Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 1.djvu/412

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [10* s. i. APRIL 33, 1901.

however, he disclaims any intention of discussing the origin and meaning of folk-customs the use of Easter eggs and the like even though they have been more or less recognized by the Church, his notices of such subjects are somewhat meagre and disappointing. Mr. Thurston candidly admits that many of the accepted symbolisms of the Roman Church are without doubt mere afterthoughts, which never entered the mind of the framers of the ceremony. To esprits forts seme of them appear to be (if not childish) childlike in the simplicity of their make-believe. Such, for instance, is the custom of solemnly inserting five grains of incense in the substance of the paschal candle to typify the wounds of the Divine Victim. This particular .practice, the writer conjectures, may have arisen out of a misunderstanding of the Latin words " incensi hujus sacrificium,' "the sacrifice of this .lighted [candle]," as if they meant " the sacrifice of this incense. The book is excellently printed and illustrated, and deserves the attention of those interested in ritual observances.

The Parish Clerk and his Right to Read the Litur- gical Epistle. By Cuthbert Atchley, L.R.C.P. (Longmans & Co.)

IN this tract, written for the Alcuin Club, Mr. Atchley makes out a case of merely academic interest in favour of the lay clerk being allowed to read the Epistle in the Communion Service as well as the Lessons. He has no desire, however, to see the old custom revived. Why should a young man "completely baptized" be regarded as somewhat of a rarity (p. 5) ?

AMONG other points discussed in the Intermediaire during the last three months are the blood of St. Januarius, the first introduction of pepper into France, symbolic shells used as amulets from pre- historic times, and the authorship of the well- '.known phrase " Apres moi le deluge." This saying, it appears, was in reality coined by Madame de Pompadour, although " it was so exactly the mot, the expression of that reign of from hand to mouth, that it was believed, with reason, only the well- ^beloved king could have uttered it." The ritual murder so commonly attributed to the Jews by narrow-minded fanaticism is also dealt with. It would be well if some learned Hebrew would pub- lish a European bibliography of this subject, with .a suitable introduction, paying due attention to the fact that the bloodshed attributed to his co- religionists in the Middle Ages can only have been specially horrible from theological reasons. Every " civilized" country in those days was so habituated to the idea of violence and outrage that the accused must have been detested because they were held to be miscreants, in the old sense of the word, rather than because they were believed to be human beings who had slain their fellows.

Folk-lore for March contains ' The Story of JDeirdre, in its Bearing on the Social Development of the Folk- tale,' an article demonstrating how a legend is necessarily modified and toned down by the gradual softening of manners among the people who transmit it from generation to generation. ' Arthur and Gorlagon,' in the same journal, is an English version of a curious fourteenth-century Latin text in which the werewolf idea occurs, sympathy being with, and not against, the wolf. ' Wizardry on the Welsh Border,' by Miss B. A. Wherry, a very young folk-lorist, who gives promise

of doing excellent work in the future, is decidedlj entertaining. More than one of her stories exists in a slightly different form in Eastern England For instance, Jack Kent, who sent the crows intc an old barn while he went to a fair, had a fellow wizard in North- West Lincolnshire, where Willian of Lindholme, who also disliked "scaring birds' from the crops, imprisoned the sparrows in asimilai manner while he went to enjoy himself at Wrool feast. The legend is also known to occur in Franc< and Spain.

PROF. SAINTSBURY has prepared a list of the mos important of Carolinian poets whose work has beei practically consigned to oblivion, and has arrangec for the publication of their chief contributions t< the poetry of the reigns of the first and secom Charles. The scheme already includes Chamber layne's 'Pharonnida' (1659), Marmion's 'Cupid am Psyche' (1637), Bishop Henry King's 'Poems '(1657) Benlowes's ' Theophila ' (1652), T. Stanley's ' Poems (1651)and'Aurora'(1657), Patrick Hannay's' Poems (1622), R. Gomersall's 'Poems' (1633), Sidney Godol phin's ' Poems ' (a. 1643), Kynaston's ' Leoline am Syndanis' (1641), T. Beedome's 'Poems' (1641) Robert Heath's ' Clarastella ' (1650), Bishop Josepl Hall's 'Poems' (1651), Flecknoe's 'Miscellanies (1653), Flatman's 'Poems' (1674), Katherine Phil lips's ("Orinda") 'Poems' (1667), Philip Ayres' ' Lyric Poems ' (1687), Patrick Carey's ' Poems an< Triolets' (1651), and John Cleveland's 'Poems (1653). The book, which will contain the necessar; introductions and notes to each group of poem and a general introduction by Prof. Saintsbury, wil be published at the Clarendon Press in two octav< volumes, of which the first will be ready in tb autumn.

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