Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 2.djvu/281

 ii. SEPT. 17, 1904.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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The alteration of the calendar in each case will explain the alteration of date, and the intense conservativeness of a very Radical constituency explains the retention of the name " April Fair." Will it also explain the name Mazzard Fair 1 ? I mean, is it possible that Mazzard should be a corruption of Magdalen ? There is so much foolish guess- ing at the meanings of place-names and local words that I hesitate the hazard. At this fair there are sold mazzards, or black cherries ; but they are not at their best then.

. YGREC.

MUMMIES FOR COLOURS. (10 th S. ii. 188.)

THE bituminous pigment called mummy is, or ought to be, neither more nor less than so much as is required of a human corpse that has been embalmed in pitch or bitumen, and its bandages of linen, ground in a mill such as artists' colourmen employ, and treated with fluid oil or varnish to obtain the stiffness or density painters require when they put it to use. A charming pigment is obtained by this means, uniting a peculiar greyness (due to the corpse and its bandages) with the rich brown of the pitch or bitumen, in a manner which it is very hard indeed to imitate. It flows from the brush with delightful free- dom and evenness: being a comparatively rapid dryer, it is relatively easy to place one film of it over another, and thus vary, or increase, the richness and density of the material ; thin films spread upon a white ground are extremely lovely and enjoyable by painters who understand and appreciate the refinements of their art. At one time, in this country and in France, where such matters were understood, mummy was much used. At present, except by artists who care not for the permanence of their pictures, and are reckless of the interests of those who buy them, it is very seldom employed. As with all pigments compounded of bitumen or any of its allies, mummy is fallacious in the worst degree ; even when " locked up " in copal its durability is among the shortest. In no long time it becomes, by parting with its volatile elements, dry and rusty, its clearness is lost, and, at no distant date after being used, it shrivels and even parts from the ground on which it was spread.

Mummy was a great favourite with, for examples, Hilton and Wilkie. To it was due the premature ruin of the fine * Sir Calapine rescuing Serena' by the former, in which

parts of the work, such as the eye of the heroine, actually slid down over her cheek, and the picture was inverted in order that the eye might slide back again. At last this capital instance had to be withdrawn from the National Gallery, of which it was originally an important ornament. Wilkie's of his making, another National Gallery work, suffered hugely in the extensive crack- ing of its surface ; so great was this that the background showed the white of the priming in hundreds of lines, which more than once had to be stopped or painted over. The Spanish pictures of Wilkie are worse off than others.
 * The Blind Fiddler,' to cite only one example

It is the fallacious nature of the pigment, not the rarity of mummied Egyptians in their cerements suitable for grinding, which has led to the supply of this interesting material being deficient. A little of it goes a long way, and though it is more than twenty years since, at a well-known colour- man's in Long Acre, I saw a whole corpse preparing for the mill and collapsible tubes, I am now told that there is a good deal of it " still in stock."

Of course mummy is merely a refinement on simple bitumen, which is only more falla- cious. There is, I am told, a sort of sham mummy "made in Germany," and a coarse compound of common bitumen and lime. This, like the sham indigo which is likewise " made in Germany," is not to be compared with the real thing. F. G. STEPHENS.

Properly speaking, mummy is not the flesh of the deceased, but the composition with which it is embalmed. Mummies being scarce, the solicitude of the advertiser in the Daily Mail to obtain the " genuine article " is readily accounted for, since it is from the genuine mummy only that the bituminous substance employed by painters, which produces a rich brown tint, is said to bo obtained. Fairholt says that the genuine mummy consists of the substance found in tombs of Egypt, which is a compound of bitumen and organic matter both animal and vegetable. Some manufacturers grind the whole of this substance up together, by which a dirty-coloured pigment is obtained. Others carefully select only the bitumen ; it yields a very useful pigment, but differing in little or no respect from the bitumen now obtained from the East, except, perhaps, in the accidental mixture of myrrh and other gum resins. The better kinds of mummy form useful grey tints mixed with ultra- marine, and madder lake and ivory black when these are mixed with white. See