Volume 4 — Notes.

TRADITIONS FROM REMOTE PERIODS THROUGH FEW HANDS.

On two or three occasions in the "NOTES AND QUERIES" instances have been given of "Traditions from remote periods through few hands," of which it would not be difficult to adduce numerous additional examples; but my present purpose is to mention some within my personal experience, or derived from authentic communication.

In 1781, and my eleventh year, a schoolfellow took me to see his great-grandmother, a Mrs. Arthur, in Limerick, then aged one hundred and eight years, whose recollection of that city's siege in 1691, when she was eighteen, was perfectly fresh and unimpaired, as, indeed, she was fond of showing by frequent and even unsolicited recurrence to its dread scenes, in which the women, history tells us, fearlessly participated. We are here then presented with an interval of one hundred and sixty years between a memorable event and my recollection of its narrative by a person actively engaged in it. The old lady's family had furnished a greater number of chief magistrates to Limerick than any other recorded in its annals.

Again in 1784, on a visit to my grandfather in the county of Limerick, during a school vacation, I heard him, then in his eighty-sixth year, say, that in 1714, on the accession to the British throne of the present royal dynasty, he heard in Cork, where he was at school, a conversation between several gentlemen on this change of the reigning family, when one of them, a Mr. Martin, said that he was born the same day as Charles II., on the 29th of May, 1631, and was present at the execution of Charles I., the 29th of January, 1649. His family then resided in London, where he joined Cromwell's Ironsides, and thence accompanied them to Ireland. The transfer to him of some forfeited property naturally induced him to settle there. Thus, between me and the eye-witness of the regicidal catastrophe, only one person intervenes.

In 1830 there died in London, at the eastern extremity, called the World's End, an Irishman, aged one hundred and eleven, named Gibson, whose father, a Scotchman, he told me, served under the Duke of Monmouth at the battle of Sedgemore in July, 1685, and afterwards, in July, 1690, under William, at the Boyne. Supposing, as we well may, the father to have been born about 1660, in 1830, before the son's decease, the two successive lives thus embrace one hundred and seventy years. I had rendered the son some services which made him very communicative to me. The father married and settled in Tipperary, where he became a Roman Catholic, and no adherent of O'Connell could be more ardent in his cause than the son. This veteran had served full seventy years in the royal navy.

In 1790 I recollect an old man of a hundred and twenty, who appeared before the French National Assembly, and gave clear answers to questions on events which he had witnessed one hundred and ten years before.

Similar lengths of personal remembrance are related of old Parr, Lady Desmond, and others, whose ages exceeded one hundred and forty years. The daughter-in-law of the French king, Charles IX. (widow of his natural son, the Duke of Angoulême), survived that monarch by a hundred and thirty-nine years (1574-1713),—a rare, if not an unexampled fact. The famous Cardan, in his singular work, De Vita Propriâ, states that his grandfather's birth anteceded his own by a hundred and fifty years (1351-1501). Franklin relates that his grandfather was born in the sixteenth century, and reign of Elizabeth, as Sir Stephen Fox, the grandfather of our contemporary statesman, Charles, was born shortly after the death of James I., in 1627. A very near connexion of my own, though much younger, is the grandson of a gentleman whose birth retrocedes to Charles II., in 1672. Niebuhr grounds one of his objections to the truth of the early Roman history on the very great improbability of the long period of two hundred and forty-five years assigned to the collective reigns of the seven kings. It does, indeed, exceed the average of enthroned life; but the seven monarchs of Spain, from Ferdinand (the Catholic) to the French Bourbon, Philip V., inclusively, embraced a period of two hundred and sixty-seven years in their successive rule (1469, when Ferdinand obtained the crown of Arragon, and 1746, the date of Philip's death). The eminent German historian offers, however, much stronger arguments in disbelief of the Roman annals; but he had many predecessors in his views, though himself, unquestionably, the most powerful writer on the subject.

