NOTES AND QUERIES:

A MEDIUM OF INTER-COMMUNICATION FOR LITERARY MEN, ARTISTS, ANTIQUARIES, GENEALOGISTS, ETC.

"When found, make a note of."—Captain Cuttle.

CONTENTS.

Notes.

POPULAR STORIES OF THE ENGLISH PEASANTRY,

NO. V.

By far the larger portion of our tales consist of those connected with the popular mythology of elves, and giants, and bleeding trees; of witches and their wicked doings; of frogs that would go a-wooing, and got turned into princes; and amorous princes who became frogs; of primitive rough chests transformed into coaches; young ladies who go to bed young ladies, and get up owls; much despised younger sons crowned kings of boundless realms; and mediæval tabbies getting inducted into flourishing vizierships by the mere loss of their tails: stories, in short, of the metamorphosis of all conceivable things into all conceivable shapes. Lest this catalogue should frighten your readers, I at once disavow any intention of reflecting more than a specimen. Their puerility renders them scarcely suitable to your columns, and there is moreover such a sameness in those best worth preserving—the fairy legends—that a single example would be amply sufficient for our purpose of pointing out the different varieties of oral romance. Whenever the story relates to the dealings of the fairy-folk with mankind, the elf is almost always represented as the dupe; while, in his transactions with rival supernaturals, he invariably comes off victorious. Giants especially, being always of sleepy and obtuse intellect, afford a fine field for the display of his powers; and we find him baffling their clumsy plans, as well also as the more cunning devices of weird-sisters, in a manner which proves him to be a worthy scion of the warlike avenger of the Sagar. The lovers of folk-lore will probably agree with me in regarding the following tale as a choice bit of elfin history, illustrating the not very amicable relations of the witches and the good people. No sneers, therefore, gentle readers, but listen to the simple strain of "Fairy Jip and Witch One-eye."

Once upon a time, just before the monkey tribe gave up the nauseous custom of chewing tobacco, there lived an old hag, who had conceived an inordinate desire to eat an elf: a circumstance, by the way, which indubitably establishes that elves were of masticable solidity, and not, as some one has it, mere

So the old lady went to the place where the fairies dwelt, and knocked at the hill-top:—"Pretty little Jip!" said she; "come and see the sack of cherries I have brought thee, so large, so red, so sweet." Fairies, be it known, are extremely fond of this fruit, and the elf rushed out in eager haste. "Ha! ha!" said One-eye, as she pounced upon him, and put him in her bag (witches always carry bags), "take care the stones don't stick in thy throttle, my little bird." On the way home, she has to visit a place some distance from the road, and left Jip meanwhile in the charge of a man who was cutting faggots. No sooner was her back turned, than Jip begged the man to let him out; and they filled the bag with thorns. One-eye called for her burden, and set off towards home, making sure she had her dinner safe on her back. "Ay, ay! my lad," said she, as she felt the pricking of the thorns; "I'll trounce thee when I get home for stinging me with thy pins and needles." When she reached her house, she belaboured the bag with a huge stick, till she thought she had broken every bone in the elf's body; and when she found that she had been wasting her strength upon a "kit" of thorns, her rage knew no bounds. Next day, she again got possession of Jip in a similar manner, and this time left him in care of a man who was breaking stones by the road-side. The elf makes his escape as before, and they fill the sack with stones. "Thou little rogue!" said the witch, as she perspired under the burden; "I'll soften thy bones nigh-hand." Her appetite was only whetted, not blunted, by these repeated failures, and despairing of again catching her prey in the same way as before, she assumed the shape of a pedlar with a churn on his shoulder, and contrived to meet Jip in a wood. "Ah! Master Redcap," quoth she; "look alive, my little man, the fox is after thee. See! here he comes: hie thee into my churn, and I will shelter thee. Quick! quick!" In jumped the elf. "Pretty bird!" chuckled the old Crocodile; "dost thee scent the fox?" This time she went straight home, and gave Jip to her daughter, with strict orders that she should cut off his noddle and boil it. When the time came for beginning the cooking, Miss One-eye led her captive to the chopping-block, and bade him lay down his head. "How?" quoth Jip; "I don't know how." "Like this, to be sure," said she; and, suiting the action to the word, she put her poll in the right position. Instantly the fairy seizes the hatchet, and serves her in the manner she intended to serve him. Then picking up a huge pebble, he climbs up the chimney to watch the progress of events. As he expected, the witch came to the fire to look after her delicacy; and no sooner does she lift up the lid of the pot, than "plop" came down Jip's pebble right into the centre of her remaining optic, the light of which is extinguished for ever; or, according to some versions, killed her stone-dead.^[1]

Some of the stories are so extremely like the German ones, that, with very slight alterations, they would serve as translations. These, for obvious reasons, it will not be worth while to trouble you with. Among them, I may particularise the following from the Kinder und Hausmärchen:—Hans im Gluck: Der Frieder und das Catherlieschen; Von der Frau Füchsin; and Van den Nachandel-Boom.

