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NOTES AND QUERIES, rio s. xn. SEPT. 25, im

house in Brecon or Brecknon, South Wales, where Mrs. Siddons was born. "It is," he says, " a public-house, ' The Shoulder of Mutton,' " and he adds that a joint of this kind was " always at the accustomed hour seen roasting at the kitchen fire, on a spit turned by a dog in a wheel, the invariable mode in all Breconian kitchens " (p. 16) Is the custom of employing dogs for this purpose still in use anywhere ?

J. WlLLCOCK.

Lerwick.

" LORD GLENCAIRN." Students of criminology may remember the extra- ordinary career of the impostor calling himself " Lord Glencairn " in 1869-70. Chambers ( ' Stories of Remarkable Persons ' ) say; nothing is known of his origin ; but Mr. H. Gerald Chap in (in ' The Green Bag,' Boston vol. ii. ) says : " He is known to have been the son of middle-class parents living near the Borderland of Scotland." Has this been verified ? J. M. BULLOCH.

118, Pall Mall, S.W.

ST. BARTHOLOMEW, THE BENEDICTINES, AND OTFORD. In ' N. & Q.' for 1898 (9 S. ii. 262) a connexion between the cults of ^Esculapius and St. Bartholomew and the associations of the Benedictines with the latter is worked out by MR. ST. CLAIR BADDELEY. Briefly the story is that on Tiber Island there was a temple to ^Escu- lapius which became the resting-place of the remains of St. Bartholomew, which Otho III. (German Emperor) believed he had purchased at Beneventum and carried to Rome. Over these remains a church to St. Adalbert of Prague was built, the name being sub- sequently changed for St. Bartholomew. Near this church the Benedictines erected a hospital. According to MR. BADDELEY, the Benedictines monopolized the science of medicine in the later Middle Ages, and he adduced as proof the two hospitals named after St. Bartholomew and erected by them at Chatham and London ; but he was unable to establish the connexion of the Benedictines with medicine earlier than the eleventh century.

It would be interesting to know whether an earlier connexion has been found, and especially if in conjunction with the cult of St. Bartholomew. That the connexion of the saint and ^Esculapius or medicine is much older than the tenth century may be inferred from the fact that in the Middle Ages there was a figure in the church at Otford which was made to foretell the sex

of unborn children, the women having to spice their wishes with cocks or hens accord- ing to the desired sex of the child.

This practice is parallel to that of the Greeks and Romans, who offered a cock or goat to the blameless doctor (^Esculapius) when cured of their ailments, and justifies the inference that the old pagan practices were continued into Christian times in this cult as in many others. As to how this peculiar cult could reach Otford there are two assump- tions :

1. That it came in with St. Augustine from Rome.

2. That the Romans had a temple there to ^Esculapius, the cult of which was trans- mitted by the Britons to the Saxons. Pro- bably this is rather a " tall " assumption, and the former is more reasonable.

Further evidence of the connexion of doctor and saint is quoted from the ' Lives of the Saints ' by Mr. Baring-Gould, who says that it was formerly the custom in Brittany and Belgium for cataleptic patients to spend the night before St. Bartholomew's Day dancing in the parish church an in- fallible cure for fits.

Can readers throw any further light on this matter, and in particular can they refer to a description of the wonder-working figure at Otford or any similar figure ?

C. HESKETH. Otford.

REV. GEORGE MARKHAM. I wish to know who this Vicar of Carleton-in-Craven (circa 1790) was, the family he came from, and ihe date and place of his death. He also leld a living in Cheshire about the same

ne.

He was the author of ' Truth for Seekers * and 'More Truth for Seekers' (1796-7), Damphlets which I should be glad to have i sight of. He was the aggressor in the Lothersdale Quaker tithe case, which re- sulted in the imprisonment of eight of his parishioners in York Castle for two years and ive months, 1795-7. See ' The Prisoners' Defence Supported,' of which Lindley Murray was part author.

J. HAMBLEY ROWE, M.B.

88, Horton Grange Road, Bradford.

BEE-STING CURE FOR RHEUMATISM. At a meeting of the British Beekeepers* Association held at the Royal Horticultural

Sail, Westminster, on Tuesday, 17 August, Sir A. K. Rollit, who was in the chair, stated that there was one thing that he had

ong regarded as a country-side superstition, viz., that the " sting of a bee was a remedy