Notes and Queries

in the Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica, as shortly to appear, the Parish Registers of Madron, in the County of Cornwall, a place which probably many of the readers of this never heard of, and yet it will sell.

With each register I should certainly give all existing monumental and tombstone inscriptions. This leads me to mention that I have persuaded a very respectable but comparatively humble individual to copy, after his day's business is over, all the inscriptions in the churches, churchyards, and cemeteries of the cathedral city in which I live. These he will publish in one volume, just as Cansick has done those of the London churches. I obtained for him a few influential subscribers, who rapidly brought many others; and now the man will certainly make " a pretty penny" by his very easy work, for which, of course, an antiquary has no time. Why should not this be done in other towns?

I have only to add that it has been suggested that the Harleian Society should undertake this publication of registers at an extra subscription, and individuals might join one or both branches of the society as they chose.

ARGENT.

I trust that ARGENT's suggestion, when modified, will meet with sufficient support to lead to the formation of such a society as he describes. Many local antiquaries already possess copies of the more important entries in the parish registers of their districts, and these they would no doubt contribute gratuitously. By restricting the extracts published by the society to entries of noble, gentle, and eminent yeoman or other families, the space occupied by each parish would be comparatively small, and a yearly volume might well contain the cream of several registers. It would probably be advisable, also, in order to render the volumes more generally interesting, that they should contain the registers of parishes in the north as well as the south of England, say three from the province of Norroy King-of-Arms and three from that of Clarencieux. I would gladly join the society, and could promise to obtain the names of several other subscribers; I would also place at the disposal of the council extracts from the registers of several parishes in Lancashire and Cheshire. J. PAUL RYLANDS, F.S.A.

Such a society as is now proposed I endeavoured to constitute about nine years ago; but it did not succeed, nor, I fear, would it succeed now. The work to be done is vast, and the labour nearly overwhelming. The registers of Nonconformist churches were, by a Royal Commission, collected and deposited in Somerset House about thirty years ago; but the clergy objected to the transfer of the parochial registers, and they retain them still. These should now be collected and, under proper arrangement, deposited in the Public

Record Office. I would willingly join in any movement to effect this most desirable object.

Fifteen years ago I made a tour over a large portion of Scotland, and examined tombstones in the different parishes. The result of my inquiries has been published by the Grampian Club in two octavo volumes. To the Scottish parochial clergy I issued schedules, but I received comparatively few replies. Country ministers seldom answer public letters; such has been the experience of antiquaries for centuries. If inscriptions on tombstones are to be preserved, the Master of the Rolls should appoint a suitable person in each county to undertake the transcription. In like manner diocesan, parochial, and municipal registers should be catalogued. Good work in this respect has been done in Scotland, but in England and Ireland little has been accomplished. No antiquarian subject interests me more than this, but it is useless to work unaided in this or any other field.

CHARLES ROGERS, LL.D.

Grampian Lodge, Forest Hill.

Many of your readers will no doubt have read as it deserves the article in the current number of the Church Quarterly Review on "Parish Records." It comes as an apt commentary upon ARGENT'S suggestion, and the opening words of its concluding sentence might indeed serve as a motto for his proposed society: "Let us more perfectly do for posterity what our ancestors did in a measure for us." H. W.

New Univ. Club.

Form the society, collect by subscription ample funds, and offer to every clergyman a fee for every one hundred entries as they are sent up. My

registers begin in 1560. I should therefore have a long work before me, and, moreover, a very dry work; therefore the fee should be large and liberal. T. W. R.

MRS. CHRISTIAN DAVIES (5th S. vi. 511.)—I am glad to see this question again brought forWard, and trust we may now hear whether there is It was first printed in 1740, a second time in 1741, in truth any evidence that Defoe wrote the life. and a third time, modified, in 1742. It is well written, and much in the style and manner of Defoe. On the one hand, it has been said (3rd S. ix. 323) how could it have been the work of Defoe, as he died nine years previously? And why should we doubt that the name given to the third edition, that of J. Wilson, is really that of the author? To the first point, it may be replied that the life practically ends with the death of Marlborough in 1722, hence it might quite possibly have been written by Defoe; and to the second, unless it can be shown that there really was a surgeon named J. Wilson at Chelsea, it may be a fictitious name assumed by Defoe. If, however,

it was written by him, it is difficult to understand why it was not printed till nine years after his death; first with no author's name, and then with that of an unknown surgeon, when that of so well known a writer as Defoe would at once have commanded a ready sale.

