I shall be happy at some future day, if it suits your purpose, to collect and send you such particulars as may be gained on the spot respecting it, and the incidents of the capture.
We have still in the Town Hall here the chain in which it is said Jefferies sat at the Bloody Assize.
A. D. M.
Dorcester, 3d Nov. 1849.
[We shall gladly receive the particulars which our Correspondent proposed to collect and forward.]
SERPENTS' EGGS AND STRAW NECKLACES.
[Mr. Thoms' Query in this case should have been limited to the straw necklaces, as Mr. Nichols has already explained the serpents' eggs; but our Correspondent's letter is so satisfactory on both points that we insert it entire.]
The passage from Erasmus, "brachium habet ova serpentum," is plainly to be rendered "and with a string of serpents' eggs on your arm." The meaning is equally apparent on recalling the manner in which snakes' eggs are found, viz., hanging together in a row. Erasmus intends Menedemus to utter a joke at the rosary of beads hanging over the pilgrim's arm, which he professes to mistake for serpents' eggs.
I am not aware what particular propriety the "collar or chaplet" (for it may mean either) of straw may have, as worn by a pilgrim from Compostella; or whether there may not lurk under this description, as beneath the other, a jocular sense. The readiest way of determining this point would be to consult some of the accounts of Compostella and of its relics, which are to be found in a class of books formerly abundant in the north-western towns of Spain.