Some years before the book was published, I had visited this very interesting spot, and examined these sculptures, and other ornaments, amongst which the pierced stars puzzled me much: however, after a lengthened and very careful investigation, finding that, being at too great a height from the ground, and, moreover, that as the holes in the centre of the stars do not pass through the wall, but merely into small cavities in it, they could not have been used as embrasures, or have served for warlike purposes; and that, as there were no channels or pipes that could have
conducted water to them, they could not have been connected with fountains or water-works; I came to the conclusion that the planner of the garden, or at least of its walls, must have been an ardent lover of birds, and that these holes were for providing access for his beloved feathered friends (they would only admit the passage of small birds) to the secure resting-places which the hollow stones afforded; for whose use other niches and recesses seem also to have been planned (though some of the latter were probably intended to hold bee-hives) with a philornithic indifference for the security of the fruit tempting their attacks from all sides, but quite in character with the portrait of Sir David, as depicted by his noble biographer.
W. C. Trevelyan.
Athenæum.
Minor Notes.
Unlucky Days.—The subjoined lines on certain days of the several months, I copied some years ago from a MS. on the fly-leaf of an old Spanish breviary, then in the possession of an Irish priest. Though neither their grammar nor prosody are first-rate, yet they may be worthy of preservation as a curiosity. I may add that they appear to have been written by a Trinitarian Brother of Redemption, in the early part of the sixteenth century.
"January. Prima dies mensis, et septima truncat in ensis.
February. Quarta subit mortem, prosternit tertia sortem.
March. Primus mandentem, disrumpit quarta bibentem.