I am not aware that Defoe's biographers, such as Chalmers, Wilson, and Lee, have ever claimed this book for Defoe. It has, because it is so like his style, been printed several times amongst his works, and sometimes been incidentally spoken of as his, but in such a manner as to render his authorship of it very doubtful. Thus Chadwick, Life of Defoe, 1859, p. 444, says that Defoe could not pay his butcher's bill "on the security of the last impression of Mother Ross," forgetting that there was no impression of the book in existence till several years after Defoe had ceased to have any

trouble about butchers' bills.

There is no doubt but that the main facts of the life of this extraordinary person are correctly given. There were several brief accounts of her published at the time of her death in 1739. The following is from the London Magazine for July, 1739, p. 361, in the list of deaths for the month:

“At Chelsea, Mrs. Christiana Davis, who for several years served as a Dragoon undiscover'd in the Royal Irish Inniskilling Regiment; but receiving a wound in K. Williams Wars at Aghrim in Ireland, she was then discover'd; tho' her Comrade had not the least suspicion of her being a Woman: She behaved with great Valour, was afterwards in Flanders, and was very useful in a Battle or a Siege to supply the Soldiers, &c., with Water and other Necessaries, even to the Mouth of a Cannon. She, for her courageous Behaviour, obtain'd his late Majesty's Letter for an allowance out of Chelsea College of 1s. per day, which she receiv'd till her Death. And her Corps, according to her desire, was interr'd amongst the old Pensioners in Chelsea Burying-Ground, and three grand Vollies fired over her Grave."

Faulkner, in his History of Chelsea, quotes the above statement (ii. 226), and adds that she was well respected by many persons of distinction and general officers, that her third husband was a pensioner in the Royal Hospital, and that she resided the latter part of her life at Chelsea, being principally supported by the charity of some persons of quality (see Boyer, Political State of Europe, vol. lviii. p. 90). Faulkner makes no mention of Mr. J. Wilson. EDWARD SOLLY.

I do, that it is the genuine evidence of her ladyship's spite and malice :-

"The Lawyer's Fortune, or Love in a Hollow Tree, a Comedy. Written by" (here half the line is left blank, and filled up in this copy in MS.. Lord Grimston "). "Revis'd and Compared with the First Edition in 1705."

Then vignette; a couple of trestles with a tight rope extended, upon which an elephant is performing a pas seul, an exceedingly pretty device in red. booksellers of London and Westminster, 1736, London, printed for E. Underhill, and sold by the price 6d." The words in italic in red; 12mo., edition of 1705. The Biographia Dramatica says pp. 64. The author's preface as in the genuine the elephant one has a frontispiece exhibiting the foregoing "allegorical reflection upon his lordship's understanding," thus really ignoring the the comedy, "The Desert," with its hollow tree in frontispiece in this, illustrating the third scene in the centre; a dry branch upon the upper part, on which sits an owl; a fissure in the trunk, discovering the bearded Valentine addressing the astonished Friendlove; wild beasts roaming in the background, and in the fore part the most direct insult upon the author, indicated by a coroneted ass munching a thistle. In an old hand on the flyleaf, "by William Vincent Grimston, printed by order of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough." The edition of the same date, octavo, differs from mine also in being "Lond., Printed and Sold by E. Hill"; has the same frontispiece, but, instead of a smart donkey munching a thistle, has a passive, stupid-looking brute with a better defined coronet; the plate reversed; the vignette relegated in black as a headpiece to the first page of the comedy; and besides the author's preface has a second, addressed "To the Right Sensible the Lord Flame," subscribed "The Publisher," with some notes of a spiteful and depreciatory character, from which it is evident that both these were put forth with the same intent. The editions in quarto, published by Lintott, are no doubt the author's own-that of 1705 anon., and that without date "written by W. Grimston, Esq." The Rotterdam edition I have not seen. This absurd comedy fell into the hands of the wits at an earlier period. Swift apostrophizes the author thus :

