the other I am not aware. Another likeness of a white horse is near Lambourne, Berkshire, and known as the Berkshire White Horse, and which perhaps is the largest of all. CABALLARIUS.

Selwoodshire.-In Ethelwerd's Chronicle, Bohn's edition, p. 14., it is said,

"A. D. 709. Four years afterwards died the holy Bishop Aldhelm, by whose wonderful art were composed the words which are now read, and his bishopric was the province which is now called Selwoodshire [Sherborne]."

In Asser's Life of Alfred, ib. p. 62., it is said :—

"Also in the seventh week after Easter, he (Alfred) rode to the stone of Egbert [foot-note: now called Brixton Deverill in Wilts] which is in the eastern part of the wood which is called Selwood, which means in Latin Silva magna, the Great Wood, but in British Coit-mawr." Another foot-note says: —

"Selwood Forest extended from Frome to Burham, and was probably much larger at one time."

Can any of your readers afford any information as to what Selwoodshire comprehended? why it was called in the Chronicle a province? or any local or other information connected with the subject, and who are the authorities?

ANGLO-SAXON.

ledge and skill in that art or science, and that there is none comparable unto him, which said picture the deuill rent and tore all in many pieces; he ruinated the same in such manner and sort, that the repayring thereof will cost an hundred pound (at the least) before it can be brought to that perfection which it was of, and to set up again, in the like order and forme as it was, at the first there placed."-Strange Newes from Antwarpe which happened the 12 of August last past, 1612. First printed in Dutch at Bergen op Zoame by Soris Staele, and now translated into English by J. L. London, 1613. G. H. K.

Quotations Wanted.

"Cicero plainly lays down that to fall short of perfection whether by a mile or an inch is equally bad, and the Predestination of the Conventicle is but a harder and meaner version of the Necessity of the Porch: nay, Final Perseverance itself, as expressed by the Synod of Dort, differs in name only from the absolute Wisdom, which once acquired could not be lost, and which Chrysippus was blamed for supposing to be suspended during madness or ebriety." A Sermon preached before the University of Oxford at St. Mary's, on Sunday, Jan 20, 1713, by George Williams, B.D., late Fellow of Jesus College in Oxford. Oxford, 1714.

.

Can

The sermon is well composed and learned, but has no reference to pages or chapters. It seems to have been printed exactly as preached. any of your correspondents direct me to the passage in Cicero, and the censure of Chrysippus ? T. W. B. Minutes of Committees. - What is the proper mode, according to the best authorities, of authenticating the minutes of Committees? By whom and when should they be signed? By the chairman of the meeting to which they refer, or by the chairman of the meeting at which they are read over? LIBER.

[The etymology of conundrum is a question of some difficulty, and one which lexicographers leave as they find it. The signification of the term itself, also, is unsettled. With some, conundrum is "a sorry joke;" with others, "any witty saying." A learned friend, who thinks that, when help is not to be got from the Anglo-Saxon,

there is no harm in turning for a derivation to classical antiquity, suggests that conundrum affords one of those rare instances in which a word is part Greek, part Latin; and he is also of opinion that, to bring out the true derivation, we must take the term conundrum in its strictest sense. Accordingly, the Portuguese conundrum, "What does a dog make when he goes into the sun? Do you give it up? A shadow," and the waterman's conundrum, when he asked a brother waterman who was rowing by, "What makes it so cold, rowing on the Thames? Give it up? 'Cos it's wherry cold,". are neither of them, says our friend, conundrums in the strict sense of the term: but only such as these; the soldier's conundrum, "Why is death like an Enfield rifle? Give it up? Because it's a debt-o'-natur"—and again the Jew's conundrum, "Why ish greedy peoples like oysters? Give it up? Because they're shelfish: ― the distinction lying in this, that the conundrum proper, or true conundrum, must indicate an imaginary or fanciful agreement between some two objects that have no real congruity. This similitude of the two must of course be expressed in the answer, which is to the conundrum what the point is to the epigram; but still with this peculiarity, that it (the answer) always suggests some amusing feature of resemblance, common to the two incongruous objects indicated in the question.

This feature, then, common to the two objects and expressed in the answer, which is the essence of the conundrum, might in Greek be termed kovov dvoîv (commune duorum). Substitute the Latin duorum for the Greek Svoîv, and we have koinon duorum, or, more briefly, koinon d'rum; whence conundrum.

