—These words are derived from sgológ, a Celtic word meaning a farmer, a husbandman, and probably denote the husbandlands and husbandmen holding the kirktoun (church lands) of Ellon, or parts thereof. A distinction is drawn between the husbandman and the cotter in an unpublished return to an inquisition in 1450, concerning the payments and services due by certain tenants of some ecclesiastical lands—"that is to say, of ylke husband an thraf (threave) of corn and half an ferlot of meil, and of ylke coter an pek." The husbands of church lands (bondi of Scotch charter Latin?) were in all likelihood the "Kyndlie tenantis" of the church, who seem to have had a sort of hereditary right to renewal of their leases on payment of a fine, either taxed or uncertain. In a charter lately before me, a lease of tithes was renewed to the holder as "Kyndlie tenant," on payment of a grassum (equivalent to a fine), and it was declared that the said tenant and his ancestors had held the vicarage land hereditarily, past the memory of man, on payment of a rent, though the said vicarage land belonged in property to the vicar. Neither sgológ nor bondi are applicable to tenants of church lands exclusively. The compilers of the Highland Society's Gaelic Dictionary do not appear to have met with the word sgológ, or, if they did, have confounded it with scalóg or sgalóg, a boor, a hind, a countryman.
DE CAMERA.
St. Botolph (Vol. v., p. 396.).
—Your correspondent A. B. has anticipated an inquiry I was about to make as to the history of this saint, which I am desirous of learning. It is a rather singular circumstance that three churches dedicated to St. Botolph, and all of ancient foundation, are situated immediately without gates of the city, viz. at Aldgate, Bishopsgate, and Aldersgate. There was also before the Great Fire a church similarly dedicated at Billingsgate, and a water-gate, called Buttolph's gate (vide Stow).
I can hardly imagine that this is merely a coincidence, and should be glad to know whether any explanation can be given of it.
J. R. J.
Which are the Shadows? (Vol. v., p. 281.).
—An extract from the Memoirs of Wordsworth, vol. ii. p. 273., will throw some little light on J. C. R.'s perplexities:
"The anecdote of the saying of the monk, in sight of Titian's picture, was told me in this house (Rydal Mount) by Mr. Wilkie, and was, I believe, first communicated to the world in this poem, the former portion of which I was composing at the time ('Lines suggested by a Portrait by F. Stone, 1834'). Southey heard the story from Miss Hutchinson, and transferred it to the Doctor; my friend Mr. Rogers, in a note subsequently added to his Italy, speaks of the same remarkable words having many years before been spoken in his hearing by a monk or priest in front of a picture of the Last Supper, placed over a refectory table in a convent at Padua."
It is much to be feared that this goes far towards reducing "the mild Jeronymite's" remark to the established order of stereotype. On which supposition, one need not wonder that—