I took in hand my pen,
And wrote it down so plain
That every one might see;
How I was cut down,
Like blossoms from a tree."
J. G. L.
Queries.
THE CRESCENT.
I shall be obliged to any correspondent of "N. & Q." who will point out the period at which the crescent became the standard of Mahometanism. Poets and romancers freely bestow it upon any time or scene in which Mussulmans are introduced; Sir Walter Scott mentions it in the Talisman, but after the strange liberties he has taken with Saladin and Richard, he becomes, on such a question, no higher authority than writers of meaner name. I cannot find it in the history of Mahomet, or in that of his immediate successors. The first time Michaud, in his fine Histoire des Croisades, speaks of it is in the reign of Mahomet II., which is many centuries after periods at which modern poets, and even historians, have named it as the antagonistic standard to the cross. The crescent is common upon the reverses of coins of the Eastern empire long before the Turkish conquest, and was, I have reason to believe, in some degree peculiar to the Sclave nations. Was it the standard of the Turks, as contradistinguished from other Saracens? or, was it adopted by Mahomet II. after his conquests of Constantinople and the eastern countries of Europe? I am aware that if this last idea be substantiated, it will make it much more modern than it is generally supposed to be, but our ideas of everything, Turkish were for so long a time mixed with the wonderful and the romantic, that we must not expect much correctness on such points. The Turks came into fearful contiguity with the West in the fifteenth century; Europe had as much to dread from them then as from the Russians now. This event and the art of printing were almost cotemporary, and the crescent has been presented to us as the symbol of Mahometanism ever since; but I much doubt it can be proved to have been so at a far remoter period.