Modern tales of diablerie are not so uncommon as might be expected. In the time of Chaucer, the popular belief ascribed the departure of the elves to the great number of wandering friars who mercilessly pursued them with bell, book, and candle; and at the present day, in the opinion of our uneducated peasantry, the itinerant sectarian preachers are endowed with similar attributes. The stories told of these men, and their encounters with the powers of darkness, would fill a new Golden Legend. There is one tale in particular which comes within our designation of "popular stories," as is well known in almost all parts of England,—How a godly minister falls over the company of wicked scoffing elves, and how he gets out.^[2] The last time I heard it, it was related of a preacher of the Ranting persuasion, well known some dozen years ago in a certain district of Warwickshire; and I prefer to give it in this localised form, as it enables me to present your readers with "Positively the last from Fairyland."

Providence B—— was a well-known man throughout that whole country-side. He had made more converts than all his brethren put together, and, in the matter of spirits and demons, would stand a comparison with Godred or Gutlac, or, by'r Lady, St. Anthony himself. Now it fell out one day, that Providence was sent for to the house of a wealthy yeoman to aid in expelling an evil spirit which had long infested his daughter. I must here remark, en parenthèse, that scenes of this fearfully ludicrous nature are far from unfrequent in our country districts. The besotted state of ignorance in which a great portion of our rural population are still enwrapt, renders them peculiarly open to the fleecing of these fanatics, who, marvellous to relate, are almost everywhere looked upon with respect, and treated with the greatest consideration, proving incontestably that,

On this occasion the job proved a tough one, and it was not till a late hour that Prov. set off on his road home. It was a pitchy dark night, and somehow or other the preacher and his nag contrived to lose their way among the green lanes, and it was not till they had floundered about for some time that our hero discerned (as is usual in such cases) a light gleaming through the thick foliage before him, which he incontinently discovers to proceed from a solitary dwelling in the middle of the woods. Of course he dismounts, and knocks at the door; and of course it was opened by a suspicious-looking old woman in toggery which it would do Mr. James's heart good to depict. To his request for a night's lodging, she yielded a ready assent—too ready, Prov. thought; for it seemed from her manner as though he had been expected. He was shown into a bed-room, and was proceeding to divest himself of his garments, when he hears a knock at the door, and a voice asked him to come down to supper. Prov. made answer that he didn't want any, that he was in bed, and that moreover he was engaged at his devotions; but presently the messenger returned, and declared that if he did not join the company downstairs, they would come and sup with him. Poor Prov. quaked with fright, but thought it politic to cloak his fears, so followed the servant to the house-room, where there were a number of people sitting round a table plentifully laden with good things. All of them were little "shrivelled up" old men; and, as the chairman motioned Prov. to a vacant seat, they all regarded him with a stare that made him feel the reverse of jolly. Although he is well acquainted with the neighbourhood, he recognises none of them. The meal proceeded in solemn silence: look which way he would, he encounters the gaze of his companions, who appear to scowl at him with an expression of fiendish hate. Dreadful surmises flit across his brain. Suddenly his attention becomes directed to the posterior portion of the gentleman next him. "By Jove! he has a tail. Yes, he has; and so has his neighbour, and so have they all." He fancies too he can trace a resemblance between the individual who sits at the head of the table and the fiend of the morning's exorcism. All is now clear as a pike-staff. It is a decided case of trepan. That dark fellow on the right has to complain of a forcible ejection from a comfortable dwelling in the portly corpus of Master Muggins the miller; and he on the left is the identical demon who got into Farmer Nelson's cow, and gave our hero a world of trouble to get him out. He is in the power of the incubi, whom he has been so long warring against. Not a moment is to be lost, for already they are whispering together, and the scowls get fiercer and fiercer. What is to be done? A monk would have had recourse to his breviary; Prov. thought of his hymn-book. "Brethren," says he, "it is usual wi' us at the heend of a feast to ax a blessing."

