Balliolensis.
Minor Notes.
On a "Custom of ye Englyshe."—When a more than ordinarily doubtful matter is offered us for credence, we are apt to inquire of the teller if he "sees any green" in our optics, accompanying the query by an elevation of the right eyelid with the forefinger. Now, regarding this merely as a "fast" custom, I marvelled greatly at finding a similar action noted by worthy Master Blunt, as conveying to his mind an analogous meaning. I can scarcely credit its antiquity; but what other meaning can I understand from the episode he
relates? He had been trying to pass himself off as a native, but—
"The third day, in the morning, I, prying up and down alone, met a Turke, who, in Italian, told me—Ah! are you an Englishman, and with a kind of malicious posture laying his forefinger under his eye, methought he had the lookes of a designe."—Voyage in the Levant, performed by Mr. Henry Blunt, p. 60.: Lond. 1650.
—a silent, but expressive, "posture," tending to eradicate any previously formed opinion of the verdantness of Mussulmans!
R. C. Warde.
Kidderminster.
Epitaph at Crayford.—I send the following lines, if you think them worthy an insertion in your Epitaphiana: a friend saw them in the churchyard of Crayford, Kent.