"Because that learned body wanted loyalty."
I quote from memory.
Can any of your readers, through the medium of your valuable paper, favour me with the correct version of the epigrams, and with the particular circumstances which gave rise to them?
J. SWANN.
Norwich.
Lammas Day.—Why was the 1st of August called "Lammas Day?" Two definitions are commonly given to the word "Lammas." 1. That it may mean Loaf-mass. 2. That it may be a word having some allusion to St. Peter, as the patron of Lambs.
O'Halloran, however, in his History of Ireland, favours us with another definition; upon the value of which I should be glad of the opinion of some of your learned contributors. Speaking of Lughaidh, he says:—
"From this prince the month of August was called Lughnas (Lunas), from which the English adopted the name Lammas, for the 1st day of August."
J. SANSOM.
Mother Grey's Apples.—At the time I was a little girl,—you will not, I am sure, be ungallant enough to inquire when that was, when I tell you I am now a woman,—I remember that the nursery maid, whose duty it was to wait upon myself and sisters, invariably said, if she found us out of temper—"So, so! young ladies, you are in the sulks, eh? Well, sulk away; you'll be like 'Mother Grey's apples,' you'll be sure to come round again." We often inquired, on the return of fine weather, who Mother Grey was, and what were the peculiar circumstances of the apples coming round?—questions, however, which were always evaded. Now, as the servant was a Cambridge girl, and had a brother a gyp, or bedmaker, at one of the colleges, besides her uncle keeping the tennis court there, I have often thought there must have been some college legend or tradition in Alma Mater, of Mother Grey and her apples. Will any of your learned correspondents, should it happen to fall within their knowledge, take pity on the natural curiosity of the sex, by furnishing its details?