"A blessing quotha! and to us?" roared the fiends. "Ha! ha! Yea! yea!" said Prov.; and instanter he out with that spirit-stirring stanza of "immortal John:"

Who shall depict the scene while these words were being uttered? The old men turn all sorts of colours, from green to blue, and blue to green, and back again to their original hue. At the last line, the uproar becomes terrible; and, amidst shouts of fiendish wailing, the whole company resolve themselves into a thin blue smoke, in which state they career up the chimney, taking with them a bran new chimney-pot, and leaving behind a most offensive odour of lucifer matches. Prov. saw no more; he fainted.

Some scandalous fellows spread abroad a report that the morning's sun discovered our valiant vessel snugly ensconced in a dry ditch; but as he always denounced strong waters, and was moreover a leading member of the Steeple "United Totals," I, for one, do not believe it. From the examples already given, I trust your readers will think with me that these old world relics are worth preserving. I hope they will not be backward in the good work. A few more years, and the scheme of an English work on the plan of Grimm's will be impracticable. The romance-lore, both oral and written, which erewhile delighted the cottager, is growing out of date. The prosy narrative of "How John the serving-man wedded an earl's daughter, and became a squire of high degree;" and the less placid, but still intolerably dull feats of the "Seven Champions," have no charms for him now. He has outgrown the old chap-book literature, and affectionates the highly seasoned atrocities of the Old Bailey school; which, to the disgrace of the legislature, are allowed to poison the minds of our labouring community with their weekly broad-sheets of crime and obscenity. Even those prime old favourites, the Robin Hood Garland and Shepherd's Kalendar, with its quaint letter-press and grim woodcuts, are getting out of fashion, and beginning to be missed from their accustomed nook beside the family Bible.

T. Sternberg.

P.S. Owing to some unaccountable inadvertence, I have only just seen the number of "N.& Q." containing the highly interesting communications of H. B. C. and Mr. Stephens. Will Mr. Stephens allow me to ask him where he procured his tale, for I agree with H. B. C. that it is "desirable to fix the localities as nearly as possible." My version came from the Gloucestershire side of the county.

DR. THOMAS MORELL'S COPY OF H. STEPHENS' EDIT. OF ÆSCHYLUS, 1557, WITH MSS. NOTES.

As your valuable paper is in the hands of scholars of every description in every part of the world, the following communication may meet the eye, and be of no slight interest to some of your classical readers, and, at the same time, give a stimulus to hunters at bookstalls. Some time since, in one of my hunts, I stumbled upon a very fine copy of Pet. Victorine's (Vettori) edition of Æschylus, printed by H. Stephens, 1557. I was much gratified in finding it had belonged to the celebrated Thomas Morell, D.D., F.R.S., F.S.A., the lexicographer, and had his book-plate and autograph. The margins were filled with many conjectures and emendations written in two very ancient hands, and, besides, some MSS. Scholia on the Prometheus and Poesæ. In carefully examining them I found many were marked with the letters (A) and (P). I remembered the present very learned Bishop of London, in the preface to his edition of the Choæphoræ, mentioned the vast assistance he had received in editing that play from a copy of this very edition of Æschylus (H. Stephens, 1557), lent to him by Mr. Mitford, the margins of which were similarly marked. The bishop observes these emendations were by Auratus and Portus, two learned French scholars; and that Mr. Mitford's volume contained several other emendations without the signatures (A) and (P), which he, for distinction's sake, marked (Q). Now my copy also possessed these readings marked (Q). The bishop further observed, that the writer of the MSS. notes was a cotemporary of Casaubon's from a remark at p. 14. of the volume. The learned bishop's description of the volume will be found in the Museum Criticum, vol. ii. p. 488. I at first imagined I had met with this identical volume; but a closer examination proved I was mistaken, as my copy, besides all those carefully noted by Dr. Blomfield, contained many other emendations, but had not the note at p. 14. of the Prometheus. Whoever was the copier or writer of the marginal MSS. in my volume, was evidently a Frenchman, as some of the notes are in French. The handwriting is very ancient and contracted, and has the appearance of being of the early portion of the seventeenth century. The most interesting part, however, of the story still remains. Dr. Thomas Morell edited the Prometheus, 4to., 1773. The title is as follows: Æschyli P. V. cum Stanl. Versione et Scholiis, α, β, (et γ ineditis), &c. Now these Scholia γ, which he professes to give for the first time, I found to be those in the very ancient hand in the margin of my volume. He frequently also gives the various marginal readings, and styles them "Marg. MS." Moreover he occasionally adopts these notes without any acknowledgment, especially where they throw any light on the text. The volume then is of great curiosity and value. From a curious note at the end of the Prometheus, Morell takes nine iambic lines, to which is affixed "Ad Calcem Dramatis MS. Regii." From this it would seem the Scholia were taken from a MS. in the Royal Library at Paris.