"The leaden crown devolved to thee, Great Poet of the Hollow Tree "; and Pope, with reference to his lordship's residence at Gorhambury, follows suit :

"Shades that to Bacon did retreat afford

"THE LAWYER'S FORTUNE" (5th S. vii. 27.)As a pendant to MR. SOLLY'S note, I would observe Are now the portion of a booby lord"; that all the paragraphs bearing upon the Duchess of Marlborough's treatment of Lord Grimston's un- and, finally, Dr. W. King, in his Art of Cookery, fortunate comedy are derived from the Biographia in Imitation of Horace, n.d., but marked 1719, Dramatica, where the electioneering edition is not devotes five or six pages of his introductory matter so fully described as it might have been, and to an ironical review of The Lawyer's Fortune. possessing the copy of "John Towneley, Esq." (not in the British Museum), with his book-plate, I here give its title and peculiarities, believing, as

J. O. GERARD JOHNSON (5th S. vi. 409.)- MR. MORRELL will see from Redgrave's Artists of the

Eng. School, 1869, that Gerard Johnson was a modeller, a Hollander, who lived in the parish of St. Thomas Apostle, in London, and it is on the authority of Dugdale's Diary that the Shakspeare bust is attributed to him.

In the "Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, 1623-25," p. 430, occurs this :

"Petition of Gerard Janson, of Amsterdam, to the King, for a patent of the sole manufacture in England for twenty-one years of gally works of earth, and a prohibition of their importation."

There is no doubt at all but that this is the Hollander of St. Thomas Apostle, written by bungling people then and since as Gerard Johnson; and I think that through "N. & Q." search might be made at Amsterdam which would identify this Janson, and connect him with the artistic Jansons of Holland, and Janssens, more especially, of Amsterdam, whence Cornelius (also improperly called Johnson) came. I make little question but that the Cornelius Janssen, who painted the splendid Sir Kenelm Digby in the Spencer Gallery, was the close relative of our City "Hollander"; and although he has been called a wretched stone-cutter, I find him to have been a very good artist.

Of course, this settles the other question put by MR. MORRELL, showing that he could not have been related to the Thomas Johnson, physician, who translated Gerarde's Herbal. Gerarde was himself "civis et chirurgus Londinensis." The first edition was in 1596, of which there is a rare copy in the British Museum; and this very book has helped to establish the first culture in England of many old plants. Old John Gerarde, of Holborn, whom Burleigh calls his servant, did achieve marvellous sound work in his day and generation, and his memory now blooms accordingly, like the rose of Hafiz. C. A. WARD. Mayfair.

[In our edition, the author spells his name Gerard, and dates his address "To the Courteouse and wellwilling Readers" "From my house in Holburne, within the Suburbs of London, this first of December, 1597.]

the words a wider meaning than they will bear. His interpretation would require some such word as extirpatio, a rooting up, a getting rid of altogether. But cleansing a thing and extirpating it are processes widely different. In one case the thing ceases to exist, in the other not, but only in a better state. Further, the grammar is against him. To render his translation tenable, there must be an exchange of prepositions, ex for in, as the latter is never used in the sense of from. Finally, whatever MR. ADDY's experience may have shown him, there is certainly no authority, as far as I can find, for golda meaning "charlock,” or any other vegetable production. He would have been much nearer the mark if he had said the same of bladum, which means corn, or, by a metonomy, the land on which it grows.

EDMUND TEW, M.A.

When the chartulary of Beauchief Abbey was in force, gold was the popular English name for Chrysanthemum segetum (corn marigold). Chaucer, in his Knightes Tale (1. 1932), mentions

"Jelausie

That wered of yelwe goldes a gerlond." Tyrwhitt, in his glossary to Chaucer's works, writes, "Gold, n., a flower commonly called a turnsol"; and Lightfoot, in his Flora Scotica, adds to his description of Chrysanthemum segetum the following remark :

"These golden flowers turn to the sun all day, an ornament to the corn-fields, and afford a pleasing sight to the passenger, but are so very detrimental to the husbandman, that a law is in force in Denmark which obliges the inhabitants everywhere to eradicate them out of their grounds" (vol. i. pp. 489, 490).

