Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 12.djvu/119

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

95

about 1849 to 1853, after the suppression of the Hungarian insurrection ; but to the best of my recollection the name was always spelt Pestel.

W. HENRY JEWITT. 38, North Road, Highgate, N.

An account of Col. Festal and the song has been given at 8 S. x. 360. I can remem- ber the song being very popular fifty years ago. W. C. B.

[ DIEGO and MR. F. P. MABCHANT also thanked for replies.]

" MATTHEW, MABK, LUKE, AND JOHN " (10 S. xii. 47). Surely Miss HICKEY has omitted a couplet :

Four corners to my bed, Four angels guard my head.

" Guard the bed " in the second line should be " bless the bed."

I have heard both the versions which Miss HICKEY gives of the last line, and I agree with her in believing that " two [angels] to kesp the devil away " is the older. G. W. E. R.

These lines were looked upon as one of the little prayers which children should use before getting into bed, and in some families they were told to children at any rate sixty years ago. All my companions, boys and girls, said them as follows :

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,

Bless the bed that I lie on :

Two to watch me and to pray,

Two to carry my soul away,

If I should die whilst in my sleep.

It was upon our minds that Matthew and Mark did the watching and praying, Luke and John especially John carrying the soul away. As I never saw the last line printed with the verse, I should say that it might be an addition by older heads than ours ; yet it was certain to us that without death " whilst in my sleep " Luke and John would not have a soul to carry away. I am just recording some child impressions.

There is another reading with which I was equally familiar, and it is, I think, well known everywhere, varying but little in the wording :

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,

Bless the bed that I lie on ;

Four corners to my bed,

Four angels round my head ;

One to sing, and one to pray,

And two to carry my soul away.

A picture in a child's book of that day impressed some of us, I remember, greatly. It represented four angels bearing a baby away, the uppermost figure carrying the

baby closely pressed to the breast : this we said was John ; the others were Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Those were simple days, and the equally simple little books of that time are treasured memories.

In romping about we often shouted :

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,

Get a stick an' lay hard on !

THOS. RATCLIFFE. Worksop.

NUNS AS CHAPLAINS (10 S. xii. 49). I dare say PROF. SKEAT will answer MB. McGovEBN's question as to Tyrwhitt ; but to spare the learned editor of Chaucer's works the painful and inaccurate conviction that nobody gives heed to the result of his labour, I should like to quote his note on

Another Nonne with hir hadde she

That was hir chapeleyne,

as it tends to confirm the views of Dr. Jessopp and of Eckenstein :

' It was not common for Prioresses to have female chaplains ; but Littre gives chapelaine, fern., as an old title of dignity in a nunnery. Moreover, it is an office still held in most Benedictine con- vents, as is fully explained in a letter written by a modern Nun-Chaplain, and printed in Anglia, iv. 238. See also ' N. & Q.,' 7 S. vi. 485; The Academy, Aug. 23, 1890, p. 152."

ST. SWITHIN.

Dr. Richard Morris, commenting on 11. 163-4 of Chaucer's 'Prologue,' says: "It was not u^ual for Prioresses to have female chaplains ; chapeleyne, however, is the reading of all the MSS. Did Chaucer write chamberleyne ? "

Dr. H. Frank Heath in ' Social England ' (1902), ii. 294, for the nun-chaplaincy refers the reader to Sussex Archseol. Soc., ix. 15, 'An Episcopal Injunction to the Prioress of Easeburn in 1478 ' ; and Dugdale, ' Mon.,' iii. 415, in a report on Elstow Nunnery. A. R. BAYLEY.

DE QUINCEY : QUOTATIONS AND ALLU- SIONS (10 S. xi. 388, 438). 4. MB. T. BAYNE'S allusion to the wooden door-bars prompts me to say that Scott refers to these fastenings in chaps, iii. and xvi. of ' Wood- stock.' At the first reference it is stated that the Ranger's apartments at the Royal Lodge, Woodstock,

"opened by a short passage from the hall, secured at time of need by two oaken doors, which could be fastened by large bars of the same, that were drawn out of the wall, and entered into square holes con- trived for their reception on the other side of the portal."

Such or bar as is here described was nightly drawn across the back door of my