LONDON, SATURDAY, JULY 13, 1878. CONTENTS. - N° 237. NOTES:-" Morte d'Arthur"; or, "The Passing of Arthur," 21-Death of Spencer Compton, Earl of Northampton, 22— Folk-Lore, 23-The Household Accounts of All Souls', Ox- ford-The Inadequacy of Language to Express Ideas, 24- "Gulliver's Travels"-"To write like an angel," 25-Sir H. Trelawny-Barnefielde an Appropriator, 26. QUERIES:-Pre-Adamites, 26-Symbolical Vestments-Col. C. H. Nilson-Pilling of Stansfield Hall, Todmorden A Barefoot Club-Capt. J. King, LL.D.—"In Memoriam " -Old China-Arms Wanted-"Vincent Eden, the Oxonian" -"Gentleman Instructed"-An Old Tablecloth, 27-"It is Gaultry Forest "-Baynard's Castle-Cruelty-The Aston MSS.-Ipswich Customs-Authors Wanted, 28. REPLIES:-Francis, Viscount Lovel: Minster Lovel, 28- The Change in the English Pronunciation of Latin, 29- "Catalogue of Five Hundred Celebrated Authors," 30-Sir N. Riche, 31-"The Paston Letters"-Pope Alexander VI., 32-The Knights of St John-The Globe Edition of Shak- speare-Voltaire-Local Proverbs, 33-Edburton, Sussex- "A brass knocker"-Mount Jerome Cemetery, Dublin- Debbie Carnegie-French Heraldry-" Bernardus non scit omnia," 34-Licence to eat Flesh in Lent-"Talis cum sis," &c.-Death of Charles II.-J. S. Jones, M.D-Surnames now Obsolete, 35-Legend of Holme Church-Nightingales and Cowslips-clavonic or Slavonic, 36-"Toot Hills"- Blechynden and Bache-" Bandana" Pocket-handkerchiefs -Goethe and Johnson on Dante-Bread and Salt, 37- Drowaed Bodies Recovered -Tony Lumpkin-Electoral Facts-Booksellers' Catalogues-" Plotinus "-" Arthurus Severus O'Toole Nonesuch "-The Law of Gravitation- Booth Family-"Guy Mannering "-The Monks of Mount "MORTE D'ARTHUR"; OR, "THE PASSING Having shown in "Gareth and Linet" wherein Tennyson differs from the History of Prince Arthur (compiled by Sir T. Malory in 1470), it will be no less interesting to trace his parallelisms of thought and word with the prose story. It is known to every reader of our Laureate that the Passing of Arthur, after the few lines of introduc- tion, is verbally identical with the Morte d'Arthur. "N. & Q." is not the place for criticism, but facts, with such brief running comments as may serve to put the reader au courant with the mind of the writer. The object of this short paper is to show the parallelisms between the prose story of the Mort d'Arthur, in Caxton's book, and the Morte Prose.-And Sir Lucan and Sir Bedivere...heaved him up, and so...led him [the wounded king] between them... Idyll. Then because the wound was deep Prose.-"My time hieth fast, therefore take you Ex- " Idyll.- And fling him far into the middle mere; Watch what thou seest, and lightly bring me word." To him replied the bold Sir Bedivere, "I thy hest will all perform at full, Watch what I see, and lightly bring you word." Prose. So Sir Bedivere departed, and...he beheld that Idyll. So...from the ruined shrine he stept... Better to leave Excalibur concealed So strode he back slow to the wounded king. Prose. "What sawest thou there?" said the king. And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere, I charge thee, quickly go again, As thou art lief and dear, and do the thing Prose. Then Sir Bedivere returned again, and took Idyll. Then went Sir Bedivere the second time... And so strode back slow to the wounded king. Idyll. Then spake King Arthur..." What is it thou And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere, Prose.-"Ah, traitor, untrue," said King Arthur, Idyll.-To whom replied King Arthur..." Untrue, Thou wouldst betray me for the precious hilt. But if thou spare to fling Excalibur, I will arise and slay thee with my hands." Prose. Then Sir Bedivere departed, and went to the ...and then he threw the sword into the water...and there * "Wap" is a Welsh word wab, to bounce [against the came an arm and a hand above the water, and met it, and caught it, and so shook it thrice, and brandished [it]; and then the hand vanished away with the sword on the water. So Sir Bedivere came again to the king, and told him what he had seen.* Idyll. Then quickly rose Sir Bedivere and ran..... ...and clutched the sword,...and threw it... But ere he [it] dipt the surface, rose an arm... And caught him by the hilt, and brandished him Three times, and drew him under in the mere; And lightly went the other to the king. Prose." Alas," said the king, "help me from hence, for I dread me I have tarried over long" [a few lines lower down we read "I fear this wound...hath taken overmuch cold"]. Then Sir Bedivere took King Arthur upon his back, and so went with him to the water-side. Idyll.-Then answer made King Arthur... My wound hath taken cold, and I shall die." I do not think that the following letter has been noticed by any of our historians. As it confirms Lord Clarendon's statement that when Spencer Compton, Earl of Northampton, was slain at the battle of Hopton Heath on March 19, 1643, the Parliamentarian leaders refused to give up his body (edit. 1843, p. 350), it is not unworthy of the attention of the readers of "N. & Q." It occurs in a quarto pamphlet of eight pages, entitled "The Battaile on Hopton-Heath in Staffordshire, Betweene His Majesties Forces under the Right Honour O'er both his shoulders...and bore him thro' the able the Earle of Northampton and those of the Rebels, place... Prose. And when they were at the water-side, even fast by the bank, hove a little barge with many fair ladies in it, and among them were three queens, and all had black hoods, and they wept and shrieked when they saw the king. Idyll. Then saw they how there hove a dusky And all the decks were dense with stately forms Prose.