Another suggestion is that conundrum is only a modified and disguised form of the Latin conventum, an agreement. It is to be borne in mind, as some palliation of this very unlikely-looking derivation, that conventum in old books sometimes stands conuentum. Thus "Conventum tamen," Juy. vi. 25, is in the Aldine ed. (1515) " Conuentum tamen.' It should also be remembered that, in instances where u has thus slipped into the place of v, the pronunciation of the word has sometimes been modified in consequence, as in the case of salve (monosyllable), salue (dissyllable). This circumstance considered, it certainly does not appear quite impossible that conuentum, pronounced as written, may have been gradually transformed into conundrum.

When we say that, of several derivations which have been suggested for conundrum, the two now offered appear the least improbable, it will probably occur to some minds that the etymology of conundrum stands in need of farther illustration.]

"Maystre off Game."-Will you permit me to repeat my Query (2nd S. vi. 91.) about the authorship, &c., of the MS. of the "Maystre off Game"? I extract a few lines to show that it is not unworthy of attention:

"Now I wyll proue how hunters lyue in the worlde most ioifull of eny other man: ffor whan the hunter ryseth in the mornynge, and seth the ffayre and swet mornynge and cler wedyr and bryght, and hereth the songe off the small fowles which synge so swetly, wt grete melodye and ffull of loue, euych in hys langage, affter yt he lerneth off hys awn kynde, and whan the Sone is a ryse, he shall see the ffresh dew vpō the small twynggs and grass, and the sone whych by hys vertue shall make hym shyne, and that is grete joi and lykyng,

unto the hunters herl," &c.

E. H. K. [Of the Master of the Game there are no fewer than ten MSS. in the British Museum, viz. one in the Cotto

nian Library, Vesp. B. 12., a beautiful and clear MS. on vellum; prefixed to which, in the same hand with the rest of the volume, is the English Giffard and Tuity, filling a few pages as introductory of the Master of the Game. There are six, viz. three on vellum and three on paper, in the old Royal Library: two on paper in the Harleian; and a paper MS. (Additional 16,165) written by or for John Shirley, an English poet of the fifteenth century, unknown to Ritson, although particularly mentioned by Tanner in his Bibliotheca Britannico-Hibernica. This last is the only MS. of the Master of the Game which distinctly states, in its colophon title, that the treatise itself was written by Richard Duke of York, who was killed at the battle of Agincourt. The MS. itself is indisputably of the middle of the fifteenth century: and completely corroborated by the title of a ballad, written by Shirley, contained in one of Thoresby's MSS., dated in 1440, and described in his Ducatus Leodiensis. It is right to add that for this information we are indebted to the kindness of our learned friend Sir Henry Ellis.]

"Christians awake! &c."—As you have opened your pages for this subject, the present season seems a fit one for asking the authorship and correct version of that which is by very far the most popular Christmas Hymn in this neighbourhood, and even more so in South Yorkshire than here. I mean that beginning

"Christians awake! Salute the happy morn."

Eckington, N. Derbyshire.

J. EASTWOOD.

[This hymn is printed in Montgomery's Christian Psalmist, and is there attributed to John Byrom.]

Visitations of the Bishop of Norwich.-A correspondent of the Guardian states that this bishop has been forbidden by statute for some centuries past to summon his clergy more frequently than once in seven years. The clergy themselves (he adds) were the cause of this arrangement, having petitioned the Crown to diminish the number of visitations on account of the expenses consequent on a journey to meet the bishop. Can any of your correspondents give a reference to the statute alluded to, and inform me whether the same tender care has been taken of the clergy of any other diocese, by the same or by any other statute?

VRYAN RHEged.

[Blomefield, Hist. of Norfolk, iv. 553., edit. 1806, states, that "the visitation of the diocese of Norwich is a profitable emolument of the spiritualities of the see, and is under a certain limited custom; as first, every bishop hath right after his inthronization, to hold his primary visitation as soon as he pleases; and the customary fees are double to those of an ordinary visitation, which the bishop by custom can hold only every seventh year, computing from the time of his primary visitation; and accordingly by all the public registers of the see, no bishop ever I find, that from the most early times to Queen Elizabeth, visited otherwise; though since that time, contrary to the aforesaid act, which grants the spiritualities only in as have had the same,' one or two of the bishops held illarge and ample a manner as any bishops of the same see legal visitations-illegal, I say, because they held them within less than seven years, and consequently in a more large and ample manner than any bishop of the same see ever did, before the act." Again, by a composition be

