COIN (4th S. x. 293.)-AS PELAGIUS does not mention the size of the coin he inquires about, it increases the difficulty of identifying it. Third brass. coins with a similar type were struck by Valentinianus I. and his brother Valens; but what the warrior (or emperor) holds in his right hand is the labarum, not a "floriated staff." The legend is GLORIA ROMANORVM." These coins are extremely common. CCCXI. ROBERT BURNS AND NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE by H. H. S. C., viz. the one belonging to the late Richard (4th S. x. 273.)—Your correspondent asks if Burns Forster, Esq."] ever visited England. In 1787, he and Mr. Robert Ainslie, a young gentleman of Berwickshire, then serving his apprenticeship as a writer to the signet, made an excursion to the "Border," starting from Edinburgh on Saturday, the 5th of May. After visiting most of the famed localities of the Border they crossed over into England, and passed through Alnwick, Warkworth, Morpeth, Newcastle, Hexham, Wardrew, Longtown, and Carlisle. Burns left England in the early part of June, but did not reach Edinburgh till the 7th of August. He kept a journal of this tour. F. A. EDWARDS. Bath. THE LAST LOAD: HARVEST-HOME (4th S. x. 286.) When I was a very little boy-Consule PLANCO-I was on a visit at a clergyman's in a village called Wendlebury, in Oxfordshire. I remember the harvest-home well; it was a wheatharvest, and the top of the last load was crowded with reapers-men, not children--who sang lustily as they came through the village : "Harvest home! Harvest home! We wants water and can't get none!" which certainly was not true in fact, as from every house they passed buckets of water were thrown on them. CCCXI. one in the "JOHN BON AND MAST PERSON" (4th S. x. 294.) This dialogue, according to Strype (Ecclesiastical Memorials, vol. ii. p. 116), was written by Luke, a Physician of London, first year of King Edward VI." John Day, the printer, nearly got into trouble about it at the hands of Sir John Gresham, the Lord Mayor; but escaped through the interposition of Underhil. Your correspondent's reprint was printed in 1807, and published by Mr. Stace, the bookseller. The impression was limited, and twenty-five copies were printed on" chosen parchment." The dialogue was again reprinted by the Percy Society in 1852, under the editorship of Mr. W. H. Black. It was their last issue. This edition was corrected from a transcript of the original by Mr. Thomas Park, and varies in twenty-six instances from Smeeton's reprint. It was again reprinted (from the Percy Society edition) by Mr. Hazlitt in his Early Popular Poetry of England (vol. iv. ed. 1866). Mr. Hazlitt says in a note (iv. 370): "John Bon and Mast Person, in all probability, came from Day's press between January, 1547, and January, 1548." According to Mr. Black, there is internal evidence of the date in line 143, where Catechismus refers to Cranmer's Catechismos, &c., of 1548. For fuller particulars I refer H. H. S. C. to the Percy Society Preface, and to Mr. Hazlitt's notes. JOHN ADDIS. [G. W. N. writes: "The copy from which Mr. Black reprinted the dialogue was the identical copy referred to 66 introduced by the Emperor Constantine after his con[The "labarum" was a Roman military standard, version to Christianity.] "I CAME IN THE MORNING" (4th S. x. 187.)-— The original of this quotation is to be found in a volume of poems written by Miss Mary Pyper, an Edinburgh local celebrity. She was a poor but industrious needlewoman; and in 1865, when she was incapacitated by blindness and old age from plying her not very remunerative occupation, a selection of her poems, with an introduction by Dean Ramsay of Edinburgh, was collated and published on her behalf. The quotation, correctly cited, runs thus: DOCTOR CONSTANTINE RHODOCANAKIS (4th S. x. 289.)-In reply to MR. CHARLES SOTHERAN'S inquiry, I beg to state that I have no authority for the assertion made by Dr. Hodges, one of the personages introduced in my tale, Old St. Paul's, that Doctor Constantine Rhodocanakis died of the plague in 1666. MR. SOTHERAN has himself disproved the statement by showing that the Doctor died in 1689. At the time of writing Old St. Paul's, now some thirty years ago, I had a large and curious collection of tracts relating to the great Plague of London, and I still possess most of them; but I have vainly searched for any mention of Doctor Constantine Rhodocanakis, though I must have possessed some tract, probably written by him, since I have specially alluded to his residence near the Three Kings' Inn, Southampton Buildings. A descendant of the Doctor has investigated the than confess to the stolen for hidden under his garments, allowed the beast to bite him to death, be at the root of the above name for wounds, selfinflicted, or voluntarily borne, as "tests" of courage and endurance? Plutarch's works were well known turies ago; time enough for this strange imitation in England-in translations-more than three cenof Spartan hardihood (which, according to O. B. B. and F. C. H., still lingers in the land) to have arisen, and yet for the origin of the name (handed down through so many successions of schoolboys) to be entirely forgotten among those who at this day carry on the practice. NOELL RADEcliffe. "LORNA DOONE": THE DOONES OF BAGWORTHY (4th S. x. 206, 281.)