-"Now put me in the barge," said the king. And so he did softly; and there received him three queens with great mourning; and so these three queens set him down, and in one of their laps King Arthur laid his head. Then that queen said..." Why have ye tarried so long?...alas! this wound...hath taken over-much cold." Idyll.-Then murmured Arthur: "Place me in the So to the barge they came. Then those three queens Prose. Then Sir Bedivere cried: "Ah, my lord Arthur, what shall become of me now ye go from me?..." "Comfort thyself," said King Arthur;..." in me is no trust...I will unto the vale Avilion for to heal me of my grievous wound. And if thou never hear more of me, pray for my soul." Idyll.-Then loudly cried the bold Sir Bedivere, "Ah, my lord Arthur, whither shall I go?..." And slowly answered Arthur from the barge... Comfort thyself, what comfort is in me?... If thou shouldst never see my face again, Where I will heal me of my grievous wound." The poet in this idyll has kept close to the prose story, and I think all readers of "N. & Q." will agree with me in saying his model is so simple, so The description of the hand clad in white samite, &c., is in part i. of the History, when Arthur went to the mere to fetch the sword, at the command of the fay. March 19. Together with a Letter from the Lord Compton, now Earle of Northampton, Printed by H. Hall, M.DCXLIIJ." The original is certainly of considerable rarity. I do not remember ever to have seen more than two copies. "Deare Mother,-On Sunday last we got the day of the Rebels, but our losse (especially your Honours and mine) is not to be expressed. For though it be a generall losse to the Kingdome, yet it toucheth us nearest. But, Madam, Casualties in this world will happen, & in such a cause who would not have ventured both life and fortune? praye, Madam, let this be your comfort, that it was impossible for any to do braver then he did, as appeares by their owne Relation. I sent a Trumpeter to know what was become of my Father, hee brought me a Letter from Sir John Gell and Sir William Brereton, assuring mee of my Father's death, making strange demands for his body, such as were never before heard of in any warre, as all their Ammunition, Prisoners, and Cannon which we had taken. I send them word backe, that their demands were unreasonable, and against the Lawes of Armes, but desired them to give free passage to some Chirurgeons to embalme him, or to let their Chirurgeons doe it, and I would satisfy them for their paines. Their last Answer I have sent in Philip Willoughby's Letter, which is, that they will neither send the body nor suffer our Chirurgeons to come to embalme it, but will see their owne Chirurgeons doe it. Their Relation was, that He was assaulted by many together, and with his owne hand killed the Colonel and others also, but was unhorsed by the multitude, his horse being shot: But his Armour was so good that they could not hurt him, till he was downe, and had undone his headpeece. Praye, Madam, be comforted, and think no man could more honourably have ended this life (fighting for his Religion, his King, and his Country) to be partaker of heavenly joies. We must certainely follow him, but can hardly hope for so brave a death. Thus humbly craving your blessing, I shall remaine till death "Your obedient Sonne, "Stafford, March 22, 1642." The Countess of Northampton to whom this letter was sent was Mary, daughter of Sir Francis Beaumont, Knight, of Glenfield, co. Leicester. SATURDAY'S MOON.-A new moon on Saturday, in this part of Surrey, as in other parts of England, is considered of bad omen as regards the weather. This prejudice is not confined to the lower orders, for in some letters of the Hon. Mrs. Boscawen, widow of the admiral, I have come across the following passages :— Badminton, Sept. 30, 1793. "Delightful weather we have had ever since I came, but Saturday next is new moon, Saturday's moon, voyez-vous. I shall fear some bad weather." Oct. 4, 1795. "Now we must lay our account by some 'coup de Patte' of the Saturday's moon." And again :— "Miserable weather, worthy a Saturday's moon, wh M Leveson laughs at, but you remember the night Mr West's house was blown down, and you went flying in the Walk-field at Boxley, rending y' Cloaths, and how threw my Clogs in the air in sign of desperation, and how we went to Goody Gervard's at y Church Gate, and how you sipped brandy, and how I was afraid lest you were gone so far that brandy wou'd not fetch you, and all this was on a Saturday's moon not quite forty years ago." The saying in these parts is "A Saturday's moon "Saturday's moon and Sunday's full Is always wet and always wull (will).” It seems impossible to educated people to believe that the day on which the moon changes can in any way affect the weather. There must, however, be some origin for so widespread and apparently ancient a superstition. One would like to know how far back it can be traced, and whether to some such calamity as the great gale | that devastated England on Nov. 26, 1703. It occurred, as we are told, just at the new moon (Stanhope's Queen Anne, p. 105). G. L. G. Titsey Place. WEDDING LUCK.