·

MR. BOASE says, a Polish merchant of Altona told him that all the inhabitants of the island of Nordstrand, on the west coast of Schleswig (some 2000), spoke English, and were all descended from one settler and his family. This information is unquestionably incorrect. On account of its calamities, caused by inundations of the sea, few islands of so little importance have been so much noticed in geographical works as Nordstrand. For three centuries before 1634, it had suffered much from inundations, but in that year a tremendous one swept away above 1300 houses, 6000 persons, 50,000 head of cattle, and broke up the island, which had previously been a large one, into many fragments. Of these only two, the larger, still retaining the name of Nordstrand, and another called Pellworm, are secured by dykes. Nordstrand has at present 2500 inhabitants, descendants of Frieslanders, whose language they still speak. They are partly Lutherans, partly Roman Catholics. Thus far I have quoted from English authorities (the Penny Cyclopædia and others), which do not mention any colony. M. Gachard, well known for his antiquarian and historical researches, states, however, that after the frightful calamity of 1634, some Belgians settled in Nordstrand,-being assured of exemption from taxation for fourteen years, and for the same period after every new inundation. The free exercise of their religion—a fact which may probably explain the statement above, that the inhabitants are partly Roman Catholics—was also guaranteed to them. Christiern V. and Frederick IV. subse

quently confirmed their privileges. Nevertheless, after experiencing three inundations between 1717 and 1720, they were required to pay taxes in 1721, when there was another inundation. They applied for protection to the Emperor Charles VI., whose intervention gained for them two years' exemption. But in 1723 the taxes were again demanded, and payment enforced by military execution. The latest notice of these Belgian colonists which M. Gachard has met with, is in a return of the possessions of the religious houses in the Pays Bas, which was required in 1786 by Joseph II., so aptly called "revolution couronnée," in order to confiscation. It was, in short, one of

his many arbitrary acts which led to the Brabant

revolution. From this return M. Gachard discovers that the Oratorians of Malines were proprietors of an estate in Nordstrand.

It would be interesting to learn what reason the Danish government had for inducing the Belgians to settle in Nordstrand. Was it for the formation or better management of the dykes ?

The story of the descent of the inhabitants of Nordstrand from an English family may be dismissed as apocryphal. In regard to their language I am inclined to suppose that the Polish merchant was imperfectly acquainted with English at the time of his visit, and consequently mistook the Frisian for our language. That it more closely than any other Teutonic dialect resembles English, has been remarked by Sir William Temple and other writers. H. P.

ARMS OF THE ISLE OF MAN ON ETRUSCAN VASES.

(2nd S. vi. 409. 490.)

Your correspondent TOURIST, in mentioning that the Museum at Rouen contains an Etruscan vase, on which are three legs resembling the armorial bearings of the Isle of Man, opens to us a field of interesting inquiry. It has subsequently been shown by other correspondents (p. 490.) that in ancient days the three legs were especially connected with the Island of Sicily.

But it is also worthy of observation that there evidently existed some peculiar relation between the three legs and Mercury or Hermes. LowER, depicting to us in his Curiosities of Heraldry (1845) the coat of the Isle of Man, adds in a note (p. 79.), "Some of the Greek coins in Sicily bear an impress of three legs conjoined, exactly similar to this fanciful charge [of Man], except that they are naked, and have at the point of conjunction a Mercury's head." And WALSH, in his Essay on Ancient Coins, &c., remarks on a Gnostic gem bearing the image of Mercury, "He has all the symbols of Mercury about him; his wings, cap, and buskins, and his caduceus; but what distinguishes him is his three legs" (p. 60.). Is there no

term occurs.

THOMAS BOYs.

The ancient ensign of Man was a ship in full sail. But Alexander III. of Scotland, when in the thirteenth century he reduced the Island to feodal submission, took away the emblem of fast sailing, and substituted an emblem of fast running-three legs. Why? May it not have been because the Isle of Man, from its central position between England, Ireland, and Scotland, had become the common resort and asylum of refugees, vagabonds, and runaways? The Island is stated by Boethius (after Tacitus) to have been, even so far back as the time of Nero, when Man was invaded by the Romans under Paulinus Suetonius, a receptacle for this peculiar class of emigrants—“ transfugarum receptaculum." (Scot. Hist. 1575, p. 53.; "receptaculum perfugarum," Tac. An. xiv. 29.) But of all such "ill-used individuals Mercury was the patron; and his three legs would aptly symbolise their nimbleness in running. Mercury in fact, more properly Hermes, was the patron of gymnastics, as well as of loose characters. May not his three legs, then, have been substituted for the ship by King Alexander III. (jocularly, perhaps unjustly,) to symbolise the conquered Island, as still bearing the character of such an asylum as we have described ?

