I am myself possessed of a white cat which, at the advanced age of upwards of seventeen years, still retains its hearing to great perfection, and is remarkably intelligent and devoted, more so than cats are usually given credit for. Its affection for persons is, indeed, more like that of a dog than of a cat. It is a half-bred Persian cat, and its eyes are perfectly blue, with round pupils, not elongated as those of cats usually are. It occasionally suffers from irritation in the ears, but this has not at all resulted in deafness.
H.
Consecrated Roses (Vol. vii., pp. 407. 480.; Vol. viii., p. 38.).—From the communication of P. P. P. it seems that the origin of the consecration of the rose dates so far back as 1049, and was "en reconnaissance" of a singular privilege granted to the abbey of St. Croix. Can your correspondent refer to any account of the origin of the consecration or blessing of the sword, cap, or keys?
G.
The Reformed Faith (Vol. vii., p. 359.).—I must protest against this term being applied to the system which Henry VIII. set up on his rejecting the papal supremacy, which on almost every point but that one was pure Popery, and for refusing to conform to which he burned Protestants and Roman Catholics at the same pile. It suited Cobbett (in his History of the Reformation), and those controversialists who use him as their text-book, to confound this system with the doctrine of the existing Church of England, but it is to be regretted that any inadvertence should have caused the use of similar language in your pages.
J. S. Warden.
House-marks (Vol. vii., p. 594.).—It appears to me that the house-marks he alluded to may be traced in what are called merchants' marks, still employed in marking bales of wool, cotton, &c., and which are found on tombstones in our old churches, incised in the slab during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and which till lately puzzled the heralds. They were borne by merchants who had no arms.
E. G. Ballard.
Trash (Vol. vii., p. 566.).—The late Mr. Scatchard, of Morley, near Leeds, speaking in Hone's Table Book of the Yorkshire custom of trashing, or throwing an old shoe for luck over a wedding party, says:
"Although it is true that an old shoe is to this day called 'a trash,' yet it did not, certainly, give the name to the nuisance. To 'trash' originally signified to clog, encumber, or impede the progress of any one (see Todd's Johnson); and, agreeably to this explanation, we find the rope tied by sportsmen round the necks of fleet pointers to tire them well, and check their speed, is hereabouts universally called 'trash cord,' or 'dog trash.' A few miles distant from Morley, west of Leeds, the 'Boggart' or 'Barguest,' the Yorkshire Brownie is called by the people the Gui-trash, or Ghei-trash, the usual description of which is invariably that of a shaggy dog or other animal, encumbered with a chain round its neck, which is heard to rattle in its movements. I have heard the common people in Yorkshire say, that they 'have been trashing about all day;' using it in the sense of having had a tiring walk or day's work.
"East of Leeds the 'Boggart' is called the Padfoot."