We may observe then as a remarkable circumstance, that while Bishop Blomfield was describing the copy belonging to Mr. Mitford, a similar copy, with more notes, and of equal antiquity as to the MSS. emendations, was in existence, and had once been in the possession of, and of much assistance to the great Dr. Morell. Where Morell got this volume, and how he should not have acknowledged the aid he derived from it, is a mystery. As I mentioned before, the handwriting is far prior to Morell's day. The volume is rendered still more interesting by its having many of Stanley's emendations, about which such a controversy arose from the observations made by Blomfield in his preface to the Agamemnon. And I am almost induced to think it might originally have belonged to Stanley, who made a similar use of it to what Morell did. Many of the emendations are still inedited. This valuable volume, therefore, is of great interest, (1) from the vast number of MSS. readings, and (2) from its having been formerly in the possession of Dr. Morell, and the circumstances above mentioned. It is a very large and clean copy of the now scarce edition of H. Stephens; and your bibliographical readers will be astonished to hear I purchased it for one shilling! I may mention I showed it to the Bishop of London and Dr. Wordsworth, Canon of Westminster, who were both interested with it. The latter showed me in return several volumes of MSS. collections for a new edition of Æschylus, made by his lamented brother the late Mr. John Wordsworth, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, perhaps the profoundest Greek scholar next to Porson the University of Cambridge ever possessed, and who so ably reviewed Professor Scholefield's Æschylus in the Philological Museum. The classical world can never sufficiently regret that death prevented us from receiving at his hands a first-rate edition of this noble poet, as he had been at much pains in travelling all over the Continent, and examining all the MSS. extant; and from his known partiality to the author, and vast learning, would doubtless have done ample justice to his task.

Richard Hooper.

St. Stephen's, Westminster.

ON A PASSAGE IN THE "MERCHANT OF VENICE," ACT III. SC. 2.

The passage in which I am about to propose some verbal corrections has already been in part examined by your correspondent A. E. B. in p. 483. of this volume; but the points, except one, to which I advert, have not been touched by that gentleman. The first folio reads thus:

The word guiled in the first line is printed guilded in the second folio, the form in which gilded appears often in the old copies. I have no doubt that this is the true reading, and it would obviate the difficulty of supposing that Shakspeare wrote guiled for guiling.

In Henry Peacham's Minerva Britanna, 1612, p. 207., of deceitful "court favour" it is said:

Notwithstanding your correspondent's ingenious argument to show that beautie in the third line may be the true reading, I cannot but think that it is a mistake of the compositor caught from beauteous in the preceding line; and that gypsie was the word used by the poet, who thus designates Cleopatra. The words in their old form might well be confused. For "thou pale and common drudge," in the seventh line, I unhesitatingly read "thou stale and common drudge;" and, by so doing, avoid the repetition of the same epithet to silver and lead. It is evident that the epithet applied to silver should be a depreciating one; while paleness is said to move more than eloquence. The following passage in King Henry IV., Part I. Act III. Sc. 2. confirms this reading:

To obviate the repetition, Warburton altered paleness to plainness, but paleness was the appropriate epithet for lead. Thus, Baret has, "Palenesse or wannesse like lead. Ternissure."

And in Romeo and Juliet, Act II. Sc. 5., we have:

With these simple and, most of them, obvious corrections, I submit the passage to the impartial consideration of those who with me think that our immortal poet, so consummate a master of English, has been here, as elsewhere, rendered obscure, if not absurd, by the blunders of the printer. It will then run thus:

I may just observe, that in Troilus and Cressida, Act II. Sc. 2., the quarto copies have printed pale for stale, which is corrected in the folio.

S. W. Singer.

EPISODE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

Mademoiselle de Sombreuil and the Glass of Blood.

