Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 1.djvu/193

 io* s. i. FEB. 20, wo*.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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To the poems already enumerated may be added Wordsworth's ' Pilgrim's Dream ; or, the Star and the Glowworm,' also the closing lines of Gilbert White's ' Naturalist's Summer-evening Walk.' CHAS. GILLMAN.

Church Fields, Salisbury.

Primd facie I should say that the glow- worm and the firefly are two totally distinct species of insect, though perhaps the latter term may be applied to the former. Let me quote the glee by Bishop in the opera of ' Guy Mannering,' which all your readers must have heard :

The chough and the crow to roost have gone,

And the owl sits on the tree ; The west-wind howls with feeble moan

Like infant charity ; The firefly glances from the fen,

The red star sheds its ray, Up rouse ye then, my merry, merry men, It is our opening day.

JOHN PICKFORD, M.A. Newbourne Rectory, Woodbridge.

Moore has written a poem 'To the Fire- fly '; and his ballad ' The Lake of the Dismal Swamp' ends with these lines :

But oft from the Indian hunter's camp

This lover and maid so true Are seen, at the hour of midnight damp, To cross the lake by a firefly lamp, And paddle their white canoe.

Longfellow in ' Hiawatha ' has written as follows :

All the air was white with moonlight, All the water black with shadow, And around him the Suggema, The mosquitoes sang their war-song, And the fireflies, Wah-wah-taysee, Waved their torches to mislead him.

Tennyson's comparison of stars with fire- flies in 'Locksley Hall' will be familiar to most readers. Coleridge in 'The Nightingale' has these lines : Their bright, bright eyes, their eyes both bright

and full,

^Glistening, while many a glowworm in the shade Lights up her love-torch.

Byron in ' Manfred ' has the following:

When the moon is on the wave, And the glowworm in the grass.

Johnson in his dictionary, under the word "glowworm," quotes both from Shakspeare and from Waller. E. YARDLEY.

[Besides the translation from Vincent Bourne mentioned by PROF. SKEAT, ante, p. 112, Cowper wrote ' The Nightingale and the Glowworm.']

CROWNS IN TOWER OR SPIRE OF CHURCH .(9 th S. xii. 485 ; 10 th S. i. 17, 38). A note- worthy example of a spire with a crown is that of the steeple of Notre Dame, Bruges. JOHN A. RANDOLPH.

CARDINALS AND CRIMSON ROBES (9 th S. xii. 486 ; 10 bh S. i. 71). MR. WAINEWRIGHT says, "The red robes have been worn since 1464; the purple is now only worn in Lent and Advent." MR. OLIVER, quoting from Mac- kenzie Walcott, says, " In 1290 Pope Boniface gave the cardinals a purple dress in imita- tion of the Roman Consuls."

There appears to be confusion in the use of the word "purple." It is ued for dark blue, ranging from "garter blue" to the darkest indigo blue, or for reds, from crimson to dark blood-red, or again for a blending of blue and red, resulting in various tints, from a red plum colour to dark violet. The old Roman or royal purple was, I think, a dark crimson, such as one may see in the robes of Venetian nobles depicted by Paul Veronese. Is not this the cardinal's purple? Violet would be worn by cardinals in Advent and Lent, but it should not be called purple.

S. P. E. S.

ST. MARY AXE: ST. MICHAEL LE QUERNE (9 th S. x. 425; xi. 110, 231 ; xii. 170, 253, 351, 507; 10 th S. i. 89). MR. J. HOLDEN MAC- MICHAEL asks me to refer to a document relating to St. Michael le Querne an early document preferably in which that church is styled "St. Michael-in- the- Corn-market." I thought I had already done so when, in a former paper, I quoted from the archives of St. Paul's Cathedral an early document in which the church is described as " S. Michael ubi bladum yenditur." Exactly the same description will be found in a very early will which is recorded in Dr. Sharpe's ' Calendar of Husting Wills.'* A place where corn is sold is a corn-market, and there is evidence to show that the corn-market was held in that part of the West Cheap in which St. Michael's Church was situated. Some time later the cumbrous phrase "ubi bladum venditur" was shortened into "ad bladum," or, iu English, "atte Corn" not "at corn," be it noted, but " at the Corn," i.e., the Corn-market. There is nothing unusual in this abbreviation. The hill which led up to the market was known as Corn Hill, not Corn-market Hill. Another thoroughfare further east is still known as The Poultry, that is, the place where poultry was sold, or the poultry - market. Grace- church, one of the few London churches mentioned in a pre-Conquest charter, is therein styled Gerscherche, or Grass-church, because it adjoined the grass-market. No

unable to give the exact reference, but the will may be found near the beginning of the first volume of Dr. Sharpe's valuable work. [Vol. i. p. 3.]
 * Being far away from my books just now, I am