Antiquarian Correspondence.
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All communications must be accompanied by the name and address of the sender, not necessarily for publication.
HERALDIC QUERY.
Sir,—Can any of your readers kindly inform me what family bears or bore the arms “Ermine, on a bend azure three lions rampant or”?
T. J. H.
ISLE D’ECOSSE.
Sir,—In Aytoun’s “Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers,” there is a ballad entitled the “Island of the Scots,” setting forth that in 1697, France and Germany being at war, an island in the Rhine, strongly garrisoned by German troops under General Stirke, was attacked and taken in a most gallant manner by a company of Scotsmen, exiles from their own country, and in the service of the King of France; and that this island has ever since been known by the name of Isle d’Ecosse. Can you inform me where this isle is situated, and where I can see a detailed account of the above passage of arms? The isle, I may add, is not mentioned by Murray.
R. M. B.
MINING IN THE HOME COUNTIES.
Sir,—In the Lansdowne MSS. (57, fol. 146) in the British Museum, may be seen a copy of a licence granted in December, 1588, by Queen Elizabeth, to one John Nicholls, for a term of six months, to dig for “mynes or myneralls of golde, silver, tynne, or leade, hidden within the earth, in the counties of Middlesex, Hertford, Buckingham, and Kent.” What success may have attended his searches in the other counties I know not; but as I searched in vain for any notice to the effect of a renewal of the grant so far as concerns Hertfordshire, it is more than probable that Master John Nicholls did not find “myning” a very profitable occupation in that county. Can any of your readers throw light upon the subject?
Fossor.
THE NAME OF FOSTAL.
Sir,—Can you, or any of your readers, kindly assist me in throwing light on the derivation of Fostal, a commonplace name in Kent? I believe there are some dozen places bearing the name, but variously spelled as Fostal, Fostalls, Forstals, and Forstalls. In Herne parish, not far from Herne Bay, there is a Fostall and Fostall Farm, and in Ospringe parish, near Faversham, a place called Painter’s Forstal. Prof. Skeat, I believe, explains it as “Fore” and “Stall” (= Stead), a place in front of a farm (?). There are generally trees near at hand, and the people in this locality connect the word with forest-alling and regrating—most absurdly as I think.
H. F. Woolrych.
Oare Vicarage, Faversham.
RICHARD, ARCHBISHOP OF MESSINA.
Sir,—Can any of your readers give me some account of the Archbishop of Messina, an Englishman, the subject of the accompanying paragraph, which I have translated from an Italian paper, the Italia, of May 31:—
“At the Villa Guzzi, near Messina, the interesting discovery has been made of the sarcophagus of Richard, English Archbishop of Messina, who died A.D. 1195. The sarcophagus is decorated with a bas-relief in the Byzantine style, having for its subject, the Saviour seated; on His right is shown the Virgin Mary standing, whilst on His left is the Archbishop, likewise in a standing position. There is also an inscription on each corner.”
This account is meagre as far as it goes; and I should feel interested in learning something more about this English Archbishop of Messina.
M. H. C.
Spezia, Italy.
“THE SENTENCE OF PONTIUS PILATE.”
(See vol. v. pp. 80, 217.)
Sir,—Since writing the note at the second reference, I have ascertained that the alleged death-warrant of Jesus Christ appeared in the National Magazine (published in Liverpool) for Oct. 1877. In this version only three names are appended to the sentence, and the phraseology is somewhat different.
But what I wish to point out at present is the glaring contradictions occurring in the three copies before me as to the date of the finding of this curiosity. According to the above-named magazine it was discovered “in the year 1825,” the Catholic Fireside account says 1820, while your version has “A.D. 1280.” May not the latter date be a misprint for 1820? If not, were excavations in search of Roman antiquities made in Naples in the thirteenth century?
P. J. Mullin.
HELSTON FURRY DANCE.
Sir,—As the very interesting subject of the Helston Furry Day has been opened by Canon Boger (see vol. v. p. 251), may I add a few remarks on it?
1. As to the term Floralia or Flora Day, except from a descriptive standpoint I should demur to the theory that the Helston festival of May 8 is a continuation or survival of the Roman Floralia, although some persons may favour that view. It is probably in origin purely Celtic, and is connected with the Roman Floral festival only in that it also expresses the joy of May.
2. The origin of the custom may be held to be “lost in remote antiquity” solely in the sense that we cannot actually date its institution. The local legend relates that it was instituted in the middle ages as a rejoicing for the deliverance of Helston from the plague: a not improbable solution of the Helston myth that here St. Michael overcame Satan, and forced him to drop the “Hell stone,” still seen in the “Angel yard.” The parish church is dedicated to St. Michael, and May 8 is, I believe, the feast of the apparition of St. Michael on St. Michael’s Mount. It is not improbable that the deliverance of Helston from the plague was attributed to the patron of the town, i.e., St. Michael, who overcame the demon of the plague.
3. The Helston furry dance is a definite institution, unlike any other dance that I know. I do not know to what “various dances” Canon Boger refers; probably to the ball in the evening, which, I believe, is conducted in the modern fashion.
