Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 10.djvu/333

 10 s. x. OCT. 3, 1908.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

273

" As THE FARMER SOWS HIS SEED " (10 S.

x. 169, 217). The play-songs of English- speaking children and their counting-out rimes are to be heard the world over. This is how the children of our neighbourhood sang it a few days since, so did their mothers thirty years ago and more, and the children's children will sing it in the years to be. Here the children have three stanzas :

Oats, peas, beans, and barley grows, 'Tis you, nor I, nor nobody knows ; So open the ring, and choose one in, And kiss her when you get her in. Thus the farmer sows his seed,

Thus he stands and takes his ease, Thus he stands and claps his hands,

Then turns around arid views the land. Now you 're married you must obey,

You must be true to all you say, You must be kind, you must be good,

And make your husband chop the wood. As the children sing, they take hold of hands and form the ring round one of the playmates, who chooses another, who also enters the ring. They sing, they go through the motions of scattering the seed, they clap their hands at the proper time, and each

E layer turns around as the words are said, o the play goes on until each participant has been one of the pair within the ring.

JOHN E. NORCROSS. Brooklyn, N.Y.

It is quite erroneous to speak of this game as obsolete. I have seen it played frequently at Sunday-school treats and the like in this neighbourhood, to the accompaniment of words that do rime, the first lines running thus :

He, nor I, nor any one knows,

Where oats and beans and barley grows.

The game is known to the children as " Enarina " (!), and the first line is habitually sung

Enarina, any one knows. I do not think any of them have the least idea of the real meaning. At the lines

Stamps his foot, and claps his hand,

And turns him round,

the children stamp, clap, and turn round in illustration. CORNELIA.

Sheffield.

"CARDINAL" OF ST. PAUL'S (10 S. x. 85, 173, 235). If MR. HARLAND-OXLEY is able to refer to a book-plate of the author of ' The Ingoldsby Legends,' he will find thereon the Cardinal's hat again, and this time apart from any emblems connected with the legend of the famous jackdaw.

R. J3.

Upton.

The engraved title-page of my copy of 'The Ingoldsby Legends ' (Bentley, MDCCCLVIII). presents pictorial promise of the contents of the book. The Jackdaw of Rheims, with he ring in his beak, surmounts the design ; on either side of him is a censing angel, and the one towards whom the bird's head is turned is occupied with what is no doubt meant for a Cardinal's hat, though the houppes attached to it mark it as being intended for nobody above the rank of a bishop. ST. SWITHIN.

HOLBEACH CHURCH : KNIGHT'S HEAD

RESTING ON LADY'S BODY (10 S. X. 228).

A hospital was founded and endowed at Holbeach by Sir John de Kirton, Kt., about 1351. The church (All Saints') also contains, I believe, a brass of a man in armour, and monuments of the Irby and Littlebury families, formerly resident in the neighbour- hood. Possibly information as to the attitude of the figures represented will be found in ' Notes on Holbeach Church,' by Henry Peet, a pamphlet of 24 pp., with five auto- type plates, ground plan, and other illustra- tions, published in 1891.

J. HOLDEN MACMlCHAEL.

ANATOLE FRANCE : ' THE GARDEN OF EPICURUS' (10 S. x. 188). It is possible that Anatole France was alluding to the epitaph familiarized by George Mac Donald in ' David Elginbrod,' chap. xiii. :

Here lie I, Martin Elginbrodde : Hae mercy o' my soul, Lord God ; As I wad do, were I Lord God, And ye were Martin Elginbrodde.

W. B.

Westminster.

" PLUS JE CONNAIS LES HOMMES," &C. (10

S. x. 188). Comte Alfred D'Orsay added as- a P.S. to a letter which he wrote from Paris- to John Forster in 1850 the following :

" Une autre fois je vous parlerai politique, c'est trop d^goutant pour le moment. Lamartine me disait hier, ' Plus je vois des representants du peuple r plus j'aime mes chiens.'"

CONSTANCE RUSSELL. Swallowfield Park, Reading.

TAINE : " TENIR UNE QUEUE DE VACHE 1 LA MAIN" (10 S. x. 188). Taine, of course, refers to the Hindu belief that the souls of the dead are helped across the dread Vai- tarani, the river of death, by holding on to a cow's tail. The idea is common among Hindus. I have myself seen a criminal led out to execution calmed by being allowed to touch a cow's tail before the hangman performed his duty. Ward justly suggests