—If SCANUS had lived in the neighbourhood of Exmoor, he surely must have heard various legends and tales of the Doones and their devastating habits. The name was thoroughly familiar to me several years before the appearance of Mr. Blackmore's splendid romance, but I cannot give any reference as to where the tales could be authenticated. A short story, called, I believe, "The Doones of Exmoor," appeared some ten years ago in the pages of the Leisure Hour. It was written by an old school friend of mine, who was intimately acquainted with the district; and if this should meet his eye, he will, I dare say, communicate to "N. & Q" the information he possesses. Those who have followed the Devon and Somerset stag-hounds must be well acquainted with the haunts of the Doones near Dare, in Somersetshire, and the scenery surrounding their stronghold is but little exaggerated by Mr. Black-Lond. 1642), and died 1645. His will, dated more's graphic pen. J. CHARLES COX. Hazelwood, Belper. SIR JOHN DENHAM (4th S. ix. 504; x. 13, 73, 164, 249, 282.)-I find the following, as to Lady Denham's death, in the Rawdon Papers, in a letter from Lord Conway to Sir George Rawdon, Jan. 8, 1666-7 (p. 227): Upon Sunday morning my Lady Denham died, poisoned, as she said herself, in a cup of chocolate. The Duke of York was very sad, and kept his chamber, where I went to visit him." W. D. C. ETYMOLOGY OF "ORIEL" (4th S. v. 577; x. 256.) 66 oreillon" in -W. asks the meaning of the term * Frensh is the name of the former possessors mentioned in the Close Roll, 1452-3. WILLIAM FROST OF BENSTEAD (4th S. x. 106, 280.)-A person of this name was living at Acton, co. Yorkshire, cir. 1612 (Betham's Baronetage, vol. iii. p. 39). I presume this was William Frost the musician. A letter of his occurs in the Lansel MSS., 92, fol. 76, "humbly requesting Lord Salisbury to be allowed to teach the Princess Elizabeth to play on the virginals, in place of a Mr. Marchant, deceased," 1611. William Frost of Fairfield, N.E., came from Nottingham, England (see Thomas Lechford's Plain Dealing, p. 43, pub. 6 Jan. in that year, is printed in Trumbull's Coll. Rec. i. 465. His sons were Daniel and Abraham. His daughter Elizabeth married John Grey, and Lydia became the wife of Henry Grey. Mary and Jacob, children of the last-named daughter, speak of William Frost's estate in England, which he devised to Mary Riley and her children. Savage's Gen. Dict. vol. ii. p. 212. W. WINTERS. Waltham Abbey. SYMBOLUM MARIE (4th S. x. 4, 74, 155, 199, 281.)-In Bishop Jeremy Taylor's Dissuasive from Popery (a copy of which I have seen bound up with his ΣΥΜΒΟΛΟΝ ΘΕΟΛΟΓΙΚΟΝ, and other "Tractates," by the same divine, fo. edit. 1674, London, Royston), at p. 332, à propos to Mariolatry, he remarks as follows: "The other thing we tell of is, that there is a Psalter of Our Lady of great and ancient account in the Church of Rome; it hath been several times printed, at Venice, at Paris, at Leipsick, and the title is The Psalter of the Bonaventure, Bishop of Alba, and Presbyter Cardinal of Blessed Virgin, compiled by the Seraphical Doctor St. the Holy Church of Rome. But of the book itself, the account is soon made; for it is nothing but the Psalms of David, an hundred and fifty in number are set down; alter'd indeed to make as much of it as could be sence so reduc'd. In which the name of Lord is left out, and that of Lady put in, so that whatever David said of God and Christ, the same prayers and the same praises they say of the Blessed Virgin Mary." Wimbledon. CRESCENT. "FAIR SCIENCE," &c. (4th S. ix. 339, 396; x. 282.)-I maintain that my interpretation is correct. It occurs to me that Gray has already been working BLESSING OR CROSSING ONESELF (4th S. x. 164, 233.)-This custom is not only confined to Roman Catholics, since there are very few houses in Franconia where housewives omit to cross (or make a cross over) their dough in order to insure fermentation, their garden beds to make the seed prosper and keep insects off, or go to a crossway on eleventh night in order to destroy the nefarious calculations of their enemies by making the sign of the cross over their molten lead. I think in the Romanian (?) Reformed Church the crossing is part of the service. I read something about it, but I cannot just now remember when and where. MENTONIANA. O. B. B.'s VOLUME OF MS. POEMS (4th S. ix. 531; x. 14, 47, 86, 279.)