Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 10.djvu/613

 10 s. x. DEC. 26, 1908.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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Henning, having found out that his design had been frustrated by the cowherd, in revenge fried the man alive in a large iron pan, and gave him, when he was dying, a last kick with his left foot. Soon after this the duke came with a regiment of soldiers, laid siege to the castle, and captured it. When Henning saw that there was no escape for him, he packed all his treasures in a box and buried it close to the round tower in his garden, the ruins of which are still standing, and he then committed suicide. A long line of flat stones in our churchyard was said to mark the malefactor's grave, from which for centuries his left leg used to grow out, covered with a Mack silk stocking. Nay, both the sexton Prange and the sacristan Wollert swore that when boys they had themselves cut off the leg and used its bone to knock down pears from the trees ; but at the beginning of the present century [the nineteenth] the leg had suddenly stopped growing out. In my childish simplicity, I of course believed all this ; nay, I often begged my father to excavate the tomb or to allow me to excavate it, in order to see why the foot no longer grew out."

Dr. Schliemann adds in a foot-note that one of Henning' s legs even one of these left legs, if I read aright had been buried before the altar, and, " strange to say, when, some years ago, the church of Ankershagen was being repaired^ a single leg-bone was found at a small depth " on that very spot.

I do not recollect any other example of the same kind of post-mortem growth.

ST. SWITHIN.

KING'S ' CLASSICAL AND FOREIGN QUOTA- TIONS.' (See 10 S. ii. 231, 351 ; iii. 447 ; vii. 24; ix. 107, 284, 333; x. 126.) No. 5045 (among the ' Adespota ')

Festinare nocet, nocet et cunctatio ssepe ;

Tempore quseque suo qui facit, ille sapit. This couplet is i. 15 in Joachim Camerarius the younger' s * Symbolorum et Emblematum Centurise Quatuor,' the emblem being a mulberry tree with the motto " Cunctando proficit." EDWARD BENSLY.

University College, Aberystwyth.

" TH' OWD LAD "= THE DEVIL. Country folk are queer folk for the most part, or were so when I was a lad amongst them. You never heard any one say " th' devil " : it was always " th' owd lad." There was a general idea or belief that if any one said a,t once appear, the results being startling and serious, so everybody said " th' owd lad " or "the devil" in a whisper. This is as old as I remember. " Th' owd lad 's after yer," expressions. Some of the older people declared they had seen him, always with a long tail switching, and carrying " a prong fork " ; but none spoke of him except as " th' owd lad." There were two in par-
 * ' the devil " in a passionate way he would
 * Th' owd lad will hev yer," were common

ticular " Yance" a woman, and "Jimmy," a man who were said to have regular dealings with " th' owd lad," and were up to all sorts " o' maukin'." Jimmy, indeed, was known to have had several turns with " th' owd lad," and Nancy, when it was stormy, rode the " broomstick," otherwise they seemed harmless people, except for language and drinking.

THOS. RATCLIFFE. Worksop.

" LESE - MAJESTE " : " REPUBLIC." ' N. & Q.' has sometimes dealt incidentally with early use in the French and Eng- lish tongues of the word " Republic " for Monarchy or Empire, as, for example, in the case of the Imperialist invasion of France early in the eighteenth century, when Toulon was described by French writers as the rampart of "la Republique," meaning the French kingdom.

A double modernity of language may be found by some in a phrase worth noting, even though the words associated with " Republic " are as respectable, and almost as ancient, in French at least. Paradin in his ' Annales de Bourgongne,' writing in the sixteenth century, relates events early in the fifteenth, and describes the conduct of Shakespeare's Duke of Orleans in reference to the struggle between King Richard of England and Henry of Lancaster. Paradin also censures Orleans for resistance to the Crown of France : " Le Due d' Orleans avoit commis crime de lese majeste contre la Republique." L. M. R.

CLARET. ^(See 8 S. xii. 485, 512 ; 9 S. i. 52; ii. 156, 433.) In Paradin' s 'Savoy' there is described the visit of the Emperor Charles IV. to Count Ame at Chambery, and the banquet where the meats (viandes) were gilt (dorees) and a fountain played with " vin blanc et cleret." This use, apparently for red wine, is rare, though not unique. Paradin, as mentioned above, wrote in the sixteenth century, but some- times followed the words of earlier chroniclers.

It has already been stated in ' N. & Q.' that the modern use of the term in the South of France confines it, in the form of " clairet," to the clear or light red wine made of the mixed grapes. It has also been explained by one of your correspondents that the mediaeval use of the term implied a wine treated with sugar and spice. The " fountain " seems to negative the latter meaning in the case cited from Paradin.

C. I. P.