Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 10.djvu/25

 10 s. x. JULY 4, 1908.J NOTES AND QUERIES.

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on his deathbed. Wood insists that ample corroboration of the truth of the legend existed, and says that no inquiry was ever made after the two unfortunate lovers. His ipsa verba as to their identity are,

" who the victims were, and whence they came, is not satisfactorily known : Clara was supposed to be an English nobleman's daughter, and Allan, a ^gentleman from the south of England."

W. B. H.

In ' The Ballads and Songs of Derbyshire ' ((Derby, Bemrose & Sons, 1867), byLlewellynn .Jewitt, is ' Henry and Clara,' a Peak ballad on the murder at Winnats. The couple were returning from their marriage at the chapel of Peak Forest, a runaway marriage in 1758 or 1768. They were on horseback, and fell benighted on reaching " The Winnats." Five miners set upon them, dragged them into a barn, and robbed and murdered them. What the murderers did with the bodies is not stated ; their horses were found wandering later on, and were taken to Chatsworth Park, and ran there as waifs ; nor were they ever claimed. It is said that -the saddles are still preserved at Chats- worth. The ballad ' Henry and Clara ' -was written by the Rev. Arthur George Jewitt, brother of the compiler of ' Derby- shire Ballads.' It begins,

Christians, to my tragic ditty Deign to lend a patient ear ;

If your breasts e'er heav'd with pity Now prepare to shed a tear.

It is written in the dear old style, and runs to thirty verses. It was first printed in the -author's ' Wanderings of Memory,' 1815, and at the time, I believe, when the Jewitt family resided at Dumeld, near Derby. It was by no means an uncommon thing ior a ballad-monger to come to the villages, with a sheaf of ditties over his arm, and sing or recite local pieces told in simple verse. I am not sure, but think that ' Henry and Clara ' was dealt with in the * Notes and Queries ' columns of The Derbyshire Times upwards of thirty years ago. I do not think that the full names of the murdered couple were then given.

THOS. RATCLIFFE. Work sop.

HOLY GRAIL (10 S. ix. 465). I think that 1 must have left a few words out of my communication on this sub j ect. The legends concerning the Holy Grail vary, and I should have written : " According to one legend it (the Holy Grail) was made from a diar mond," &c. Tennyson follows that legend which makes the Grail the cup from which

the Saviour drank at the Last Supper. But the vessel which received the Saviour's blood probably would be something different from a cup. The Grail was said also to be a dish which was used at the Last Supper, and afterwards received the blood at the Cross. But I do not know that this fits much better with the description of its splendid appearance and many miraculous qualities. The diamond, or emerald, that fell from the crown of Satan, fashioned by angels into the vessel which received the Holy Blood, would make the best Grail. Satan, when he was contending with an archangel, would be of enormous size. " His stature reached the sky," as Milton said of him. And the diamond, or emerald, would be correspondingly large.

E. YABDLEY.

The etymology is fully discussed, in fact at great length, in my Preface to ' Joseph of Arimathie,' published for the Early English Text Society, and it is given briefly in my from the O.Fr. greal, representing the Late Latin gradate. The latter is a " voiced " form of *cratale, a derivative of crater, a bowl. See Diez and others.
 * Concise Etymological Dictionary.' It is

WALTER W. SKEAT.

LATIN LINES ON SLEEP (10 S. ix. 390). The English version of these lines is given in a slightly different form from that quoted by C. K. in Beeton's ' Great Book of Poetry,' where it is attributed to Dr. Wolcot. Bee- ton's collection has, of course, no critical value, but it may be worth while to quote the lines as there given :

Come, gentle sleep ! attend thy votary's prayer, And, though death's image, to my couch repair ; How sweet, though lifeless, yet with life to lie, And, without dying, how sweet to die !

C. C. B.

I have these lines written in a common- place book, with a note that they were a composition of Thomas Warton to be placed under a statue of Somnus in the garden of Harris the philologist, and had been trans- lated by Peter Pindar. The source of this information is not given ; possibly it is Wolcot' s version that is quoted by your correspondent. R. L. MORETON.

ST. MARY'S ABBEY, YORK (10 S. ix. 38% 496). We are much indebted to MR. MAeMiCHAEL for his note on the earlier or monastic use of the terms " prebend," " prebendary," &c., which I had overlooked {p. 388). We may refer to Ducange as well