Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 12.djvu/283

 10 s. XIL SEPT. is, 1909.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

231

United States has been a subject for aca demic discussion ; but from The Reporte we learn that this has become an accom plished fact.

According to the list, there is in Boston a monument to Miantonomah. A temporary absence from Boston prevents my writing with absolute certainty, but I feel confident that there is no such monument. The Indian in question was a Narragansett chief and hence Rhode Island is the place where one would expect a monument, if one exists. Near Newport, Rhode Island, is a hill named after the chief.

The list also states that there is a monu- ment to "Attucks in Boston Common." There is no such monument. There is, however, on Boston Common a monument bearing the inscription : " Erected in 1888 by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in Honor of those who fell at the Boston Massacre." In September, 1768, some British troops reached Boston, having been sent to keep the good Bostonians in order. Naturally there was bitter feeling between the inhabitants and the troops, and this culminated in the so-called Boston Massacre of 5 March, 1770, in which Capt. Thomas Preston and his men fired on the people, killing five and wounding others. The names of the five killed, among them Crispus Attucks, are inscribed on the monu- ment erected in 1888. Attucks took no part in the fray, and was a mere casual bystander who happened to be killed. Moreover, at the time Attucks was regarded not as an Indian, but as a negro. It has never, I think, been ascertained with cer- tainty whether he was an Indian or a negro, or of mixed Indian and ' negro blood. If there is anywhere in Boston a monument to Attucks, it was doubtless erected to him not as an Indian, but as a negro.

The other sixteen monuments on the list should be examined with care before they are accepted. In The Boston Evening Transcript of Tuesday, 10 Aug., 1909, was a long dispatch dated White Pigeon, Michigan, and stating that

4< On Thursday the people of this, one of the oldest towns m South- Western Michigan, will unveil a monument to the Pottawatomie chief White Pigeon, who, early in the last century, died in his efforts to save the settlers from possible massacre." The story seems to be largely traditional. It is stated in the newspapers that the proposed memorial will take the form of a colossal statue of an Indian.

ALBERT MATTHEWS. Jefferson, N.H.

" MORS JANUA VIT^: " (10 S. viii. 231, 334, 456). At the last page, after giving extracts from Nicolas Reusner's ' Symbola Heroica,' MR. PIERPOINT adds : "If St. Bernard wrote the saying ' Mors janua vitse ' I presume that Bernardus means St. Bernard it would be a great labour to find the reference."

I cannot confirm this gloomy prognostica- tion. See vol. i. of the Benedictine edition (Paris, 1690) of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, col. 1044 F :

" Pessima quidem mors peccatorum, quoniam & nativitas mala, & vita pejor ; sed pretiosa est mors sanctorum [marg. Psal. 115, 15]. Pretiosa plane, tamquam finis laborum, tamquam victorise consum- matio, tamquam vitse janua, & perfectse securitatis ingressus." ' Sermones de Sanctis,' 'In transitu S. Malachiee Episcopi,' Sermo I. 4, ad fin.

EDWARD BENSLY.

"COMETHER" (10 S. x. 469; xi. 33, 98, 416, 513 ; xii. 77). Towards the close of chap. Ixxxv. of Lever's ' Charles O'Malley,' Mike the hero's Irish soldier-servant in the Peninsula, says, alluding to the ladies :

"They have a way of getting round you. It's like the pigs they are. I was coming along one morning, when I sees a slip of a pig. I thought ' Musha ! but yer fine company av a body could only keep you with him,' but you see a pig is a baste not easily flattered, so I took off my belt and put it round his neck, as neat as need be."

Sir Dennis Pack, appearing on the scene, advises him that they part company, lest Mike come to a similar end. Mike adds : "Faix, I took his advice, and ye see they're like the women, the least thing in life is enough to bring them after us, av ye only put the ' comether ' upon them."

MISTLETOE. i

" IF TWO AND TWO MAKE FOUR " (10 S.

xii. 109). With the context, "What is your opinion of things in general ? " the inquiry seems to savour of an attempt at opening up, or at all events to lead towards, further conversation, in the same traditional way that the weather is exploited.

J. HOLDEN MACMlCHAEL.

GRAVESTONES AT JORDANS : WILLIAM PENN (10 S. xii. 129). MR. ABRAHAMS is right in thinking that some memorial stones were in recent times erected in Jordans graveyard to Penn and his family. In an article entitled ' William Penn's Homes ' in The Quiver, March, 1902, by E. Clarke, on p. 488 are mentioned the graves of the hree elder children, but no stones. On i. 489 it is stated that Penn's first wife was luried there, and that his second wife was uried in the same grave as he at Jordans.