Each of the three Manx legs, in such representations as I have had an opportunity of examining, has, appended to it, a spur of large dimensions, fixed high up, not level with the heel, but with the ancle. There is evidently something peculiar about these spurs. Generally speaking, in mediæval remains, the spur is rather the appendage of riders than of runners. These Manx spurs, then, attached to three legs which are evidently running, not riding, invite examination and inquiry, to say the least. There must be a why and a wherefore for spurs appearing under such peculiar conditions. Now Hermes, from the nimbleness of his heels, was in process of time represented as having winged feet; the wings, however, are not seen appended, strictly speaking, to the feet themselves, but rather to the uncles, on one side or behind, and somewhat above the heel. Hence the name, talaria. May not, then, the ancle-spurs of Man's three legs be representatives, somewhat modified by time, of Mercury's talar wings?

These few hints are submitted for the consideration of those of your correspondents who are better able to follow out this curious subject. Respecting the mode in which Mercury came by his third leg, you will perhaps allow me to offer a few remarks hereafter. The term τρισκελές, three-legged, is in one instance (Theoc. Epig.) applied to the image of another deity; but figuratively, as it seems, and with an allusion of a

The badge of Sicily, as proved by old Roman coins, consisted of three naked legs joined together at the thigh, adopted in reference to the triangular shape of the Island and its three promontories, Lilybæum looking towards Africa, Pachynus towards Greece, and Pelorus towards Italy; from which it was called Trinacria. The arms of the Isle of Man, of comparatively recent with the difference of the legs being armed, not date, were probably copied from those of Sicily, so much from the shape of the Island, as from its being nearly equidistant from England, Scotland, and Ireland. I have a silver coin (5 lire) of Joseph Napoleon (Le Roi Joseph) when King of the Two Sicilies, or rather of Naples, anno 1806, Parted per fess, azure and or, two cornucopia salon the reverse of which are the following arms :legs conjoined in triangle at the thigh, in base; tireways and a mermaid in chief, and three naked over all the imperial arms of France, supported on the dexter by a merman, and on the sinister by a mermaid. The cornucopia is a favourite figure on Roman coins, and on those relating to Sicily ears of corn are used to represent fertility, as it was called the granary of Rome. The sirens or mermaids were the ancient supporters of Sieigns of Naples, neither the naked legs nor the cily. On the coins of the recent legitimate soversirens appear, although they have quarterings by the dozen. It is amusing to find the arms of the upstart Buonapartes more classical than those of the long-descended Bourbons. R. R.

FAMILY OF WAKE.

(2nd S. vi. 489.)

The intermediate links, for which MELETES inquires, are thus succinctly given by Abp. Wake, in his Brief Enquiry into the Antiquity, Honour, and Estate of the Name and Family of Wake, published at Warminster, 8vo. 1833. P. 12.

"Among other places to which he [Hereward]_travelled, Flanders was one, where he married a Noble Daughter, whom he married to Hugh Evermur, Lord Virgin, Turfride by Name: by whom he had one_onely of Deping, which by that means descended, together with Brunne" [co. Linc., which came from Hereward's father, Leofricus le Brun, p. 10. ], "to our Family, and from thenceforth became part of the Inheritance of it

Heir; who marryed Richard de Rulos, Chamberlain to p. 17. “This Hugh also left but one Daughter, his King William the Conquerour, and carried away both the Honour and Estate of her Family to Him. It was now a kind of Fate to this Family to have no Male Issue * "Dugdal. Baronag., to. ii. pp. 541, 542." "Ingulf, p. 77."

66

Ingulf, pp. 77, 78."

to settle in: For as Hereward and Hugh Evermur before, So this Richard de Rulos now left only one Daughter and Heir, Adelhildis, who married Baldwin Fitz-Gilbert, a very eminent Person, and a noble Family, being Brother to Walter*, the Father of Gilbert de Gant, the first Earl of Lincoln of that Race. By this Baldwin she had a Son, whom in an Ancient Charter, relating to the Abby

of Brunne, founded by this Baldwyn, I find by the Name of Roger. But... either this Roger dyed unmarried, Or he left no Children to succeed him, And so the Dignity and Estate fell to Emma his Sister; And by her came [to] Hugh de Wac, her Husband.”

Dr. Wake proceeds to notice another account, which differs from the foregoing in the addition of another descent.§ This gives the name of Baldwin's only daughter as Roesia, and states that she married William de Ruseis, and by him was the mother of Emma, the wife of Hugh le Wac. But this he rejects, as inconsistent with a charter of King Edward III., in which this Emma is expressly called the daughter of Baldwin; and with another charter, belonging to the Abbey of Thorney ¶, in which Baldwin Fitz-Gilbert is mentioned as the grandfather of Baldwin Lord Wake, the first of that name, "and which, if he were, he must also have been Father to Emma, his Mother" (p. 19.). АСНЕ.