4. The ceremony is somewhat this: The party assemble at the Market House, the local aristocracy at 1 p.m. In 1883 there were thirty-one couples of the gentry, this year there were thirty-two couples. The tradesmen’s dance at 4 p.m. was not quite so numerously supported as the upper class one. The volunteer band marches to the gate with three javelin men with lances crowned with flowers. At the appointed time the band strikes up the Celtic Furry tune. The dancers then proceed, two and two, pirouetting and changing partners at certain places. They go into the houses, passing out of the back doors through the gardens, and then re-enter the houses from the back. As they leave the houses in some places they ring the bells. The effect is very singular, but to anyone fond of ancient customs is full of interest as a survival from mediæval times, and such a survival as could hardly have continued except in a remote part of England. Most of the Helston May customs belong to mediæval customs of Merrie England, e.g., the boughs outside the houses, the procession dance (though most of our English May dances were held round the May-pole), but the going in and out of the houses and also the music of the Furry tune are distinctively Cornish.
W. S. Lach-Szyrma.
PORTS AND CHESTERS.
(See ante, p. 47.)
Sir,—I should not have thought it necessary to notice “A. H.’s” singular effusion in your last number (see p. 47), but for the welcome illustration it affords of what Mr. Allen has so happily termed that “easy off-hand theory,” which “shirks all the real difficulties of the question” (ante, v. 286). In trying to pursue his own more searching and scholarly method of dealing with these “interesting philological fossils,” I am only too glad that those who despise this method as “word-twisting,” and prefer to leap at conclusions, should expound, as a contrast, their views.
As to “A. H.’s” first point, it is based simply on mis-statements. I never used the word “borrowed” myself. My expression was: “incorporated before the settlement” (ante, v. 286). Nor did I ever claim any of these words as “generically an English word,” or as “English forms of some Teutonic roots.” On the contrary, I gave “the Latin words” (v. 285) from which they were each etymologically derived. My contention was that they had become “distinctly English words” by being
“Incorporated before the settlement, into the tongue of the English pirates, who brought with them, as part of their language, the forms which they had thus constructed for themselves.”
It is necessary to put this as strongly as possible in order to accentuate the distinction. Thus, when “A. H.” speaks of “lamentable confusion” (so well illustrated in his own letter), he is using “distinctly English words,” though they are derived from Latin originals. If I, on the other hand, should say “Naviget Anticyram,” I should be using distinctly Latin words. And, lastly, when “A. H.” seeks to “ramify” the “purport” of a paper (ante, p. 47), he is using an expression unknown, I believe, to any language, living or dead.
As to the Welsh caer or kair, I never said, or could have supposed, that it was derived from the Latin castrum. I merely quoted Mr. Allen’s reminder that, on the departure of the Romans, this native form supplanted theirs in place names, before the arrival of the English. Ergo, the erudition of “A. H.” is obviously nihil ad rem.
As to port, what we have to account for is not, as “A. H.” crudely imagines, “the modern word Port,” but the Anglo-Saxon port, which can be conclusively shown to have been used not in the sense of either portus or porta, but of a market (or trading) town. Leicester and Oxford were obviously not “ports” in our modern sense of the word, but they were “ports” in the Anglo-Saxon sense of it, and, as such, had a “portmanmote” for their governing body. We know, as I have shown, from Domesday, that Port Meadow, so-called from belonging to the town (or “port”) of Oxford, was in existence then as the town meadow. “Port Meadow at Oxford,” says Mr. Olifant (“Old and Middle English,” p. 78), “speaks of ... port, used by our pagan forefathers as a name for town; indeed, port and upland stood for town and country.” To “Port Meadow” I may now add “Portmanseyt” (the eyot of the Portmen or Burgesses), which stood near it in the river (“Calendar of Bodleian Charters,” p. 312), and also “two pieces of land and marsh-land sometime called Portemarshe [cf. Portmeadow] and now being divided, called by the several names of the Easter Portemarche and the Wester Portemarche,” at Barnstaple, in 1610 (9th Rep. Hist. MSS. I. 214a).
“A. H.” defiantly inquires, how “can the prefix [in Portway] be of English origin, if it means ‘carry?’ ” But I never said it did, or indeed mentioned it at all. A far simpler explanation of the word would be the “way” that led from one “port” to another.
The solution of “A. H.’s” irritation is of course to be found in his eagerness to contend that “port” (in “port-reeve”) was “not introduced as a new English word, but preserved by Celto-Romans from Latin usage,” and that, consequently, “our Lord Mayor” can be traced through the Port-reeve to Roman times. This is the longed-for conclusion at which “A. H.” and Dr. Pring, though starting from opposite premisses, would arrive with equal confidence, the “dead certainty” on which “A. H.” so naturally dreads and so impatiently resents that discussion which it cannot stand.
J. H. Round.
A BIBLIOGRAPHIC CURIOSITY.
