Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 10.djvu/240

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NOTES AND QUERIES. no s. x. SEPT. 5, im

a mortal disease. He was condemned for having them, and suffered death on the scaffold. When, in the reign of Henry IV. of France, Marshal Biron was accused of treason, he pleaded that he was under the power of a magician who showed him an image of wax which pronounced these words : " Rex impie peribis." E. YARDLEY.

One of the last instances (perhaps the last recorded) of the use of the magic doll is noted in an article on ' The Evil Eye and the Solar Emblem ' in The Antiquary, September, 1907, p. 344. But the writer also notes other instances from the Chaldean tablets, as well as from the Babylonian and Assyrian inscriptions generally. If I re- member rightly, Mr. Elworthy does not go quite so far back in his citations of writers on this subject.

J. HOLDEN MACMlCHAEL.

K. P. D. E.'s reply reminds me of Long- fellow's play ' Giles Corey of the Salem Farms,' one of the very nearest efforts to- wards greatness which I think that poet ever made. The play is founded on the witchcraft superstitions of the New England States. The scene is Salem in 1692. One character, Tituba, an Indian woman, asks a girl who is looking in a mirror what she sees. She sees a man holding in his hand a waxen image. " That is my father," says Tituba, " He was an Obi man, and taught me magic." The passage goes on : Tituba. What is he doing? Mary. Holding in his hand

A waxen figure. He is melting it Slowly before a fire. Tituba. And now what see you ? Mary. A woman lying on a bed of leaves Wasted and worn away. Oh, she is dying.

Tituba. That is the way the Obi men destroy The people they dislike ! That is the way Some one is wasting and consuming you. There are many passages in the play which bear on K. P. D. E.'s idea, especially in Act III. sc. ii. :

What most convinced me of the woman's guilt Was finding hidden in her cellar wall Loose poppets made of rags, with headless pins Stuck into them point outwards. Longfellow's data for the basis of this play and its legends would be a useful source of information for any one interested in the question raised by K. P. D. E.

ALFRED E. SNODGRASS.

WATERLOO : LETTER BY VIVIAN (10 S. x 145). As MR. HEMS understands that this most interesting letter of Sir Hussey Vivian V " has not been published before," I ma> perhaps be permitted to tell him that he wil

find it, together with others on the same- subject, in my ' Historical Memoirs of the- 18th Hussars,' commencing p. 136, from >riginal letters then (last year) in my posses- ion. HAROLD MALET, Col.

TOOTHACHE (10 S. x. 121, 171). There is- , curious receipt for toothache (or for tooth- extraction) in the ' Arcana Fairfaxiana ' :

" Take wormes when they be a gendering together,, dry them upon a hott tyle stone, then make poM'der >f them, and what toothe ye touch w th it will fall rat." This is signed H(enry) C(holmeley).

Underneath it is another, in the same land :

" Or R wheat-flower and mixe it w th y e milk of ipurge and thereof make a paste or dowe w th y* w ch fill y e hollow of y" tooth and leave it in a certain

ime and y e tooth will fall out.'

C. C. B.

"HAME-REIN" (10 S. x. 106). This is new phrase. The rein was, and still is, nown as the bearing-rein. It is not now ised by those who love their horses.

JOHN P. STILWELL.

I imagine that this is an expressive pro- vincial term for a bearing-rein.

ST. S WITHIN.

GRAY OF DENNE HILL, KENT (10 S. x. 148). The following is from Hasted' s 'Kent' :

"Thomas, Robert, and William Beake in 1725' old Denne Hill to Lady Hester Gray, whose hus- band Sir James Gray had in 1707 been created a baronet of Scotland. This family of Gray bore for their arms Gules, a lion rampant within a bprdure wavy argent ; and she (Lady Hester Gray) in 1738 conveyed it to her eldest son Sir James Gray, Bart, and K.B., who died possessed of it in 1775, and was succeeded in it by his brother Lieut.-General Sir George Gray, Bart., who dying soon afterwards, it came to his mother Lady Hester Gray and her daughters, Elizabeth Nicholl, widow, and Caroline Gray, spinster, who in 1774 (?) joined in the sale of it to John Morse, Esq., of London, Merchant.

" Lady Gray's Gate is mentioned in a writ of 1763. It stood in Dennehill Lane."

The date of the sale is evidently an error ; there are several such errors in Hasted' s ' History of Kent,' but it is otherwise very trustworthy. JOHN BAVINGTON JONES.

Dover.

' D.N.B.,' Supplement, ii. 347, gives an account of the two brothers Sir James and General Sir George Gray (who both died 1773). Horace Walpole said of Gray, that " his father was first a box-keeper and then footman to James II." These brothers are noteworthy as two of the original foun- ders of the Society of Dilettanti in 1732.

A. R. BAYLEY.