-At a wedding in a Worcestershire village last October, the bride and bridegroom, at the conclusion of the ceremony, left the church by the chancel door, instead of following the usual custom of walking down the church and through the nave door. One of the oldest inhabitants, in mentioning this to me, said that it "betokened bad luck," and that she had never known a like instance but once in her life, when the married couple went out of the church through the chancel door, and the bride was a widow before the twelvemonth was over. CUTHBERT BEDE. A SQUIRREL'S NEST.-A lady in Worcestershire was lamenting to me that one of the autumnal gaies had blown a squirrel's nest from the position that it had occupied for several years in the top of a tall tree in her garden. She said that this was looked upon by her servants as a sign that something unlucky would happen to her house or household during the coming year. CUTHBERT Bede. JEWISH FOLK-LORE.-A letter from Salonica, published in the Manchester Guardian, April 19, contains the following curious bit of folk-lore about the knots in timber : 66 Passing through the Jewish quarter I was an eye and ear witness of a strange scene. In every house was the sound of hammering, and through the open windows I could see the children of Israel driving nails into the knots of the timber floors of their houses. The hammering was furious and accompanied by vociferous exclamations. In every house the same scene was visible. Next morning I was told that what I had seen was the commencement of the Jewish carnival. As each knot in the floor sank down beneath the blow of the hammer the eye of a devil, I was told, was put out." Is this odd belief common elsewhere? WILLIAM E. A. AXON. Bank Cottage, Barton-on-Irwell. ISLE OF MAN FOLK-LORE.-Having occasion to send a horse to be shod on the 5th of January last, the smith refused, on the ground that it was very unlucky to light a fire and temper iron before Christmas had expired, saying he had never done so and never would. The utmost he would do was to put a nail in to secure the old shoe. I was not aware until then that there was a prejudice against lighting a fire for the purpose of working iron until after the expiration of Christmas. In the north of Durham no blacksmith throughout that district will drive a nail on Good Friday. A remembrance of the awful purpose for which hammer and nails were used on the first Good Friday doubtless holds them back. Rock Mount, Isle of Man. WILLIAM HARRISON. DORSETSHIRE FOLK-LORE. - Haymaker to her companion, "No, you won't catch a cold, 'cause you left en off a Sunday." "Oh, ees; I shoudden a left en off any other day." Stranger listening on the other side of the hedge to a weeding woman, "Is that true?" "Lor, yes, mum, everybody do know that; and when you do up for the first time after sickness, should always be a Sunday." "Yes, because it is a quiet day." "No, that bean't, if your man's whoam and children. But 'tis all the same wi' yer clothes; they do wear twice so long if you put 'em on fust time a Sunday." C. E. K. THE HOUSEHOLD ACCOUNTS OF ALL SOULS' COLLEGE, OXFORD, IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. -The following, extracted from the household accounts of All Souls', may be worthy of a place in "N. & Q." The first is dated 1573; the others are of nearly the same age. 1. You Bursers, who by bandes and othes A burser's office ove; And he a theef did bare the barze, As he doth shewe ambitions mynde Judas was a burser of Christ's Colledge. To be a Burser why doest thou Sith if thou use thy office well Greate gaines thou canst not take? And if thou use it ill, in sothe, And doest thy conscience straine, To heape up goodes and to be riche If that he loose his soule, and so Faules in the devell's bands? THE INADEQUACY OF LANGUAGE TO EXPRESSIDEAS WITH PERFECT PRECISION.-Language, whether written or spoken, is considered generally, notwithstanding the saying of Talleyrand, to express ideas with perspicuity and correctness, so that no man can doubt the meaning of what he hears or reads; but that this principle is of universal application is a doubtful point. Some may perhaps say that such a proposition is simply the outcome of a general scepticism, and that, if we do not or cannot believe or accept what we read or hear, in its own terms, then all attempts to arrive at the meaning of a man's words or writing would be simply fruitless-in fact, that language conveys no signification whatever. Not so. I am far from, and I have a holy horror of, scepticism, but I will illustrate the point which I seek to establish by citing an example. It. is commonly supposed that in Biblical times the ancients believed in the revolution of the sun round the earth, and in confirmation of this view appeal is made to the sacred Scriptures, where mention is made of the "sun rising," the sun setting," and the standing still over Gideon"; showing as clearly as words can show (as is alleged) that the idea sought to be conveyed was that of the earth remaining still, while the sun travelled round that planet. sun But in the absence of contemporaneous and explanatory