Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 1.djvu/65

 io- s. i. JAN. 16, 1904.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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united forces on that occasion in honour o the lugubriously named captain. F. F. L.

A. C. SWINBURNE. The editors of th " Centenary Edition " of Burns quote in the notes, vol. i. p. 368, the following stanza by Mr. Swinburne : Men, born of the land that for ages

Has been honoured where freedom was dear, Till your labour was fat on its wages You shall never be peers of a peer. Where might is, the right is :

Long purses make strong swords. Let weakness learn meekness. God save the House of Lords.

In which of the poet's publications can the rest of the poem be found ?

J. J. FREEMAN.

RALEIGH'S HEAD. I lately, quite by chance, came across a copy of a booklet entitled 'History and Description of the Windows of the Parish Church of the House of Commons' (1895), by Mrs. J. E. Sinclair, a lady of antiquarian tastes. In this I find it stated, at p. 30, that

"Ralegh was beheaded in the adjacent Old Palace Yard, in 1618 ; his body was interred beneath the chancel of the church, his head being placed on Westminster Hall. A tradition, handed down from rector to rector of St. Margaret's, says that the dissevered head was buried in the same grave with the body of his son, Carew Ralegh, a few years afterwards."

I should be glad to know how much credence is to be attached to this "tra- dition," and whether the statement can be by any means traced to its source. I believe that the accepted, and probably authentic, account is that the head was buried in the church at West Hprseley, in Surrey. I ad- dressed a communication on this matter to the editor of the St. Margaret's Parish Maga- zine, thinking it a likely means by which to obtain the information, but it did not secure insertion. DAVID EASTERBROOK.

[See DR. BIU:SHFIELD'S article, 9 th S. xii. 289.]

" MEYNES " AND "RHINES." At Orange the other day I came across a curious patois word which is of some interest. The waterway which is led through the town, and which is usually about one metre broad [? deep] and ten metres wide, is locally known as a "meyne." When one i-ecollects that the drainage chan- nels on Sedgemoor are known as " rhines," and that the chief tributary of the river Rhine is the Main, one is tempted to ask what the origin of these two terms really is.

It is, of course, well known that Orange was once a principality under the House of Nassau, and it is possible thatDutch engineers may have been brought there by them to

superintend the irrigation works with which the whole of this part of the Rhone plain is intersected. Similarly I believe that many of the drainage works on Sedgemoor were laid out by Dutchmen. Are there any tech- nical terms in Dutch or Flemish from which " meyne " and " rhine " could be derived ?

I do not know if the compilers of the ' N.E.D.' have as yet reached the word " main," but Dr. Murray might well have French patois dictionaries looked up as to " meyne," in view of our own gas and water mains. My informant said the word, which I have not seen written, is pure French ; but I have not Littre at hand to verify his assertion. H.

Avignon.

[For rene, a small watercourse, see 9 th S. ix. 329, 4S4.]

THE MOTHER OF NINUS.

(9 th S. xii. 128.)

As Osiris was at once the son and husband of Isis his mother, and the Indian god Iswara is represented as a babe at the breast of his own wife Parvati, the Indian Isis, so Ninus or Nimrod, the beginning of whose kingdom was Babylon (Genesis x. 10), was both hus- band and son of Semiramis, who, as the first deified queen of Babylon, was probably identified with Mu-Mu or Ma-Ma, the great mother of all nature, who in her varying ! orms, says Mr. Boscawen, was Mumu Tiamut, the Chaotic Sea, and Baku, the spouse of Hea, who presided over the south of Babylonia, the region of the marshes, and x>re the title also of the " bearing mother of mankind " (' From under the Dust of Ages,' 886, p. 35). So that, in the conflicting rela- ionships of the earliest divinities with which ,he researches of Assyriologists have made us acquainted, it is perhaps permissible to recognize in Mu-Mu or Ma-Ma attributes which were transferred to Semiramis, the ,reat goddess-mother, upon one of whose emples in Egypt, where she was known as Athor, was inscribed : " I arn all that has )een, or that is, or that shall be. No mortal las removed my veil. The fruit which I mve brought forth is the Sun " (Bunsen's Egypt,' 1848, vol. i. pp. 386-7). Similarly he Babylonian epic of the creation begins by escribing the generation of the world out of Vlummu or Chaos, the primeval source of all hings (' The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylon,' by Prof. Sayce, 1902. p. 131). The first tablet of the ' History of Creation ' says :

. When in the height heaven was not named, . And the earth beneath did not yet bear a name,