"... In the Abbaye, Sombreuil, the venerable Governor of the Invalides, was brought up to the table, and Maillard had pronounced the words 'à la Force,' when the Governor's daughter, likewise a prisoner, rushed through pikes and sabres, clasped her old father in her arms so tightly that none could separate her from him, and made such piteous cries and prayers that some were touched. She vowed that her father was no aristocrat, that she herself hated aristocrats. But to put her to a further proof, or to indulge their bestial caprices, the ruffians presented to her a cup full of blood, and said 'Drink! drink of the blood of the aristocrats, and your father shall be saved!' The lady took the horrible cup, and drank and the monsters kept their promise."

Thus, in relating the massacres of September, writes the author of Knight's Pictorial Hist. of Engl. (Reign of Geo. III., vol. iii. p. 160.); and thus tradition has handed down to us this most horrible episode of the first French revolution; one which made so deep an impression on my own mind, that the scene was always uppermost whenever the atrocities committed during that eventful period of French history were under consideration. This impression, I am glad to say, has now been removed by M. Granier de Cassagnac, who (Histoire du Directoire) states that the tradition is not founded on fact; and as it is the first denial of the event which has come under my notice, I send you the substance of the evidence which M. de Cassagnac brings forward in support of his statement:—

1. The Marquise de Fausse-Lendry, in her work, Quelques-uns des Fruits amers de la Révolution, does not make any allusion to the fact, although she was in the same chamber with Mlle. de Sombreuil, and relates her heroic devotion to her father.

2. Peltier, who was in Paris at the time, and published his Histoire de la Révolution du 10 Août early in 1793, does not say a word as to the occurrence.

3. The report of Piette, which was drawn up in Mlle. de Sombreuil's favour, and from details supplied by herself, is completely silent on the matter.

4. Being arrested with her father, and her younger brother, Mlle. de Sombreuil was taken to the Prison de la Bourbe on the 31st of December, 1793. One of the prisoners thus notices the event in his journal:

"Du 11 Nivôse, an II.

"L'on amena aussi a famille Sombreuil, le père, le fils, et la fille: tout le monde sait que cette courageuse citoyenne se précipita, dans les journées du mois de Septembre, entre son père et le fer des assassins, et parvint à l'arracher de leurs mains. Depuis, sa tendresse n'avait fait que s'accroître, et il n'est sorte de soins qu'elle ne prodiguât à son père, malgré les horribles convulsions qui la tourmentaient tous les mois, pendant trois jours, depuis cette lamentable époque. Quand elle parut au salon, tous les yeux se fixèrent sur elle et se remplirent de larmes."—Tableau des Prisons de Paris sous Robespierre, p. 93.

Here again, not a word about the glass of blood, although the narrative was written at no very distant period from the occurrences of September.

Maton de la Varennes, in his Hist. particulière des Evènemens, written subsequent to the events of Fructidor, year V., is enthusiastic in his praise of Mlle. de S.'s devotion; but says not a word as to the horrible sacrifice by which she is represented to have purchased her father's life.

The tradition is found for the first time in print in a note to Legouvé's Mérite des Femmes, which appeared in 1801; and the subject has been consecrated by the pen of the exiled poet Victor Hugo, in an ode to Mlle. de Sombreuil. Since then M. Thiers, without further looking into the matter, has given place to it in his Hist. de la Révolut. Française:

Victor Hugo's lines are the following:—

The subsequent history of this unfortunate family was this. M. de Sombreuil and his youngest son perished on the scaffold, the 10th June, 1794. The elder brother, Charles de Sombreuil, was shot at Vannes in June, 1795, after the Quiberon expedition. Leaving prison and France, after the 9th Thermidor, Mlle. de S. married an emigrant, the Comte de Villelume, who, under the Restoration, became governor of the Invalides at Avignon, at which place she died in 1823.

Philip S. King.

MILTON INDEBTED TO TACITUS.

There is perhaps nothing in "Lycidas" which has so commended itself to the memory and lips of men, as that exquisite strain of tender regret and pathetic despondency in which occur the lines—

It is with no desire to impair our admiration of these noble lines that I would ask, if that graceful glorifying of Fame as "the last infirmity of noble minds" was not suggested by the profound remark of Tacitus, in his character of the stoical republican, Helvidius Priscus (Hist., l. iv. c. 6.):

"Erant, quibus appetentior famæ videretur, quando etiam sapientibus cupido gloriæ novissima exuitur."

The great Englishman has condensed and intensified the expression of the concise and earnest Roman. This is one of those delightful obligations which repay themselves: Milton has more than returned the favour of the borrowed thought by lending it a heightened expression.