--The opinion which MR. CHRISTIE expresses in "N. & Q.," that the volume is a collection of contemporary poems, is borne out by the four volumes of State Poems published in 1716, as the Song upon the Lord Rochester's Death is there ascribed to Flatman, several others to Rochester himself, and others to Dryden. But some of them are printed under different titles, which infers piracy; and all of them have been subjected to alterations-in the nature of suppressions, additions, unmeaning substitutions, as well as of verbal expression-to an extent which gives them an unmistakable stamp of inferiority. A comparison of the Essay on Satire, which some have attributed to Dryden, others to Buckingham, and others to Dryden and Buckingham jointly, reveals differences which support Dean Lockier's account of it to Spence, that Dryden was the sole author and Buckingham the alterer, and they also favour the conclusion of some others that he altered it for the purpose of imposing it upon the world as his own production. For these reasons alone I think the poems deserve reproduction, and, incorporated with a selection of the previously unpublished matter, a most interesting volume might be made of them. The unpublished pieces are twentyfour in number, and some of them are both of historical and literary interest. If the idea of a single authorship must be yielded, they could be produced as "A Volume of Political and other Poems of the Seventeenth Century." By far the major part of the volume must be the work of Dryden. ROYLE ENTWISLE. Farnworth, Bolton. "A great portion of his Annals, containing an immense amount of suppressed passages, not suffered to appear either in the first or the second edition of the Memorials, has seemingly been lost in some inexplicable way. The probability is, that one of his descendants has mislaid them; and hence my hope that time may reveal the spot where they lie neglected and forgotten.' P. 444. The late Mr. J. S. Burn, writing to "N. & Q.," 3rd S. ii. 260, speaks of MSS. of Whitelocke's "said to be in the possession of Lord de la Warre at Buckhurst." Is it possible the Memorials may be among them? The verb to edit means different things as used by different kinds of men. The Memorials have never been edited at all in the sense in which I should use the word. I doubt even whether the proofs have been corrected by anybody who knew as much about 1640-1660 as an ordinary Latin verse producer does of poetry. The first edition was published in folio in 1682; the second, in the same size, in 1732. This latter has more in it than the first, and I do not think that any of the passages contained in the first edition have been left out in the second. In 1853, for some reason or other, which no one in or out of Oxford has ever been able to explain to me, a reprint of the edition of 1732 was issued at the University Press. That a new edition by some competent scholar would have been very useful, no one doubts; but this is a mere reprint, and as far as I can discover, and I have looked about me carefully, there is not one blunder corrected. To have given us a new index even would have been something, but that favour was denied. The old bad index, with all its blunders and omissions, was reprinted, and made to serve for the octavos by having the pages of the folio put in the margin. What sort of an index this is may be gathered from my experience in the matter of one name--I have no reason to think this is an instance which gives more than the fair average of mistakes. There are thirty-five references to this name, and seven of them are wrong. I have also come on two places where the name is given in the text that are not noticed in the index. If I were to read the book through with the name I am alluding to always before my mind, I am persuaded I should find many more omissions. EDWARD PEACOCK. Bottesford Manor, Brigg. THE MISERERE OF A STALL (4th S. ix. passim; x. 15, 98, 157, 232, 280.)-The following from Greene's Quip for an Upstart Courtier, 1620, may be of use to your correspondents: "Some of them smiled and said rue was called herbe grace, which, though they scorned in their youth, they Mr. Boutell in his forthcoming essay would do well to notice the elaborately-carved misereres in the stalls of the ancient cathedral of St. Mary of Limerick. These carvings are in high relief; the black oak of the stalls, seats, &c., seems to be particularly suited to the perfect display of the artist's work in this instance; and I am not aware that carvings more curious or quaint are to be seen in the misereres which remain in English cathedrals. The miserere itself was the lege of the raised seat on which the reader rested during the recital of the office. When the seat was raised the carving was shown. MAURICE LENIHAN. Limerick. WALTER SCOTT'S NOVELS (4th S. x. 184, 256.) -MR. OAKLEY does not give the proper emendation of one of the phrases in the Antiquary to which he objects; he will find that Ovid wrote :— "Neque enim lex æquior ulla." De Art. Amat., i. 655. W. T. M. Shinfield Grove. HAHA (4th S. x. 37, 95, 158, 216, 284.)