MISCELLANEOUS

48-455

NOTES AND QUERIES,

WITH ANSWERS.

"KNOW THYSELF' descended from Heaven."-Juvenal.

BLANK VERSE. The earliest attempt in English at blank verse was "Elizabeth Triumphans, concerning the Damned Practices that the Devilish Popes have used," etc., etc., .

... 1588.

AARON'S BREASTPLATE. Josephus and others maintain that the precious stones of Aaron's breastplate were the Urim and Thummim, and that they discovered the will of God by their extraordinary lustre, thereby producing the issue of events to those who consulted them.Vid. Lev. VIII, 8; 1 Sam. xxvIII, 6.

SOROSIS, 1775. Last night I was at a ball at the Ladies' Club. It was all goddesses, instead of being a resurrection of dancing matrons, as usual. The Duchess of Devonshire effaces all without being a beauty; but her youth, figure, flowing good-nature, sense, and lively modesty, and modest familiarity made her a phenomenon. Don't wonder that I was at a ball; I have discovered that I am a year younger than I thought, yet I shall not use this year yet, but come out with it a dozen years hence.- Walpole's Letter.

INHALING THE BREATH. In 1743 John Campbell published his "Hermippus Revived," a curious work founded on a French book with a similar title. "Its ostensible and apparently serious object was to prove the possibility of prolonging human life indefinitely by the inhalation of the breath of young girls; and great learning and ingenuity are expended upon the illustration of this thesis. But the

writer afterwards confessed that his real purpose was to rival the celebrated Boyle, by showing that neither the serio-comic style of writing, nor recondite and curious learning, was confined to the French side of the channel."

ANOINTING, an ancient and still prevalent custom throughout the East of pouring aromatic oils on persons as a token of honor, owes its origin to consideration of comfort and health, being regarded as a preventive of diseases, and a contributing to personal elegance. The anointing oil was often a very costly preparation. Olive oil, spikenard, and myrrh were the more common materials. It was a regular article of trade, and sold in alabaster boxes, which were well fitted to preserve the odor. Anointing oils were first used in England at the coronation of Alfred the Great, and Edgar was the first anointed King of Scotland.

A CHRISTMAS Pie of ye Olden Time. James, Earl of Lonsdale, sent a Christmas pie to King George III, which contained 9 geese, 2 tame ducks, 2 turkeys, 4 fowls, 6 pigeons, 6 wild ducks, 3 teals, 2 starlings, 12 partridges, 15 woodcocks, 2 Guinea fowls, 3 snipes, 6 plovers, 3 water-hens, 1 wild goose, 1 curlew, 46 yellow-hammers, 15 sparrows, 15 chaffinches, 2 larks, 4 thrushes, 12 fieldfares. 6 blackbirds, 20 rabbits, I leg of veal, half a ham, 3 bushels flour, and 2 stones of butter. It weighed 22 stones, was carried to London fn a two horse wagon, and if it was not as dainty as the celebrated pie containing fonr-and-twenty blackbirds, which, when the pie was opened, began to sing, it was, at all events, a "dish to set before the king."

16

The most

"IN 1527," says the The Quarterly Review (1884) Henry VIII first had recourse to what was then the common practice of Princes in coinage. Having once entered into the downward path he continued in it until, in 1546, 3s. were made out of the same amount of silver which at the beginning of the reign had been put into 1s. rapid rise in the prices that England has witnessed was the immediate consequence. The wheat average from 1509 to 1550 is 6s. a quarter; from 1550 to 1582, 14s. a quarter. The restoration of the coinage by Elizabeth, in 1560, failed entirely in bringing back prices to their old standard, partly because the flood of the New World silver, which had already overspread the continent, now began to penetrate into England; partly because Elizabeth's coinage, though pure, was very much lighter than it had been in times past. At one time a pound had really been but 20s., from 1560 forward, 60s. have been coined out of a pound of silver."

IN the time of James II, i. e. at the Easter Sessions, 1688, the rates of wages allowed by the Justices of Bucks were entered in the records. A "Chiefe Bailiffe, or Hyne in Husbandry," was allowed to receive £6. a year "in the chilterne," and £5. 10s. "in the Vale."

Every other man servant in husbandry, if above 20 years of age, £4. 10s. in the chilterne, and £4. in the Vale. "Cooke-mayds and Dairymayds" were to have £2. 10s. a year; other maid-servants not more than £2. Mowers received 1s. 2d. for the day without meat or drink, or 5d. with meat and drink. Mowers of grass, by the acre, were paid 1s. 6d. Men haymakers had 10d. a day without meat or drink, or 5s. with meat and drink. Women hay-makers, 6d., or 3d. Mowers of barley, peas, beans, or oats, had 1s. 4d, or 8d. Laborers at other times might be paid 8d., or 4d from Lady Day to Michelmas, 7s., or 3d. from Michelmas to Lady Day. Gardeners and thatchers if supplied with meat and drink were to have 8d. all the year round, but a tailor got only 6d a day with meat and drink, or 10d. without. These rates appear to have remained without material attention until the reign of George I.

MURDER-WOUNDS BLEEDING AFRESH." The popular superstition that the wounds of a murdered body will "bleed afresh" when they are touched by the murderer, is thus referred to in Shakespeare's Richard III, 1, 2:

"Dead Henry's wounds

Open their congealed mouths, and bleed afresh."

Drayton says the simple proximity will produce the effect:

"If the vile actors of the heinous deed

Near the dead body happily be brought,

Oft hath been proved the deathless corpse will bleed."

The belief is shown to have been universally established in Scotland as late as 1668, when the Crown counsel, Sir George Mackenzie, in the trial of Philip Standsfield, thus alludes to a deposition sworn by several witness on that trial :

"God Almighty himself was pleased to bear a share in the testimonies which we produce. That divine power which makes the blood circulate during life has ofttimes, in all nations, opened a passage to it after death upon such occasions, but most in this case; for after the wounds had been sewed up, and the body designedly shaken up and down, - and which is most wonderful, after the body has been buried for several days, which naturally occasions the bload to congeal,-upon Philip's touching it, the blood darted and sprang out, to the great astonishment of the chirurgeons themselves, who were desired to watch this event; whereupon Philip, astonished more than they, threw down the body, crying, ‘O God, O God!' and cleansing his hands, grew so taint they were forced to give him a cordial."

THE KILKENNY CATS. The story generally told is, that two of those animals fought in a sawpit with such ferocious determination, that, when the battle was over nothing could be found remaining of either combatant except his tail-the marvellous inference to be drawn therefrom being, of course, that they had devoured each other. This ludicrous anecdote has, no doubt, been generally looked upon as an absurdity of the Joe Miller class; but this, says a writer in Notes and Queries (Eng.), I conceive to be a mistake. I have not the least doubt that the story of the mutual destruction of the contending cats was an allegory designed to typify the utter ruin to which centuries of litigation and embroilment on the subject of conflicting rights and privileges tended to reduce the respective exchequers of the rival mu