Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 12.djvu/111

 10 s. XIL JULY 31, 1909.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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MONUMENTS TO AMERICAN INDIANS. A movement is on foot in the United States to erect, near New York Harbour, a memorial to the honour of the aboriginal races of America. A writer in The Reporter (Chicago) for June of this year points out that, in different parts of the United States, no fewer than nineteen public monuments have been reared, from time to time, to as many prominent members of the original inhabitants of that great continent. He furnishes the following list :

Sakajaweaj "the mother of Oregon," at Portland.

Pocahontas, Jamestown Island.

Mahaska, recently erected in Iowa.

Red Jacket in Buffalo.

Miantonomah in Boston.

Sleepy Eye at Sleepy Eye, Minn.

Shabonee at Morris, 111.

Osceola at Fort Moultrie, Charleston, S.C.

Tomochichi in Savannah.

Uncas at Norwich, Conn.

Pushmataha in Washington, D.C.

Corn planter in Pennsylvania.

Cornstalk at Point Pleasant, W. Va.

Logan at Auburn, N.Y.

Keokuk at Keokuk, la.

Attucks in Boston Common.

Waban at Newton, Mass.

Leatherlips, Franklin county, Ohio.

Brant (Thayendanegea) at Brantford, Ontario.

The last named, who assumed the name of Joseph Brant, was the chief of the Six Nations. HARRY HEMS.

Fair Park, Exeter.

CARLYLE ON THE PENETJS. In the first volume of Carlyle's * French Revolution,' chapter entitled ' Usher Maillard,' occurs this :

"Menads storm behind. If such hewed off the melodious head of Orpheus, and hurled it into the Peneus waters, what may they not make of thee, thee rhythm'ic merely, with no music but a sheepskin drum ? "

It was not the Peneus river at all, but the Hebrus, that Carlyle meant. No critic seems to have noted this curious confusion of the Peneus river with Pentheus, King of Thebes. Carlyle probably knew by heart the lines from ' Lycidas ' : What could the Muse herself that Orpheus bore, The Muse herself for her enchanting son, Whom universal nature did lament, When by the rout that made the hideous roar, His gory visage down the stream was sent, - Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore ?

THOMAS FLINT. 123, South Elliot Place, Brooklyn, N.Y.

" DYNAMOMETER." The ' N.E.D.' cites The Quarterly, Aug., 1810, with reference to " a new instrument, invented by Regnier, which he calls a dynamometer, for the

purpose of ascertaining the comparative strength which individuals are capable of exerting." This instrument is men- tioned 6 Jan., 1808, in a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, concern- ing the trial of ploughs and drills "by a dynamometer." The * Ency. Brit.' names other contrivances of a similar nature, but without giving what an inquirer naturally looks for the order of their invention, with dates. RICHARD H. THORNTON.

(Qmrus.

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.

" PYRRHIC VICTORY." We shall be glad of one or two early examples of this phrase ; indeed, of any good ones before 1885. I remember its being explained to me when at school. J. A. H. MURRAY.

Oxford.

FARNESE ARMS. What were the arms borne by Cardinal Farnese ? Were they a cross gules surmounting five fleurs-de-lis azure ? LTJDWIG ROSENTHAL.

Munich.

" BIER-RIGHT " : ORDEAL BY TOUCH. It is not a little extraordinary that the " bier-right," or " law of the bier," or " ordeal of the bier," or " ordeal by touch," as it is variously called, has attracted no attention in ' N. & Q.' As I am preparing a paper on the custom as practised in this country, I am anxious to obtain all the infor- mation I can in regard to the custom in the British Isles. Cases in England or Scotland dated 1611, 1628, 1644, 1661, 1676, 1683, and 1688 are recorded in Pitcairn's ' Criminal Trials in Scotland,' Lea's ' Superstition and Force,' or elsewhere ; but the fact that there were cases in this country so recently as 1869 makes it pretty evident that my British cases do not indicate when the custom ceased in the British Isles. This inference is strengthened by a question asked in The Gentleman's Magazine for August, 1796 (Ixvi. 636): "What grounds are there to imagine that the wounds of a murdered person will bleed on being touched by the murderer ? " I shall be greatly indebted to any correspondent who can give me exact references to cases in the British Isles, more particularly after 1700. ALBERT MATTHEWS.

Boston, U.S.