P. FELDENCALDUS.

(2nd S. vi. 396.)

I have little doubt that Feldencaldus, Felgenbalder, Felghenore, and Feldenhauer, signify the same person. La Nouvelle Biographie générale, says:

FELGENHAUER, PAUL, illuminé bohémien, vivait dans la seconde moitié du dix-septième siècle. Il étudia à Wittemberg, fut diacre au château de cette ville, et revenu en Bohéme, après avoir refusé un emploi de predicateur, il commença la publication de ses ouvrages, où se remarque un véritable dérangement d'esprit. Il étudia ensuite la médicine. A' Amsterdam, où il se trouvait en 1623, il continua de faire imprimer les productions les plus étranges et de l'effet le plus dangereux. Emprisonné en 1657 à Suhlingen, il persista à soutenir qu'il avait reçu fixer à Hambourg, et publia de nouveaux écrits jusqu'en 1660. Depuis cette époque on ne sait plus rien de lui.”— Vol. xvii. 271.

une mission divine. Rendu à la liberté en 1659 il alla se

"Mr. Blunden, having sent a letter from London to Paulus Felgenbalder, at Amsterdam, to desire his opinion concerning magical performances, he returned him an answer in Latin, an. 1655, which answer a gentleman having favoured me with a sight and perusal of, I here give you the substance of it," &c. (P. 321.)-4 Treatise on Spirits, &c. by John Beaumont, Gent., Lond. 1705.

The British Museum contains only three works by Felgenhauer:

"Bonum Nuncium Israeli, quod offertur populo Israel *"Baronag., to. i. p. 539."

66

Monasticon, to. ii. 237. b. 40.; ibid. p. 235. b. 25."

Baronag., ibid. p. 236. a. 539. b."

See MSS. Rog. Dodsworth, vol. ii. fol. 11.

Monasticon, t. ii. p. 236. a. 12.

Monasticon, ib. p. 469. b.

et Judæ, in hisce temporibus novissimis de Messiah. Amsterdam, 1658. 8vo."

"Postilion, or a New Almanack, and Astrologicke Prophetical Prognostication, calculated for the Whole World, &c. Written in High Dutch by Paulus Felghenore. 4to. London, 1655."

At the end of this book is a list of the author's works, amounting to fifty-nine published, and three intended. The first is dated 1617 :

"Anthora, das ist Gift Beil, oder Beschreibug des Giffts der Pestilenz auch vielen andern gifftigen und gefahr

lichen Krankheiten, aus schuldiger Liebe zum nachsten geschrieben durch P. F. der gottlichen und naturlichen

Weisheit Liebhaber. Gedruckt in Jahr, 1696."
On the last page is, —

"Gegeben auf dem alten Wege bey Bremen. P. Felgenhauer."

There is no sign of this being a reprint, and if really by Felgenhauer, his career of authorship must have been long, -79 years between his first and last known work. FITZHOPKINS. Garrick Club.

DR. SAMUEL BRADY.

(2nd S. iv. 475.; v. 176, 177.)

This gentleman became a physician in 1702, and I presume was brother to the Rev. Dr. Nicholas Brady. The Rev. Dr. Nicholas Brady was born at Bandon in the county of Cork (see Smith's History of Cork, vol. ii. p. 426.) and I think it possible, on a search being made in the registry of the parish of Ballymodan or the parish of Kilbrogan, Bandon, an entry of the baptism of this Samuel Brady might be found. Smith farther states that the Rev. Dr. Nicholas Brady was the son of Major Nicholas Brady and lineally descended from Hugh Brady, the first Protestant Bishop of Meath. It is stated by Ware, and repeated by that very careful and accurate writer, Archdeacon Cotton, in his Fasti, that this bishop died on February 13, 1585, and that he was buried in the parish church of his native place, Dunboyne. I conclude the date of his death is erroneous, and should be February 13, 158. His successor was promoted to the see of Meath by patent dated April 18, 1584. Is there any evidence that this Bishop Brady was born at Dunboyne? The Rev. Dr. Nicholas Brady was born in 1659, or about seventy-five years after the death of the bishop. The doctor's father was Major Nicholas Brady, and the doctor's mother was Martha, daughter of Luke Gernon. paternal grandfather of the doctor, it is believed, was Nicholas Brady, son of the bishop. Now if this be the case, the only question which would remain is, to whom was this latter Nicholas Brady married, or who was the paternal grandmother of Dr. Nicholas Brady?

The

At 2nd S. v. 440, 441. your correspondent