Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 2.djvu/609

 10* B.II. DEC. 24, 1904.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

501

LONDON, SATURDAY, DECEMBER.

CONTENTS.-No. 52.

NOTES : The Dog who made a Will. 501" An old woman went to market," 502 Bibliography of Christmas " Wassail " Christmas Customs, Games, &c., 503 Wooing Staff Waits Christmas Carols : Waits : Guisers, 504 Christmas under Charles I. Christmas Coincidences- Arthur Shorter Theophany High Mountain The Bnvied Favourite, 505 The Vinery at Hampton Court- Poem by Cowley Asses Hypnotized "Boiling " 'Bast Lynne' House Signs Goose v. Geese, 507.

QUERIES : Bringing in the Yule " Clog " Chinese Nominy, 507 Sir Henry Wotton Wedding-Ring Finger Amyot's Anonymity Queen Anne's Last Years Kd- ward the Confessor's Chair Maze at Seville Lethieul- lier's MSS. " Cat in the wheel," 508 Stealing no Crime Armorial Visiting Cards" Cursals," 509.

REPLIES : Oxenham Epitaphs, 509 Cosas de Espana, 510 St. George, 511 Ruskin at Neuchatel Birth at Sea in 1805 Oxford Almanac Designers Mayers' Song Parish Documents : their Preservation, 512 Mary Carter Vacci- nation a-id Inoculation Clock by W. Franklin Sir Walter 1'Espec Woolmen in the Fifteenth Century, 514 awood Family, 515-Chiltern Hundreds-Birth-Marks Berwick: Steps of Grace Cape Bar Men Children at Executions Verse Translations of Molie>e Ainsty, 516 "L.S." "Male" Battle of Spurs, 517 Publishers' Catalogues Statue discovered at Charing Cross " Ob- livious" Phoenicians at Falmouth Emernensi Agro Shelley Family Ashburner Family, 519.

NOTES ON BOOKS: 'The Prioress's Tale,' &c.' Early Lives of Dante 'Com pton Reade's 'Smith Family' The Oxford Tennyson The Bask Verb 'Who's Who' and ' Who 's Who Year-Book ' * Englishwoman's Year- Book ' ' Whitaker's Almanack ' and ' Whitaker's Peerage.'

Obituary : Mr. Norman Maccoll.

Notices to Correspondents.

THE DOG WHO MADE A WILL.

AMONGST the Mohammedans the dog is regarded as an unclean animal. It is said that if a wet dog shook himself within forty steps of a member of the Shaft sect who was at prayer, that Puritan of Islam would rise -and go through his ablutions and prayers from the beginning. Yet in the East, as in the West, the dog has grateful friends. The Rev. J. E. Hanauer, amongst the other popular stories which he has collected in Palestine, records one which he heard in childhood of a Moslem who owned a beautiful greyhound, to which he was greatly attached. It died, and he buried it with his own hands in his garden :

" Enemies of his thereupon went and accused him of having interred an unclean beast with the respect due to a true believer. He thereupon informed the judge that ' the dog had earned the right to decent burial by having left a will in which a large sum of money had been mentioned as a legacy to his worship.' " ' Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement,' July, 1904, p. 270.

The same anecdote is told by Poggio of a Tuscan clergyman and his bishop ('Face- tiae,' xxxvi.). This particular story of Poggio was included by William Caxton at

the end of his translation of ^Esop, printed in 1484. When the spelling is modernized it presents no difficulty, though it bears unmistakable evidence of being, what it professes to be, a translation* :

" Silver doth and causeth all things to be done unto the hallowing again of a place which is profane or interdict. As ye shall mo[re] hear by this present fable of a priest dwelling in the country which sometime had a dog which he loved much. The which priest was much rich. The said dog by pro- cess of time died, and when he was dead he entered and buried it in the churchyard for cause of the great love which he loved him. It happed then on a day his bishop knew it by the advertisement of some other. Wherefore he sent for the said priest, and supposed to have of him a great sum of gold or else he should make him to be straitly punished. And then he wrote a letter unto the said priest of which the tenour contained only that he should come and speak with him. And when the priest had read the letters he understood well all the case, and presupposed or he thought in his courage that he would have of him some silver. For he knew well enough the conditions of his bishop, and forth- with he took his breviary and an hundred crowns with him. The prelate began to remember and to show to him the enormity of his misdeed. And to him answered the priest (which was right wise), saying in this manner: '0 my right reverend father, if ye knew the sovereign prudence of which the said dog was filled ye should not be marvelled if he hath well deservedf for to be buried honestly and worshipfully among the men : he was all filled with human wit as well in his life as in the article of the death.' And then the bishop said: 'How may that be? Rehearse to me then all his life.' know that when he was at the point of death, he would make his testament, and the dog knowing your greet need and indigence, he bequeathed to you an hundred crowns of gold, the which 1 bring unto you.' And then the bishop for the love of money he assoiled the priest, and also granted the said sepulture. And therefore silver causeth all thing to be granted or done."
 * Certainly, right reverend father, ye ought well to

mones or vjrastio, racecie or JJommicni, tlie * Novelle ' of Malespini, the ' Arcadia ' of Vacalerio, the * Voyage de Syrie' of Jean La Roque, the ' Singe de Lafontaine ' of De Theis, the * Testament Cynique ' of Sedaine, the ' Fables ' of Barthe'lemy Im- bert, the ' Schimpf und Ernst ' of Pauli (72), in the ' Contes Tartares' of Gueulette, and in the ' Gil Bias ' of Le Sage (book v. ch. iii.). That it was used by the preachers we may infer from its presence in the collection of exempla of John Bromyard. These and other references are given in the last edition of

'The Fables of ^Esop, a? first printed by William Caxton in 1484.' Edited by Joseph Jacobs. London, 1889, 2 vols.

t Mr. Jacobs reads "desernyd," which appa- rently should be "deseruyd."