Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 1.djvu/217

 10* s.i. FEB. 27, 1904.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

177

never appearing outside Chinese territory, at the same time their settlements in other countries being understood as their own territories. That, however, some Chinese of old believed in their ghosts being able to appear in quite foreign lands would seem to be implied in the words of a servant of a certain Kwoh family. When he was compelled to change his master, he offered a sword, to be beheaded therewith, say- ing, "I would rather be a ghost amongst barbarians than obey an ignorant vulgar master" (Sie Chang-Obi, ' Wu-tsah-tsu,' 1610, Japanese edition, 1661, torn. viii. fol. 28b). Nevertheless, the following passage (ibid., torn. xv. fol. 29a) points to their general view that under ordinary circumstances spiritual or quasi-spiritual beings have certain regions under their influence :

" The districts lying north of the river Yang-tsze abound with enchanting foxes, but those to

its south with elves and dryads While a

mandarin of the Ma family, whose son was my class-mate, was supervising Cheh-Chuh, a province, he became enchanted by a fox. Finding all means of exorcism useless, and his health daily impairing, he renounced his office and went home. The spirit accompanied him so far as the river Hwui, but did not pass it to its northern side."

The 'Annals of Japan,' completed 720 A.D., records General Tamichi, who had been killed in a battle with the Ainos, 367 A.D., to have appeared as a huge serpent and made havoc among the savages who tried to disturb his

grave. So the ancient Japanese appear to ave admitted their ghosts to be able to appear singly among very heterogeneous peoples. But that they held them to be influential only in limited portions of space we find in the 'Kodan Sho,' written in the twelfth century (in Hanawa's ' Collec- tion,' ed. 1902, Tokyo, torn, cdlxxxvi. p. 579). It is narrated there how the Japanese savant Kibi Daijin (693-775 A.D ) outwitted all the artful Chinese who tried to kill him from their jealousy of his wide learning, through the timely advice and help of the ghost of Abe no Nakamaro, whom this story holds to have been starved to death precedingly by the jealous Chinese.

"Those Chinese, who were greatly ashamed of their own intellectual inferiority to Kibi, held a secret council, and resolved to imprison and starve him on a high story where most prisoners could not

live long At midnight it began to storm and

rain, and a ghost approached Kibi's room. Magically hiding himself wholly from the ghost's sight, Kibi asked the spirit, ' What are you who come near me, the minister sent by the august emperor of Japan ? ' The ghost replied, ' 1 am Japanese minister too, and shall be exceedingly glad to talk

with you.' As soon as he was let in the ghost

.said, 'I was a minister sent to China, and have been

anxious but unable to learn if my descendants of the Abe clan are still flourishing in Japan. Every time I appear in this room to obtain news of

Japan there is nobody but dies frightened.'

Then Kibi narrated to him seven or eight names of his descendants, together with their ranks, offices, and present conditions. The spirit was very pleased, and offered to tell Kibi all the secrets of China in return."

KUMAGUSU MlXAKATA. Mount Nachi, Kii, Japan.

DOLORES, MUSICAL COMPOSER (10 th S. i. 107). Sir Walter Parratt informs me, " on the best authority," that the name Dolores is in no way connected with her late Majesty Queen Victoria. J. S. SHEDLOCK.

Speaking from personal acquaintance, I can say no to MR. MOORE'S query.

HAROLD MALET, Colonel.

Miss Dickson the sister of Major, after- wards General Sir Collingwood Dickson, V.C. composed and published several songs, "the poetry by Longfellow, the music by Dolores," and I believe she composed other pieces under the same name. I often heard her play and sing the songs in the early fifties, before the Crimean War. J. S. D.

I believe the lady who wrote songs under this name to have been Miss Dickson, the invalid sister of General Sir Collingwood Dickson. I had my information from her late sister-in-law about 1887. A. M. M.

This was the pen-name of Ellen Dickson, daughter of Sir Alexander Dickson, born at Woolwich in 1819. See Brown and Stratum's ' British Musical Biography,' 1897, s.v. 'Dick- son.' J. HOLDEN MAcMlCHAEL.

MARLBOROUGH AND SHAKESPEARE (10 th S. i. 127). I have always imagined that Marl- borough's avowal concerning his indebted- ness to Shakespeare for all the history he knew was a common saying with the duke, and not one peculiar to any special occasion. The apophthegm occurs, I suppose, in the ' Memoirs,' written by the indefatigable Archdeacon Coxe. Prof. George Saintsbury, in his ' Marlborough ' ("English Worthies," 1888, p. 4), remarks that this

"is another of the anecdotes which only dulness takes literally. The son of the author of 'Divi Britannici' is nearly certain to have received historical instruction from the author of that work, though if Shakespeare's teaching stuck in his memory better, it is not to his discredit. The story, however, is of some value as illustrating the baselessness, easily proved from other sources, of a notion often put forward in vulgar histories of literature and the stage that Shakespeare was forgotten in England during the last half of the seventeenth century."