-MR. F. NORGATE tells us that W. P.'s derivation of this word, which has moved the mirth of MR. OAKLEY and MR. BOUCHIER, may be "laughable,” but “not therefore necessarily incorrect or absurd." Without disrespect to your correspondent and his authority, Littré, it presents itself to me as the very essence of the reductio ad absurdum. The English word "Haha," a sunk fence-certainly with greater probability than from anything that has yet been sug"LITTLE BILLEE" (4th S. x. 166, 233, 259.)-gested-is formed by the Old Saxon* words hah, The question when this clever impromptu of a ditch, and ea, water, or is explained in Gothie Thackeray's was first uttered does not seem to haija (pronounced haw-ya), Swedish haga, an have been yet fully answered. But how about inclosure. It may here be noted that M. Goth. the impromptu itself? Thackeray, as we know, agha and Heb. aha have the significance of water. knew Paris very well. And here is a Parisian Bailey mentions the word simply as "a small gamin's song, current (as I have reason to think) canal of water." W. P.'s idea of "Haha" would in the streets of that good town some thirty years appear to be derived mediately or immediately since. Thus it goes:from Ash, who wrote a century ago, and who deduces its origin "Il était un petit navire, Il était un petit navire, Il était un petit navire, Qui n'avait ja-ja-ja-ja-jamais voyagé. (Bis.) Au bout de cinq ou six sémaines, Au bout, &c. Les vivres vin-vin-vin-vin-vinrent à manquer. Le plus jeune prit la main à l'urne, Le plus, &c. Et c'était lui qui qui-qui qui-qui séra mangé. Il monta donc sur le bout de l'aune, Il monta, &c. "From the expression of surprise at the sight of a canal of water, a wall, or some other fence at the end of a walk sunk deep between two slopes, so as to be concealed till you are quite come upon it." J. CK. R. P.S. I do not find MR. TEW's quotation in my copy of "old Bailey," if by this he means N. Bailey's Dictionarium Britannicum. Mine is the second edition, London, 1736, and it says simply, "Ha-ha [in gardens], a small canal of water." If Bailey Pour pleurer son-son-son-son-son sort malheureux. in the former edition of his work assigns as the I set down this "histoire" from memory, sure enough that I have given it correctly, but not so sure that I have made no grammatical mistakes. If it be the unacknowledged original of our beloved Little Billee, we must confess that Thackeray's genius has vastly improved it. But we may be allowed still to admire the Tacitean brevity of the poet, who has suppressed all minor incidents and gone straight to the crisis of his hero's destiny. Beautiful also is the doσónσs, which leaves you in doubt whether his hero was really eaten or not. ARTHUR J. MUNBY. Temple. origin of this word what is ascribed to him by MR. TEW, most certainly he rescinds the statement in the "second." ALLITERATION (4th S. x. 126, 208, 281, 322.)—I beg to call attention to the Prosody of my English Grammar, 1853, p. 138, in which, instead of the ordinary forms of school prosody, it is stated that the law of composition in verse in the English language is mainly dependent on the old English for Anglo-Saxon) prosody. Beginning with Cadmon, A.D. 680, the system is carried by examples down to Byron and Moore. Illustrations of the survival and continuation of the old system are also given from folk-lore, * I use this term in its ordinary acceptation for the sake of convenience, but not as denoting my belief that + Complete Dictionary of the English Langrage. By John Ash, LL.D. Lond. 1775. proverbs, the wedding service, and the translations of the Bible. HYDE CLARKE. 32, St. George's Square, S.W. THE REBEL MARQUIS OF TULLIBARDINE (4th S. x. 161, 303.)—Lord James Murray was never a Colonel of a regiment of Guards, but he was a Captain of a company, and therefore Lieut.