KIRBY TRIMMER.

Cowel's Interpreter assigns to this word the meaning, "a gullet," "a sink," "a passage" for water, &c., and quotes the following:-

"Confessionem etiam quam idem Thomas fecit-de terris suis & terris tenentium suorum tum liberorum quam nativorum, a Goldis mundandis per se & suos secundum consuetudinem in locis de Alferton & Norton usitatam.-Mon. Angl., tom. ii. p. 610."

Idridgehay.

J. P.

"GOLDA" (5th S. vi. 467.)-If MR. ADDY, when consulting his Du Cange, had turned to the word Gordus, which is given as a synonym, he would have found that the definition of the latter word 28.)-The case respecting the parentage of Becket PARENTAGE OF THOMAS À BECKET (5th S. vii. is Gurges, and that of this Du Cange says, "pro-is to be seen at sufficient length for common purprie est locus in fluvio arctatus, seu ad construen- poses in Milman's Hist. of Lat. Christ., bk. viii. dum molendinum, seu ad capiendos pisces "-that c. viii. vol. v. pp. 22-6, 3rd edit., 1864, where, at is, a mill-dam, or a fish-pond-stew, made by mounding off a certain space in a stream or river. P. 24, note f, there is a distinct answer to the Taking the word in this sense-the only legitimate one, as I can see-the meaning of emundatio goldarum," &c., is clearly this-the cleansing of the stew or mill-pond, a work of so great importance in the case of monastic establishments that no wonder it was enforced under very strict pains and penalties. Besides this, MR. ADDY assigns to

query:

Brompton is not the earliest writer who recorded this tale; he took it from the Quadrilogus I., but of this the date is quite uncertain. The exact date of Brompton is unknown. See Preface in Twysden. He goes down to the end of Richard II."

Dean Milman further shows that the tale was unknown to "any of the seven or eight contem

porary biographers of Becket, most of them his most intimate friends or his most faithful attendants."-P. 23. This is proved at length in note e, ib., of them and the French poem written five years after his death. A similar refutation is also made of the theory of the Saxon descent of Becket, p. 24, and note g. It is stated :

"The father of Becket, according to the distinct words of one contemporary biographer (anon. Lambeth.), was a native of Rouen, his mother of Caen. Gilbert

was no knight-errant, but a sober merchant, tempted by commercial advantages to settle in London. His mother neither boasted of Saracenic blood nor bore the royal name of Matilda. She was the daughter of an honest burgher of Caen.... The parents of Becket, he asserts himself, were merchants of unimpeached character, not of the lowest class."-P. 25.

This is proved by the words of Becket himself in note :

“Quod si ad generis mei radicem et progenitores meos intenderis, cives quidem fuerunt Londinenses, in medio concivium suorum habitantes sine querela, nec omnino infimi."-Epist. cxxx. ED. MARSHALL.

MYSTERIOUS MOUNTAIN SOUNDS (5th S. vi. 359.) The following may perhaps be added to the list of these. In the bay of Laig, island of Eigg, one of the Western Hebrides, is to be found a remarkable instance of "musical" or ringing' sands, which emit, when moved with the foot, a "shrill, sonorous note," described as somewhat resembling the sound given out from a stretched pack-thread when played on with the finger. I have repeatedly heard the phenomenon spoken of by witnesses. I would refer your correspondent for a minute description of it to Hugh Miller's Cruise of the Betsey, pp. 59-67. He claims this as a discovery of his own, and states that it adds a third to the previously known instances of musical sand, the others being (1) Jebel Narkous, or the Mountain of the Bell, in Arabia Petrea, described by Sir D. Brewster in his Letters on Nat. Magic (the same as that noted at p. 389); and (2) Reg Rewan, situated forty miles north of Cabul, described by Sir Alexander Burnes in 1838.