Thomas H. Gill.

Minor Notes.

Note by Warton on Aristotle's "Poetics."—Some of your correspondents having expressed a wish that the MS. remarks of eminent scholars, when met with by your readers, might be communicated to the world through your pages, I beg to send you the following observations, signed J. Warton, which I have found on the blank leaf of a copy of Aristotle's Poetics (edit. of Ruddimannos, Edinb. 1731):—

"To attempt to understand poetry without having diligently digested this treatise, would be as absurd and impossible as to pretend to a skill in geometry without having studied Euclid. The fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth chapters, wherein he has pointed out the properest methods of exciting terror and pity, convince us that he was intimately acquainted with those objects which most forcibly affect the heart. The prime excellence of this precious treatise is the scholastic precision and philosophical clearness with which the subject is handled, without any address to the passions or imagination. It is to be lamented that the part of the Poeticks in which he has given precepts for comedy did not likewise descend to posterity."

A considerable number of notes, in the same handwriting, are also in the volume.

J. M.

Oxford.

Misappropriated Quotation.—I have heard the following passage of Lord Bacon's, Essay VIII., and by a Cambridge D.D. too, so far as the word "fortune," attributed to Paley:

"He that hath a wife and children hath given hostages to fortune, for they are impediments to great enterprises. The best works of the greatest merit for the public have proceeded from unmarried and childless men."

B. B.

The God Arciacon.—In a Descriptive Account of the Antiquities in the Grounds and in the Museum of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society, drawn up by the learned Curator of the antiquities, at page 20. I find the following inscription and explanation:—

"N. III. An altar recently discovered in the rubble foundation, under one of the pillars of the church of St. Dionis, Walmgate, York. It is inscribed:

DEO
ARCIACON
ET N. AVG. SI
MAT. VITALIS
ORD V. S. LM.

Which may be read thus: DEO Arciacon et Numini Augusti Simatius Vitalis Ordovix Votum solvit libens merito, i.e. To the God Arciacon and to the Divinity of Augustus, Simatius Vitalis, one of the Ordovices, discharges his vow willingly, deservedly—namely, by dedicating this altar. There is nothing in this inscription to indicate its date, or the Emperor to whose divinity, in part, the altar is dedicated. The god Arciacon, whose name occurs in no other inscription, was probably one of those local deities to whom the Roman legions were so prone to pay religious reverence, especially if in the attributes ascribed to them they bore any resemblance to the gods of their own country. If the reading and interpretation of ORD be right, Vitalis was a Briton; and Arciacon may have been a deity acknowledged by the Ordovices, who occupied the northern parts of Wales."

In the name ARCIACON I fancy that I see in a Latinized form the British words ARCH IACHAWR, i.e. the Supreme Healer. Arch has the same meaning in Welsh as it has in the English and several other languages. In combination it is shortened to Ar, as in Yr Arglwdd Dduw, the Lord God. My conjecture is, that the Britons may have worshipped a God whose attributes resembled those of the Æsculapius of the Greeks. I hope that some of the contributors to "N. & Q." will be so kind as to give some information on this subject.

Inverted hand symbol

Gat-tothed.—I do not know whether this mysterious word in the description of the "Wife of Bath," has been satisfactorily explained since the time of Tyrwhitt; but perhaps the following passage may suggest a new reading in addition to "cat-tothed" and "gap-tothed," which he gives in his note on Canterbury Tales, p. 470.:

"The Doctor deriveth his pedigree from Grono ap Heylyn, who descended from Brocknel Skythrac, one of the princes of Powis-land, in whose family was ever observed that one of them had a gag-tooth, and the same was a notable omen of good fortune."—Barnard's Life of Heylyn, p. 75., reprinted in Heyl. Hist. Ref. Eccl. Hist. Soc., 1. xxxii.

Query, What was a gag-tooth? The "Wife" herself says,

J. C. R.

Goujere.—The usage of this word by Shakspeare (in the Second Part of Henry IV.) is another proof that he took refuge in Cornwall, when he fled from the scene of his deerstalking danger. The Goujere is the old Cornish name of the Fiend, or the Devil; and is still in use among the folk words of the West.

C. E. H. Morwenstow.

The Ten Commandments in Ten Lines.—In looking over the Registers of the Parish of Laneham, Notts, last April, I discovered on one of the leaves the Commandments with the above title. It is signed "Richard Christian, 1689:" he was vicar at that time.