literature, I do not see any proof whatever, from the simple use of these phrases, that the sacred historian had what we call false ideas of astronomy. If so, then, to come to our own times, I can from one book alone, and that book compiled by men of consummate skill in astronomy and all mathematical science, convict the compilers of an equally false theory. Take the Nautical Almanack, in which to express sunrise and sunset the compilers do not go far afield in search of precise scientific words and phrases, but they say sunrise" and "sunset," when we know that such a phrase does not express their scientific belief. They use the phrase as a convenient form understood alike by scientifics and non-scientifics, and no one would, on that account, dream of attributing to them false knowledge. But supposing that day of desolation came when the New Zealander (whom Lord Macaulay appropriated from other authors without a polite and civil acknowledgment) shall sit on London Bridge and gaze at the ruins of St. Paul's; and supposing also that all our literature had perished except a single copy of the Nautical Almanack, which came into the possession of this New Zealander; what would be his impression of the state of our astronomical knowledge when he perused this highly scientific book and found this expression distinctly and clearly made use of all through, "The sun rises"? and what would be his answer if interrogated as to the astronomical belief of the English nation? He could give only one answer, viz. that these English people believed in the passage of the sun round the earth, as evidenced and proved by their own Nautical Almanack. This is no original idea of mine--it was put forward by the late Hugh Miller in his Testimony of the Rocks; but I wish to carry out the idea to its legitimate conclusion, and I should like, with your permission, to evoke correspondence on the subject in your columns. My point is the apparent inadequacy of language to express ideas with perfect precision; and herein two sciences are involved, astronomy and theology. In the first named science I have shown that the Bible and the Nautical Almanack both describe "sunrise" and "sunset" in the same words, and therefore there cannot be, or ought not to be, any discordance between them; and in the second named science, theology, it may be that the fierce and bitter contests which have disfigured the even path of religion in the world are owing to the defeet of language to which I have before referred, and that in many a dispute the combatants are not really fighting over the doctrine, but over the terminology. I thus, doubtless very imperfectly, commend this subject to the consideration of your intelligent correspondents. right. The two works are no doubt similar in this Bexley Heath, Kent. STATE OF CHURCHES IN THE TIME OF ELIZABETH.-The author of the Admonition to Parliament, 1572, says: 66 for either he hath two places to serve, or else there are "the summer lordes and ladies, disguised persons, min- “GULLIVER'S TRAVELS."—In looking over Gul-people licer's Travels lately, I have been struck by the enormous disproportion (as it appears to me) between the human, if human they may be called, inhabitants of Brobdingnag and the animal creation, whether beasts, birds, or insects. It is possible that I am mistaken, that Swift knew what he was about, and that the proportions are really correct after all. If it is so, I confess my inability to understand the following instances. The Brobdingnagians appear to be from sixty to seventy feet high, that is, from ten to twelve times the height of an ordinary man, and one would naturally suppose that everything around them was in the same proportion. But the author speaks of a cat three times as large as an ox, a mastiff equal in bulk to four elephants, a lark nine times as big as a full-grown turkey, a fly as big as a Dunstable lark, and wasps as large as partridges. But more extraordinary than all, he says (in chap. v.), "Nature in that country observing the same proportion through all her operations, a hailstone is near eighteen hundred times as large as one in Europe." I have italicized the above words because it would appear from them as though Swift thought out his sizes both in Brobdingnag and Lilliput as carefully as Dante planned the circles and measurements of his Inferno. I may mention in passing that Macaulay compares Gulliver's Travels with the Divina Commedia on account of the air of reality and good faith with which the two stories are told. Macaulay was "Frays, unseemly noyse, brawling, jangling, and vayne pastimes" in the church reveal the melancholy result of indiscriminate purging and destruction, the loss of reverence and devotional feeling. MACKENZIE E. C. WALCOTT. "TO WRITE LIKE AN ANGEL."-The origin of this well-known phrase is thus given by D'Israeli, in Curiosities of Literature :— "There is a strange phrase connected with the art of the caligrapher which I think may be found in most, if not in all, modern languages, to write like an angel! Ladies have frequently been compared with angels; they are beautiful as angels, and sing and dance like angels; but however intelligible these are, we do not so easily connect penmanship with the other celestial accomplishments. This fanciful phrase, however, has a very |