Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 10.djvu/190

 NOTES AND QUERIES. [10 s. x. AUG. 22, im

p. 307) as being next to the waterside. Pennant, however, describes them as " two eagles, with imperial crowns round their necks, placed on two columns." Also there is an aquatint in the Grace Collection (British Museum), portf. vi. 292, of the old steelyard in Thames Street, as it appeared from the river front in 1798. Here again two eagles are represented, one each side of the water-gate. This division of the in- separable may, however, have been of a merely conventional character. At all events, it is remarkable that in an account of the steelyard and the Hanseatic League in The Home Friend ( ' Ancient London ' ), No. xiii. p. 472, there is an illustration which certainly seems to represent what remains of the relic presented to the Corporation Museum by Mr. Pope, who, I think, was a famous Q.C. as well as antiquary.

J. HOLDEN MACMlCHAEL.

Information respecting this device will be found in Lane-Poole's ' Coins of the Urtuki Turkumans ' in ' Numismata Orien- talia' (1878), p. 21. He there refers to coins of Atabegs of Sinjar, and rulers of Keyfa and Amid, on which it occurs, these coins being in the British Museum (' Cata- logue of Oriental Coins,' vol. iii.). Their dates are circa 1190 and 1220. He states that the double-headed eagle was the armorial badge of the city of Amid, and also refers to the occurrence of the device at Euyuk and near Boghaz-Keui, mentioned in the article in Blackwood this year. See also Archaeological Journal, vol. xvii. p. 145.

It appears from W. B. Stevenson's ruler of Sinjar was with Saladin before Acre till November, 1190; and it may perhaps be suggested that coins of this ruler, or seals belonging to him or others, and bearing the device, were brought home by Crusaders, and introduced the two-headed eagle as an armorial bearing into Europe. L. W. H.
 * Crusaders in the East,' p. 266, that the

ASTARTE may be interested in the follow- ing quotation from Comte d'Alviella's ' Les Symboles ' in connexion with his query about the double-headed eagle :

"M. de Longperier fait observer que si Ton pratique une section dans la tige de certaines fougeres, Pleris aquilina, on obtient une image assez exacte de 1'aigle a deux tetes. Or, la fougere se nomme en grec Pteris, comme la province on se rencontrent les bas-reliefs d'Euiuk. Le savant archeologue se demandait si ce ne serait pas cette similitude qui aurait fait choisir 1'aigle a deux tetes comme symbole de la Pterie. Mais on sait aujourd'hui que les bas-reliefs en question sont fort anterieurs a 1'entree en scene des Grecs dans cette

partie du moude, et il est probable que les Grecs avaient nomme la fougere avant de connaitre la Pterie."

The curious figure here described as a " double-headed eagle " was, when I was a child, called " Bang Charles in the oak," for neither the pattern in the root section of this fern, nor the significance of its name, Pteris aquilina (two-winged eagle), had been recognized. T. S. M.

RUSHLIGHTS (10 S. x. 27, 76, 93, 135). It may be of interest to note that rushlights were on sale and in use, to my knowledge, in Bedfordshire at a very much later date than 1845 (ante, p. 93). They were in use cer- tainly thirty years later than that, and I believe even more recently still. They were made at St. Albans, and an inquiry ad- dressed to Messrs. Joseph Wiles & Sons, tallow chandlers of St. Albans, would be likely to result in definite information as to the latest date up to which they were made. A. H. ANDERSON.

THE SWEDISH CHURCH, PRINCE'S SQUARE, ST. GEORGE'S-IN-THE-EAST (10 S. ix. 369, 416 ; x. 97). MR. HARLAND-OXLEY says that he has been unable to find any separate history of this church. In the ' Remi- niscences ' of the late pastor, Johannes Palmer, who retired in 1903, some account is given of the Swedish Church and con- gregation in London, and reference is made to ' Notes ' concerning the same by G. W. Carlson, an earlier minister, published at Stockholm in 1852. Both accounts are in Swedish, and therefore not readily accessible. We learn that privilege to establish a Swedish Church, according to the Lutheran faith, was first obtained as early as 1673 ; but, the Swedes not being numerous enough at the time, the privilege was acted upon by the German Lutherans, with whom, for a while, such Swedes as understood the German language worshipped. They joined with the Danes, however, when the latter built their church in Wellclose Square, about 1696. Some years later, ill-feeling, threatening war, having arisen between the two nations, the Swedes withdrew from church-fellowship. A private house in Rat- cliff Highway was rented until means were found for the erection of a church of their own in 1728.

Of the Danes' Church (which is not now standing) we find some account in the Rev. Daniel Ly sons' s ' Environs of London ' (1795). Its architect was Caius Gabriel Gibber, Statuary to Frederic, King of Denmark (and afterwards to Charles II.