When MR. BLAIR has completed his inquiries, we may perhaps learn the value of the challenge which Hugh Miller held out to all Europe, for an instrument capable of producing musical sounds like those to be heard at the bay of Laig. A. FERGUSSON, Lieut.-Col.

U.S. Club, Edinburgh. Of all the strange and mysterious sounds which astonish and puzzle us, none have given more reason for speculation and research than those loud explosions, similar to the distant boom of a heavy gun, heard in India during the rainy season, in the Sunderbunds, at Backergunj, at Dacca, and in other localities, called-why no one can explainthe guns of Barrisaul. These sounds, usually heard in the night, seem always to come from the south;

but even on the sea-coast they are not appreciably louder than at one hundred miles inland. Mr. Knox Wigat, who lately wrote some notes on the subject of these nocturnal noises, having, as he thinks, detected a faint, rumbling sound after the explosions, attributes them to the meeting of thunder-clouds at a very great elevation above the earth's surface. HUGH OWEN.

The subject is a very curious one, and I am happy to send a few contributions to a collection of materials which will obviously require subsequent classification.

1. The wonderful bramidos, or subterranean thunders of Guanaxuato, in Mexico.- Humboldt's Essai polit. sur la Nouv. Espagne, cited in his Cosmos, i. 205 (Bohn).

2. The singular detonazioni of the island of Meleda.-Cosmos, ibid.; Wilkinson's Dalmatia and Montenegro, i. 266. These are also mentioned, but as occurring on the banks of a neighbouring river, in a recently published book, entitled, I think, A Walk through Bosnia and Herzegovina.

3. The warning sound in the Alps, heard before some disaster.-Murray's Handbook for Switzerland (1874), p. 100, and I think other authors. T. W. WEBB.

The state

Your correspondent will find something to the purpose in Brewster's Letters on Natural Magic, PP. 241-243, and again in an article, obviously from the pen of the same writer, in the North British Review, vol. iii. pp. 25, 26. ments given in the latter of these publications of the experiences of Lieut. Wellstedt, of the Indian Navy, at Jebel Narkous, the Mountain of the Bell, and of the eminent geologist, the late Hugh Miller, on the sandy beach of the island of Eigg, in the Hebrides, go far to prove that Ehrenberg's explanation of the phenomenon is in all likelihood

the correct one. Glasgow.

Cf. Aratus, i. 1, 180:

Κορυφαί τε βοώμεναι οὔρεος ἄκραι. Virgil, Geo., i. 357 :— "Et aridus altis Montibus audiri fragor; aut resonantia longe Litora misceri."

Cork.

R. C.

THE JACOBITE STANDARDS (5th S. vii. 22.)— COL. FERGUSSON may accept the following evidence bearing on the use, by the Young Pretender, of the motto "Tandem Triumphans," and the emblems of a crown, or crowns, and a coffin. In the text quoted from Robert Chambers's work, the use of these distinctions seems to be denied. No doubt more than one banner, with varying bearings, was employed during the Scottish raid of

Conservative Club.

WILLIAM PLATT.

'45, but the evidence afforded by contemporary assumed more serious proportions in 1841 by the engravings is of the highest value. I give the issue of sixty millions of piastres, bearing twelve numbers from the British Museum Catalogue of per cent. interest, payable every six months. In Satirical Prints: No. 2788, "Tandem Trium-the following year the liquidation of a portion of phans, translated by the Duke of Cumberland," this issue, by Izzet Pasha, the Minister of Finance, published by C. Corbet, "May ye 7th, 1746." reduced the interest upon the outstanding caimés This engraving comprises a design representing, to three per cent. In the course of the year 1853 with great vigour, the defeat of the Highlanders, the paper currency had reached the enormous and in the hands of Sullivan, the Pretender's amount of 176 millions of piastres. standard-bearer, a flag showing a coffin surmounted by a crown. No. 2662, The Rebellion Displayed, "Publish'd according to Act of Parliament, 1 Nov., 1745," comprises the Pretender's banner, borne by an ass, and displaying three crowns above a coffin, with the inscription "Tandem Triumphans, Anglicè A Dog will have his Day." No. 2799, Townley and Fletcher, represents Temple Bar, over which structure a demon flies, holding the Pretender's banner, which bears three crowns above a coffin and the motto, "A Crown or a Grave." There is no publication line to No. 2799, but it is a contemporary print. The motto in English may help to answer COL. FERGUSSON'S query, "What is the exact meaning of the latter" flag? The verses engraved below the design are significant :"Observe the Banner which would all Enslave, Which Ruin'd Traytors, did so proudly Wave, The Devil seems the Project to Despise," &c. There are other prints exhibiting these emblems and that audacious motto, but, doubtless, Nos. 2662, 2788, and 2799 will suffice.