-Colonel in the First Foot Guards. The Murrays, like most other Scotch families at the time, had members who served with King George as well as those who served with Prince Charles, so that the succession to the title or property was pretty safe, whichever side might win. HENRY F. PONSONBY. "SCARCE" BOOKS (4th S. x. 309.) The subject mooted, or rather the complaint made, by OLPHAR HAMST well deserves consideration. I have myself often thought of inviting attention to it. Unfortunately for the trade, but otherwise for the public, the practice has degenerated into so stale a trick that the announcement attracts very little notice. I am indeed surprised that respectable booksellers do not leave it off altogether, or confine it to a very few real cases, when it might answer their purpose. I have often thought too, with MR. HAMST, that there is a strange inconsistency too often apparent in these notices. For if certain books really are scarce, they ought to fetch a high price in proportion; yet they are often ticketed with very low figures, letting out the secret of their acquisition by the bookseller. In most of such cases, he has bought up a remainder, very cheap, because the books were all but unsaleable. LINCOLNSHIRE HOUSEHOLD RIDDLE (4th S. x. 312.)—The following is proposed by J. T. F. for solution : "A man without eyes saw plums on a tree, Neither took plums nor left plums; pray how could that be?" To which I should answer thus: "The man hadn't eyes, but he just had one eye, With which on the tree two plums he could spy: He neither took plums, nor plums did he leave; But took one, and left one, as we may conceive." F. C. H. "THE SOUL'S DARK COTTAGE," &c. (1st S. iii. 105, 154-5; 2nd S. ii. 380; 4th S. x. 333.)—These celebrated lines, which have already been quoted with just admiration, will be found in Waller's Works, 1729, 4to., p. 316. On the foregoing Divine Poems, concluding with "Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view, That stand upon the threshold of the new.' ****“Miratur limen olympi."— Virgil. cfr. "N. & Q." 3rd S. ix. 208. To the passages analogous to that referred to which have appeared in " N. & Q.," viz., on Prophecying before Death, I would add Bishop Newton's Dissertations on the Prophecies, i. 85-113. BIBLIOTHECAR CHETHAM. Miscellaneous. NOTES ON BOOKS, ETC. Brides and Bridals. By John Cordy Jeaffreson. 2 vols. (Hurst & Blackett.) HAPPY in his names, happy in his subjects, and happy in I must, however, add some further complaints. his treatment of them, Mr. Jeaffreson has here mainI have seen many instances of books catalogued as tained his old characteristics, and has produced a book "scarce," and even "very scarce,” which I have about brides and bridals as attractive as either of his well-known books about doctors, lawyers, or the clergy. known at the time to be hanging heavily upon the The subject of these volumes may be emphatically said hands of the poor author, even by hundreds. And, to be more delicious than any Mr. Jeaffreson has before what is worse, I have known the London book-treated, for what can be sweeter than a young bride who seller's answer to be "out of print," when copies were plentiful in the shops of the publishers. In both ways I myself have been victimized. F. C. H. "I SHINE IN THE LIGHT OF GOD, &c." (4th S. x. 294.)—These lines appeared in Mrs. Wilkinson's Spirit Drawings: a Personal Narrative, which I see from the catalogues was published by Chapman & Hall in 1858. I have not read the book since it first appeared, but, if I remember rightly, the authoress states that the lines were dictated to her by the spirit of her departed son, her hand being guided over the paper by the spirit hand. The story is the more remarkable because the lines show great poetic talent. The second line should be "His likeness stamps my brow." 1, Norfolk Crescent, Hyde Park. R. C. CHILDERS. has trust in man (in one, at least) as well as in God, and who, in the depth and breadth and intensity of her love, sees no risks nor dangers in the change she is voluntarily undergoing? Mr. Jeaffreson has pretty well exhausted the subject in his two volumes, brilliant in green and gold, colour of hope and symbol of good fortune. It is not all mere gossip on maidens developing into wives, girls who drop their maiden names at church, as they might the flower which they have worn as a grace and an adornment, and, as was said of old time, take herb of grace and share it with their mates. Mr. Jeaffreson goes into the history and philosophy of brides and bridals, and of all subjects connected with them. As we pass from chapter to chapter it is like being continually married again, without any sense of bereavement. If there be not much said on lovemaking, nothing of what it leads to in the way of contract is omitted. If we might suggest a shortcoming, it would be in the omission of a comparative anatomizing of the honest, happy, hearty love-making of our own country with that of foreign countries, say of France, where the suitor has to make approaches through serried ranks of parents and relatives, and who, when at last he is permitted to see near the goddess whom he had |