J. R. (An Octogenarian.)

P.S.—In Vol. iv., p. 73., Madame du Châtelet's epitaph on Voltaire contains an error, where canis twice appears, but should be carus. The lady's object was certainly complimentary, not sarcastic. My crampt writing was of course the cause of the mistake, though, in the opinion of many, the substituted word would not appear inapplicable to Voltaire. A subjoined article of the same page, "Children at a Birth," reminds me of something analogous in Mercier's Tableau de Paris, where reference is made to the Mémoires de l'Académie des Sciences for the fact. The wife of a baker, it is there stated, in the short space of seven years, produced one-and-twenty children, or three at each annual birth; and, to prove that the prolific faculty was exclusively his, he made a maid servant similarly the mother of three children at a birth. The major portion, it appears, of this numerous progeny long survived. Bayle, in his article of Tiraqueau, a French advocate of the sixteenth century, quotes an epigram, which would make him the father of forty-five children, and, it is added, by one wife. If so, several must at least have been twins:

The accomplished authoress of A Residence on the Shores of the Baltic (1841, 2 volumes) was, it is well known, one of four congenital children in Norwich, where her father was an eminent physician.

J. R.

Cork, August, 1851.

Minor Notes.

Nelson's Coat (Vol. iii., p. 517.).

—The recognition of the coat Nelson wore at Trafalgar depends on its fulfilling a detail in the following fact. The present Captain Sir George Westphal was a midshipman on board the Victory, and was wounded on the back of the head: he was taken into the cockpit, and placed by the side of Nelson. When Westphal's wound was dressed, nothing else being immediately available, Nelson's coat was rolled up and used as a support to Westphal's head. Blood flowed from the wound, and, coagulating, stuck the bullion of one of the epaulettes to the bandage; it was deemed better to cut off some of the bullion curls to liberate the coat: so that the coat Nelson wore on that day will be found minus of bullion in one of the epaulettes.

ÆGROTUS.

Strange Reasons for keeping a Public-house.

—A clergyman in the south-west of England, calling lately on one of his parishioners, who kept a public-house, remarked to her how sorry he was, when passing along the road, to hear such noises proceeding from her house. "I wonder," said he, "that any woman can keep a public-house, especially one where there is so much drunkenness and depravity as in yours." "Oh, Sir," she replied, "that is the very reason why I like to keep such a house, because I see every day so much of the worst part of human nature."

T. W.

Superstitions with regard to Glastonbury Thorn.

—It is handed down, that when Joseph of Arimathea, during his mission to England, arrived at Weary-all-hill, near Glastonbury, he struck his travelling staff into the earth, which immediately took root, and ever after put forth its leaves and blossoms on Christmas Day, being converted into a miraculous thorn.

This tree, which had two trunks, was preserved until the time of Queen Elizabeth; when one of the trunks was destroyed by a Puritan, and the other met with the same fate during the Great Rebellion.

Throughout the reign of Henry VIII., its blossoms were esteemed such great curiosities, and sovereign specifics, as to become an object of gain to the merchants of Bristol; who not only disposed of them to the inhabitants of their own city, but exported these blossoms to different parts of Europe. There were, in addition to these, relics for rain, for avoiding the evil eye, for rooting out charlock, and all weeds in corn, with similar specifics, which were considered, at this time, the best of all property!

T. W.

The miraculous Walnut-tree at Glastonbury.

—This far-famed tree was at the north of St. Joseph's chapel, in the abbey churchyard. It was supposed to have been brought from Palestine by some of the pilgrims, and was visited in former days, and regarded as sacred by all ranks of people; and, even so late as the time of King James, that monarch, as well as his ministers and nobility, paid large sums for sprigs of it, which were preserved as holy relics.

T. W.

The Three Estates of the Realm.

—Some, even educated persons of this day, if asked which are the three estates of the realm, will reply, the Queen, Lords, and Commons. That the three estates do not include the Queen, and are therefore the Lords, the Clergy in Convocation, and the Commons, is obvious from the title of the "Form of Prayer with Thanksgiving to be used yearly upon the 5th day of November, for the happy Deliverance of King James I. and the Three Estates of England from the most Traitorous," &c.; and also from the following passage of the Communion Collect for Gunpowder Treason:—

"Eternal God, and our most mighty Protector, we Thy unworthy servants do humbly present ourselves before Thy Majesty, acknowledging Thy power, wisdom, and goodness, in preserving the king, AND the three estates of the realm of England assembled in Parliament, from the destruction this day intended against them."

W. FRAER.