W. SPARROW SIMPSON, B.A.
Milton's Rib-bone.
—In Vol. v., p. 275., mention is made of Cromwell's skull; so it may not be out of place to tell you that I have handled one of Milton's ribs. Cowper speaks indignantly of the desecration of our divine poet's grave, on which shameful occurrence some of the bones were clandestinely distributed. One fell to the lot of an old and esteemed friend, and between forty-five and forty years ago, at his house, not many miles from London, I have often examined the said rib-bone. That friend is long since dead; but his son, now in the vale of years, lives, and I doubt not, from the reverence felt to the great author of Paradise Lost, that he has religiously preserved the precious relic. It might not be agreeable to him to have his name published; but from his tastes he, being a person of some distinction in literary pursuits, is likely to be a reader of "N. & Q.," and if this should catch his eye, he may be induced to send you some particulars. I know he is able to place the matter beyond a doubt.
B. B.
Pembroke.
Queries.
THE DANES IN ENGLAND.
Since I arrived in England my friend Mr. Thoms has called my attention to the following Note by the "English Opium Eater" in the London Magazine for May, 1823, p. 556., on a subject of great interest to me with reference to the views I have advanced in my recently published volume, entitled An Account of the Danes and Norwegians in England, Scotland, and Ireland.
"I take this opportunity of mentioning a curious fact which I ascertained about twelve years ago, when studying the Danish. The English and Scotch philologists have generally asserted that the Danish invasions in the ninth and tenth centuries, and their settlements in various parts of the island (as Lincolnshire, Cumberland, &c.), had left little or no traces of themselves in the language. This opinion has been lately reasserted in Dr. Murray's work on the European languages. It is, however, inaccurate. For the remarkable dialect spoken amongst the lakes of Cumberland and Westmoreland, together with the names of the mountains, tarns, &c., most of which resist all attempts to unlock their meaning from the Anglo-Saxon, or any other form of the Teutonic, are pure Danish, generally intelligible from the modern Danish of this day, but in all cases from the elder form of the Danish. Whenever my Opera Omnia are collected, I shall reprint a little memoir on this subject, which I inserted about four years ago in a provincial newspaper: or possibly, before that event, for the amusement of the lake tourists, Mr. Wordsworth may do me the favour to accept it as an appendix to his work on the English Lakes."
Can any reader of "N. & Q." refer me to the paper in which this "little memoir" was inserted? (it was probably in a Cumberland or Westmoreland paper somewhere about the year 1819;) or inform me whether it ever appeared as an appendix to any work of Wordsworth's on the English lakes?