Temple.
Theological Tract—The Huntyng of the Romish Fox (Vol. iii., p. 61.).
—Perhaps the following tract is one of those about which S. G. inquires:
"The Huntyng and Fyndyng out of the Romish Fox: whiche more than seven yeares hath bene hyd among the Byshoppes of England, after that the Kynges Hyghnes Henry VIII. had commanded hym to be dryven out of hys Realme. Written by Wyllyam Turner, Doctour of Physicke, and formerly Fellow of Pembroke College in Cambridge. Basyl, 1543."
This tract has just been reprinted, with some curtailments and amendments, and with a short memoir of the author prefixed, by my friend, Robert Potts, Esq., M.A. Trin. Coll., Cam.; and was published by J. W. Parker, London. The copy from which this reprint has been made is in the library of Trinity College.
W. SPARROW SIMPSON, B.A.
Moke (Vol. v., p. 374).
—With the Editor of "N. & Q." I think the interpretation of "muck" for the old word used by Wyckliffe is "not satisfactory:" I therefore suggest another, perhaps equally questionable. Every rustic in grazing districts knows, that in the hot season of the year sheep are liable to be fearfully flyblown in their living flesh; and that the maggots thence resulting are called mokes, or mawks. Is not the preacher's allusion in the text to certain shepherds, or rather sheep of Christ's flock, who, rather than give one of their mokes to help one of their "needy brethren," will allow themselves to "perish" and "be taken of" these maggots? The term in question is, or was formerly, in provincial use as a metonym for lendiculosity in a figurative sense—a tetchy, whimsical individual, being said to be "maggoty," vulgo, mokey. Lendix has not, however, in all cases been treated with abhorrence; for one of the elder Wesleys not only printed a book of rhymes with the title of Maggots, but prefixed to it his portrait, with one of these animi impetu concitari represented as creeping on the forehead!
D.