Sir,—In the N. B. Advertiser and Ladies’ Journal for Jan. 12 is published a long but interesting letter from a Dundee correspondent, signing himself C. R. R., in which the writer makes known his discovery of the long-lost “lewd sang,” which was appended to an early edition of the psalm-book known as the “Guid and Godlie Ballattes.” To those of your readers south of the Tweed who take an interest in Scottish bibliography the following somewhat lengthy quotation from the letter mentioned can scarcely fail to be acceptable. I may remark further that Dr. Laing’s reprint, therein referred to, was issued in 1868:—
About thirty-five years ago the late Mr. Alexander Langlands, clerk in the Dundee Bank, purchased at the sale of the lares et penates of a deceased teacher, for the sum of eightpence, a lot of literary scraps, among which the article about to be described was found, and which proved to be an imperfect copy of the “Guid and Godlie Ballattes.”
When Dr. Laing was engaged in the publication of his reprint, this was lent him, the price offered for its purchase being far below the rather extravagant value attached to it by its owner. It is evident the Doctor never examined it very carefully; he states in a biographical note attached to his reprint that he had once had a fragment of a smaller copy, but the leaves had fallen aside. The fact is, I think, pretty obvious that these leaves and the present copy were one and the same, as great difficulty was experienced by Mr. Langlands before it was returned, and it was only restored by the intervention of a personal friend of the Doctor’s after the lapse of many months; the gentleman’s name I do not feel at liberty to make public, but may say he has done good work in connection with Wedderburn’s memory, and holds a high position in a seat of learning. Mr. Langlands eventually parted with his valuable leaves to their present possessor for a sum which was considered an extremely liberal one. Mr. Langlands soon after passed from the scene, full of years, leaving many attached friends behind.
Herbert, in his edition of “Ames Typographical Antiquities,” part iii. p. 1491, states “that a ‘Psalm Buik’ was printed at Edinburgh by Thomas Bassendyne in 1568, at the end of which was printed ‘ane lewd sang,’ entitled ‘Welcum Fortoun.’ ” The book was ordered by the General Assembly to be called in, the title to be altered, that the “lewd sang be delete,” and the printer be subjected to penalties. No copy of the book or of the lewd song is now known to exist. (See also “Buik of the Universall Kirk.”) Dr. Laing adds his testimony to Herbert’s assertions.
The fragment referred to is printed in the black letter, the letterpress measures 4½ inches by 2½ inches. It commences on folio 4, the leaves, not the pages, being numbered, and by a printer’s error folio 112 is numbered 113. The signs run from A to O in eights, sign P having four leaves which are not numbered. The first three leaves of sign A are lost, and folio 4 commences with some short prayers. These missing leaves were doubtless occupied by the title, probably a short address to the reader, and the first portion of the above-mentioned prayers. Sign P 1 to 3 are occupied by a table, and on the obverse of P 4 is printed—“With The Haill hundredth and Fyftie Psalmis of David,” Sternhold and Hopkins’s Version. And beneath is the imprint thus—“Improntit at Edinburgh, be John Scot. Anno Do. 1567.” The reverse contains some doxologies, and, having no catch-word, has a finished appearance. Whether the above is to be considered as the title-page for the Psalms to follow, or as an advertisement for a separate book, I will not presume to decide, but at that time such advertisements were not common. On the reverse of O 8 the long-lost song, entitled “Welcum Fortoun,” is found, and is printed below. If ever the Scripture words, “Unto the pure all things are pure,” were applicable, it is in the present case, for it could only be by a far-fetched innuendo or a specious construing of words that the Assembly could have arrived at their decision and verdict. But I am rather inclined to think that the sin of the printer must have consisted more in the fact of his placing a secular song in conjunction with sacred hymns, and the more especially with the productions of the Divine Psalmist:—
WELCUM FORTOUN.
Welcum Fortoun, welcum againe,
The day and hour I may weill blis,
Thou hes exilit all my paine,
Quhilk to my hart greit plesour is.
For I may say, that few men may,
Seing of paine I am ’trest,
I haif obtenit all my pay,
The lufe of hir that I lufe best.
I knaw nane sic as scho is one
Sa trew, sa kynde, sa luiffandlie,
Quhat suld I do and scho war gone;
Allace yet had I lever die.
To me scho is baith trew and kynde,
Worthie it war scho had the praise,
For na disdane in hir I find,
I pray to God I may hir pleis.
Quhen that I heir hir name exprest,
My hart for joy dois loup thairfoir;
Abufe all uther I lufe hir best,
Unto I die, quhat wald scho moir.
This unique edition, and certainly the earliest known, although I do not by any means consider it the first, in its contents other than the above, agrees with Dr. Laing’s reprint, and I only regret that he should have been removed by the grim tyrant demanding his heriot before the discovery was made. The fortunate owner of the precious brochure is Patrick Anderson, Esq., merchant, Dundee, who, by a curious coincidence, resides in the ancient home of Alexander Wedderburn, Town Clerk of Dundee, and who entertained his sapient Majesty James VI., of tobacco-defaming notoriety, on his visit to Dundee in 1617.
Leith, N.B.
P. J. MULLIN.
TO CORRESPONDENTS.
The Editor declines to pledge himself for the safety or return of MSS. voluntarily tendered to him by strangers.