Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 11.djvu/399

 10 S. XL APRIL 24, 1909.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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has recently been published by Jules Haraszti, as an introduction to an " edition critique " of his play ' Tyr et Sidon ou les Funestes Amours de Belcar et Meliane Tragedie,' in the series issued by the Societe des Textes Francais Modernes (Paris, 1908).

L. L. K.

ST. DAVID : " TAFFY-ON-A-STICK." The 1st of March is St. David's Day, the national holiday of Wales. Very little is known about St. David except that he was one of the early leaders of the Welsh Church. He established monasteries, and founded the bishopric now known by his name. He died about the year 550, and a shrine in the present Cathedral of St. David's is said to enclose his bones.

But if the authentic history of this per- sonage is meagre, the legends that cluster around his name are many and fantastic. His birth is reputed to have been predicted by a divine messenger ; he was frequently attended by heavenly beings ; the Bath waters became warm and salubrious through his agency, he healed the sick and raised the dead ; and when he preached, a snow-white dove perched on his shoulder.

Before the Reformation the highest honours were paid to him in both Wales and England. In Salisbury Cathedral the following prayer was said on St. David's Day:

" O God, who by Thy angel didst foretell thy Blessed Confessor St. David thirty years before he was born, grant unto us, we beseech Thee, that, celebrating his memory, we may by his intercession attain to joy everlasting."

Welshmen celebrate St. David's Day by the wearing of the leek. There is some reason to believe this is a relic of some pre-Christian festival connected with the revival of vegetation in the springtime.

In England there was once a custom of hanging a Welshman in effigy on this day possibly a survival of a time when a real Welshman was killed. In 1667 Pepys wrote in his diary :

" In Mark Lane, I do observe, it being St. David's Day, the picture of a man dressed like a Welchman, hanging by the neck upon one of the poles that stand out at the top of one of the merchants' houses, in full proportion and very handsomely done; which is one of the oddest sights I have seen a good while, for it was so like a man that one would have thought it was indeel a man."

This practice was very common at one time, and until the middle of the nineteenth century bakers made gingerbread Welshmen, called taffies, on St. David's Day, which were made to represent a man skewered.

In this part of the world we have a sweet- meat known as " taffy-on-a-stick," which consists of a morsel of molasses candy on the end of a skewer. It is not improbable that this is a descendant of the impaled Welshman, for the transition is easily made from ginger cake to candy via such con- fections as " Scotch cake," &c. This proba- bility is strengthened by the fact that most of the dictionaries are silent regarding the derivation of the word " taffy," while a few go as far as the Malay language to find its root in the word " tafia," a kind of rum. But the above chain of facts would indicate that "taffy" (in England "toffy") as a general term for a type of candy has arisen from the name of a special kind of candy, derived from the English nickname for a Welshman, which is in turn a result of so many Welshmen bearing the name of David, their patron saint.

F. CRIDLAND EVANS.

Philadelphia.

WE must request correspondents desiring in- formation on family matters of only private interest to affix their names and addresses to their queries, in order that answers may be sent to them direct.

MARIE ANTOINETTE'S DEATH MASK. In the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tus- saud's there is a wax model which, according to the catalogue, was moulded from a cast of Marie Antoinette's features taken imme- diately after her execution by Madame Tussaud's own hands. Is there any evidence to support this tradition ? The likeness to the ilF-fated Queen of France is unmistakable, and yet the features do not show the caie- worn expression that is revealed in her later portraits. Innumerable documents describing the last days of Marie Antoinette, her execution, her burial, and the exhuma- tion of her body, have been collected of late years by industrious French historians ; but I have never seen any mention of a death mask taken by Marie Tussaud. The subject is of interest, for, if authentic, this relic is one of the most wonderful in the world. HORACE BLEACKLEY.

ARAB SHEIKH NEFZAONI. Can any reader of ' N. & Q.' tell me whether " the mys- terious volume of the Arab Sheikh Nef- zaoni," referred to in ' Syrinx,' by Mr. Laurence North, has ever been translated into English or French ?

FREDERICK T. HIBGAME.