Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 12.djvu/45

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

33

THE CRUCIFIED THIEVES (10 S. xi. 321, 394). The story mentioned by MB. EDWARD PEACOCK came to me in German in * Des Herren Jesu Christi Kinder-Buch,' the gift of the starter and first editor of ' N. & Q.' I did not refer to this in my reply (p. 394), because there was nothing said of the names borne by the robbers, nor were they identi- fied with the malefactors who suffered on Calvary. One of a band which the Holy Family encountered when flying into Egypt preserved Joseph from death, and took him, the Blessed Virgin and the Child, to his own house.

"Dieser alte Mordor hatte eine Frau welche er so sehr liebte, wie sein eigenes Leben. Da die Frau ihren Mann mit der Jungfraxt kommen sah, so fasste sie eine grosse Liebe zu derselberi und ihrem Kinde, begriisste sie sehr freundlich, fiihrte sie in ihr Haus, gab ihnen zu essen und zu trinken und was sie sonst nothig batten. Sie richtete ein Bad zu, das Kind zu waschen, bereitete ein schones reines Bett, und bat die Jungt'rau Maria, dass sie das Kind Jesum darin tegen sollte. Die Frau des Raubers hatte auch ein Kind, das sehr aussatzig^ iind am ganzeii Leibe schwarz war ; sie badete und wusch ihr Kind in dem Wasser, in welchem das Kind Jesus gewaschen worden war, und es wurde alsbald rein. Als diess ein anderer Rauber horte, der gleichfalls einen Ausschlag an seiriem Leibe hatte, wusch er sich gleichfalls mit diesem Wasser und ward rein. Da nahm der alte Rauber das Wasser und verwahrte sorgfaltig. Hatte Jemand einen Schaden an sich, er mochte so alt sein, als er wollte so bestrich er nur den Schaden mit dem Wasser und er wurde sogleich heil. Es kamen Viele, die ihn fur ihre Rettung reich beschenkten, wodurch er ein reicher Mann wurde und das Rauben nicht mehr nothig hatte."

What is substantially the same tale,

by M. F. M. Luzel in ' Legendes Chretiennes dela Basse-Bretagne ' (vol. i. p. 137). A note concerning it (vol. ii. pp. 375-6) gives the thieves other names than those which have been cited in ' N. & Q.' :
 * Jesus-Christ et le bon Larron,' is included

" Comme on le voit, on n'est pas d'accord sur les noms des deux larrons. Dans les Collectanea, vul- gairement attribues a Bede, on les appelle encore Matha et Joca ; et dans une histoire de Jesus-Christ qui a e'te' ecrite en persan par le jesuite Jerome Xavier, que les Elze>irs ont imprimee en 1639, ils sont designes sous les noms de Lustrin et Vissimus. Selon les legendaires credules du moyen-age ce fut celui des larrons sur lequel porta 1'ombre du corps du Sauveur qui se convertit."

ST. SWITHIN.

c STAR,' 1789 : MAYNE'S ' LOGAN BRAES (10 S. xi. 449). If John Mayne's song

tune * Logan Water') is the object of inquiry, it will be found in the preface to a little volume containing the author'?
 * Logan Braes ' (sometimes called from its

every fairly comprehensive Scottish antho
 * Siller Gun, a Poem.' It is also included ir

ogy. When first published in The Star the yric consisted of two stanzas only, to which he poet subsequently added a third, admir- ably suited in all respects to his original con- ception. Some one, however, desirous of wringing a pathetic and touching predicament to a happy culmination, produced in three additional and poetically creditable stanzas a omforting and popular narrative, and gave the whole to the readers of ' Duncan's Pocket Encyclopaedia of Scottish, English, and Irish Songs,' published at Glasgow in 1816. This composite version appears in Chambers's ' Scottish Songs,' i. 31. It is worthy of note that Burns, recalling the refrain of Logan's song as published in The Star

While my dear lad maun face his faes, Far, far frae me and Logan braes

momentarily thought it one of the old frag- ments of Scottish verse, and straightway produced his own ' Logan Braes.' This, while fine in many ways and not unworthy of its high origin, fails to reach the pastoral sweetness, the emotional fervour, and the simple pathos of Mayne's delineation. On the whole matter see Johnson's ' Musical Museum,' iv., ed. Laing, 1853. In its original version, consisting of two stanzas, the song is given, with the melody to which it is set, in Chambers's ' Scottish Songs prior to Burns ' ; and as finally completed by the author it appears in Graham's ' Songs of Scotland,' Rogers's ' Modern Scottish Min- strel,' and Mary Carlyle Aitken's ' Scottish Song.' For an account of Mayne himself see memoir in ' DJST.B.' THOMAS BAYNE.

THACKERAY : ROUNDABOUT PAPERS (10 S. xi. 141, 210). If COL. PRIDEAUX is in want of a real joke by the late Thomas Hood instead of the supposititious one imagined by Thackeray in his Roundabout Papers, I can supply him with one, which, as far as I know, has not appeared in print.

My friend the late William Fisher, a portrait painter of some celebrity and a member of the Arts Club, Hanover Square, was friendly with Hood, and related that when one calling on Hood he found him in bed, and Mrs. Hood, whom he described as " a horse-godmother sort of woman "(what- ever that description may mean), about to apply a mustard plaster on Hood's chest. Turning to his visitor, Hood said, referring to his spare frame wasted by frequent attacks of illness, " So much mustard and so little meat."

Hood died 3 May, 1845. JOHN HEBB.

Primross Club, S.W.