F. G. STEPHENS.

"CAIME" (5th S. vii. 19.)-A caimé (melius kaimé*) varies in value from fifty to one thousand piastres, circulates like a bank note, and, as it bears interest and can be offered in lieu of taxes, corresponds to our exchequer bill.

The three million Turkish pounds lately put into circulation consist of caimés of five, ten, fifty, and one hundred piastres, numbered and stamped by the Imperial Ottoman Bank, and redeemable in metallic currency.

This paper money, adopted to a trifling extent by the Porte not earlier than the years 1828-1829,§

Kaieme, the feminine form of the Arabic participle kaiem, signifies, in the Turkish language-1. "The foot of an animal"; 2. "A page" (of a book), "a sheet of paper, a letter," "a written report' or "notice "; 3. " Any given hour of the day."

The piastre (ghroosh or ghooroosh), originally equivalent to the Spanish piastre, has gradually depreciated in value since the year 1774, and at the present day is only equal to 2d. or 24d. One hundred piastres of Turkey are worth, on an average of the exchanges, about one pound sterling.

The Turkish lira or pound in gold may be taken as equal to 18s. or 18s. 2d. of our money.

§ In 1829 a five-piastre piece (beshlik from besh, five), as well gold as silver, was coined at the Imperial mint to pay to Russia the war indemnity, amounting to 5,500,000l. For the payment of considerable sums, bags or purses of five hundred piastres are issued from the

GREEN THURSDAY (5th S. vi. 491.)—Gründonnerstag==dies viridium, may be accounted for by the symbolic meaning of " green" sinless, in Luke xxiii. 31; cf. French "jeudi absolu." the Lutheran Church it is "the day of absolution,” Ablasstag," preparatory to the communion celebrated on the following day. The day before Maundy Thursday has been styled "der Krumme Mittwoch," Krumme being a popular corruption of the French carême. Some writers explain in the same way the origin of grüne.

Tettenhall College.

G. A. SCHRUMPF.

It is called Green Thursday (Gründonnerstag) in German either on account of an ancient national custom of plucking and eating green spring herbs on that day, or, as others say, because in the Lutheran Church divine service is on Maundy Thursday begun with the second verse of the twenty-third Psalm. The former reason seems the more probable. NICOLAI C. SCHOг, Jun.

Chorlton-cum-Hardy.

SEAFOUL GIBSON (5th S. v. 468; vi. 18, 438, 545.)-I think it very probable that this name had its origin from some disaster to the parents at sea. I know the case of a boy whose name is Seaborn, and on inquiring how he came to bear it, I was told that his father is a merchant captain, and having taken his wife with him upon a voyage, the child was born at sea, to commemorate which event he was named as above.

R. P. HAMPTON ROBERTS.

ON THE USE OF THE WORDS "SUPERIOR" AND "INFERIOR" (5th S. vii. 8.)—The authoress of Adam Bede has something to say about the word superior in one of her later novels, which perhaps may be of interest to your correspondent C. O. B.: "But I shall not marry any Middlemarch young man.'

"So it seems, my love, for you have as good as re fused the pick of them; and if there's better to be had, I'm sure there's no girl better deserves it.'

"Excuse me, mamma,-I wish you would not say "the pick of them."

"Why, what else are they?'

"I mean, mamma, it's rather a vulgar expression.' mint, and are passed from one merchant to another at the value stated, without being opened.

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