efficacy. A watchmaker in my parish tells me that he has made ten or a dozen such rings within as many years, and that he has full faith in their curative properties.

2. Cure for Ague.—Being afflicted two years since with a severe tertian ague, I was solicited, after the usual medical treatment had failed, by a lady to take as much of the snuff of a candle as would lie on a sixpence, made into an electuary with honey. I complied and, strange to say, a complete cure was effected. Whether the nausea consequent on such an unpleasant remedy had any effect on the spasmodic nature of the malady, I cannot say; but the fact is certain, and it is esteemed a sovereign specific by the Norfolk rustics.

E. S. TAYLOR.

Martham, Norfolk.

Extreme Ignorance and Superstition.

—In a large village in Dorsetshire, not far from the county town, an intelligent man went recently into the house of a somewhat respectable woman who keeps a general shop in the village, and who is the mother of a numerous family and seeing her with a large family Bible open before her, and several of her children collected around, while she was cutting and paring their finger nails, and so holding their hands as that their cuttings might drop on the leaves of the Bible, he asked her why she did this. Suspecting, by her manner, that she had some object in view, judge of his surprise, when she replied—"I always, when I cut the nails of my children, let the cuttings fall on the open Bible, that they may grow up to be honest. They will never steal, if the nails are cut over the Bible!!" Do we not yet require the educator to be abroad?

T. WE.

Minor Notes.

The Word "Repudiate."

—I cannot help following DR. KENNEDY'S example, and calling attention to another word in our language which is now-a-days, on many occasions, used very erroneously; I allude to the word repudiation, or rather the verb repudiate.

How frequently does one hear at public meetings such phrases as these: "I utterly repudiate the idea," "I repudiate the sentiment," "I repudiate the insinuation." A page might be filled with phrases of this description occurring in reported speeches of recent date. The word, in fact, is made by public speakers of "unadorned eloquence" and newspaper writers, to do duty for such words as to refuse, repel, reject, abandon, disown, cast off.

Now, Sir, I humbly conceive that repudiation means simply a dissolving of the marriage contract, hence of any contract or obligation and I believe I may say with safety, that in no standard classical author, ancient or modern, is the term repudiation, or the verb, repudiate, used, except in connexion with some obligation expressed, or in figurative allusion to such obligation. The term, when applied to the "drab-coloured men of Pennsylvania," is undoubtedly proper; they have indeed repudiated their debt, and perhaps brought the word and the thing into vogue; but to use such a phrase as "I repudiate the notion," is, I submit, surely to talk nonsense.

H. C. K.

—— Rectory, Hereford.

The First Panorama (Vol. iii., p. 526.).

—E. N. W. must have made some mistake in his recollection. Girton was a painter, and may have worked at the Panorama of London; but the "first Panorama" was by Mr. Robert Barker. The sketches were made by his son, Henry Aston Barker, when only a lad aged fifteen. They were taken from the top of the Albion Mills: they were also etched by H. A. Barker at the same age, and aqua-tinted by Birnie, and published in six sheets, 22 by 17, a set of which I possess, with a note of their history, as herein communicated, written in dorso, long ago, from Mr. B.'s own lips.

H. T. E.

E. N. W. is correct in saying, that a semicircular view of London from the top of the Albion Mills, near Blackfriar's bridge, preceded Barker's panoramas. It must have been painted about the year 1793. I saw it at the end of that year, or at the very beginning of 1794. But it was not exhibited in St. Martin's Lane, but in Castle Street, in a rough building—not, I believe, erected for the purpose—at the back of a small house on the eastern side of that street. Perhaps some other of your octogenarian readers may recollect its being there, as well as myself. The scene on the Thames was the water-procession on Lord Mayor's day.

W. D.

Chaucer and Gray (Vol. iii., p. 492).

—MR. THOMS suggests a very interesting parallel between a line in Chaucer, and Gray's "Even in our ashes", &c. Gray himself refers to Petrarch as his original, and the thought occurs in Shakspeare:

And Malone, in a note on the passage (Supplement to Shakspeare, 1780, vol. i. p. 640), adduces the passage in Chaucer quoted by MR. THOMS as an illustration. Steevens has mentioned the following passage in Sir P. Sidney's Arcadia "In ashes of despair, though burnt, shall make thee live." Compare, also, Antony and Cleopatra, Act V. Sc. 2.

J. O. H.

To the verse,

Gray has himself appended a note, indicating that it was suggested by Petrarch, sonnet 169.; and "I will take the poet's word for a thousand pounds." It was originally written—

which has but little to do with Chaucer.

VARRO.

Burns and Propertius.

—There is a strange inclination to attribute similarity of sentiment to plagiarism; as if it were almost impossible for two men of genius to hit upon the same notions, independently of each other. In Propertius (II. i. 3, 4.) we find—

In Burns we read—

Had Burns been much of a Latin scholar, he would probably have been accused of stealing from Propertius.

VARRO.

Shakspeare in Sweden.

—The writings of Shakspeare would appear from the following fact to be read with as much avidity and delight in Sweden as in his native country. A translation of his plays by Hagberg, Professor of Greek in the

University of Lund, is now in course of publication. Of this, twelve volumes have appeared; and although the first edition consisted of no less than two thousand copies, the whole have been sold off, and a second edition is in preparation. Professor Hagberg's translation is most favourably spoken of by those who are qualified to judge of its merits.

W. J. T.