Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 2.djvu/601

 io< s. ii. DEC. 17, 1904.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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who had charge of the heart discovered in the night an enormous rat dragging it to a hole. In a few moments, had the physician not awakened, the heart of the great soldier would have been consumed by rats.

I do not think the swallowing of the heart of Louis XIV. was due to the decay of Dean Buckland's mind. The dean was always eccentric and absent-minded. He either put the heart into his mouth playfully with- out intending to swallow it, or he took it inadvertently. He was at the dinner-table with some friends when the heart was passed around for inspection. It is not unlikely that he thoughtlessly put it into his mouth with the food that he was at the time eating. The heart was dry and shrivelled, and could not have been much larger than a common plum. There are a number of instances recorded in which the human heart has been swallowed, by mistake or otherwise. The heart of Ralph, Lord de Coucy, was eaten by his dear lady. In the ' Decameron ' (Fourth Day, Novel ix.) is the tale of Gulielmo Rossi- glione, who gave his wife the heart of her lover, disguised as a boar's heart. Thus she became " the living tomb of the dear heart she loved so well."

FREDERIC ROWLAND MARVIN.

537, Western Av., Albany, N. Y.

THE PELICAN MYTH (10 th S. ii. 267, 310, 429). Readers who are interested in this subject may like to be reminded of Charles Waterton's opinion thereon. He was asked by an Englishman whether he believed that pelicans feed their young with blood from their own breasts. He writes :

" I answered that it was a nursery story. ' Then, ir,' said he, ' let me tell you that I do believe it.' A person of excellent character and who had travelled in Africa had assured him that it was a well-known fact. Nay, he himself with his own eyes had seen young pelicans feeding on their mother's blood. ' And how did she staunch the blood,' said I, ' when the young had finished sucking? -or by what means did the mother get a fresh supply for future meals?' The gentleman looked grave. no mystery at all), 'is simply this The old pelicans go to sea for fish, and having filled their large pouch with what they have caught, they return to the aiest. There standing bolt upright, the young ones press up to them and get their breakfast from the mother's mouth ; the blood of the captured fishes running down upon the parent's breast : this is all the keen observer saw. : 'Tis, indeed, a wonder, a strange wonder, how such a tale as this could ever be believed. Still we see representations of it in pictures drawn by men of science. But enough of infant pelicans sucking their mamma in the nursery. I consign them to the fostering care of my great- grandmother." ' Essays on Natural History,' Third Series, p. 26.
 * The whole mystery, sir,' said 1 (and which in fact is

ST. SWITHIN.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &o.

Memorials of a Warwickshire Parish. By Robert

Hudson. (Methuen & Co.)

THIS handsome and well-printed volume, of which only a limited number of copies are available, is of high interest, and deserves special notice, not only for its general merits, but also as being the kind of thing which might profitably be at- tempted by many who waste their time on imagi- native literature for which they are wholly unfit. For this book is an outline, founded on an excep- tional collection of registers and other documents from circa 1190 to our own times, of the history of the parish of Lapworth in the Forest of Arden, a spot which recalls Shakespeare much more delight- fully than the average commentator. Warwick- shire, perhaps from its central position in the very heart of England, far from the vivifying influence of the seaboard, has kept itself unusually uncon- taminated by modern manners and customs, and it is just these survivals of old culture on which the book throws so interesting a light, while it gives glimpses of the history common to all England. Old names have lived on in Lapworth for centuries, and Mr. Hudson has traced them ably in the often mutilated designations of fields and farms now used. An appendix, which seems to us an excel- lent idea, provides a survey over three hundred years of family names which have flourished in the parish, and another of pre-Reformation names. Such lists will appeal to all who were born and bred in some village, and have learnt to know its inhabitants as the man in the town never knows his neighbours and his tradesmen. It is ill-con- sidered, town-bred ignorance which protests that Shakespeare could gain no knowledge at Stratford. On the contrary, he gained, we doubt not, much which is now the world's eternal and inestimable treasure by human intercourse such as even a Charles Lamb could not secure in cities.

Mr. Hudson, who died in 1898, lived for nearly forty years in Lapworth, and his deep interest in its history has produced excellent results. He was far more accomplished than the average local historian, a capable Latin scholar, and an eager student of early institutions. His notes are always sound and modest, and the fact that the book is founded on lectures delivered to fellow-parishioners has given it a simplicity of style which is a charm to the educated reader. Apt mottoes from Shake- speare head the chapters, and we find various forms of his name as well as several Slys in the registers. There are also Catesbys and Lucys of historic note. The parish charities have led to the preservation of a good many documents which illumine the history, but we hope that the heartburnings of the Elizabethan age have not been repeated in modern times, though that is our experience of similar benefactions in Warwickshire villages. The church of Lapworth is fine, though rather incon- siderately restored by G. E. Street in 1860 and 1873; and it is clear that the holders of the living were men above the average, being mostly fellows of Merton College, Oxford. They had not all, unfortunately, Mr. Hudson's zeal for their parish history.

A facsimile is provided of a parchment over seven hundred years old, and Mr. Hudson is justly proud of the records which yielded up their secrets to his