Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 3.djvu/345

 io* s. m. APRIL is, 1905.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

281

LONDON, SATURDAY, APRIL 15. 1905.

CONTENTS.-No. 68.

NOTES : Easter Day and the Full Moon, 281 George Dyer 282 Patrick Gordon, the Geographer, 283 Boswell's 'Johnson,' 28i Charles V. in England Bigg, the Diuton Hermit, 285 Topographical Collections for Counties All Fools' Day Sir Robert Shirley, 286 Pseudonyms, 287.

QUERIES: Local Government Records Portraits which have led to Marriages " Born on Holy Thursday, and idle "Newspaper "Editions" MM. Smith as Sylvia in 'Cymon' Helvellyo, 287 "Warm summer sun" Juvenal translated by Wordsworth Weathercock Shacklewell Dryden's Sisters Mrs. Humby, Actress "Ledig": "Leisure" Money in Shakespeare's Time, 288 Twitchel Armorial Scriptures in Gaelic Theatre Parkgate Queutery or Quaintry, 289.

REPLIES :' The Lass of Richmond Hill,' 289 "The gentle Shakespeare," 290 Names of Letters Biblio- graphical Queries, 292 "Beating the Bounds "Ancho- rites' Dens Willesden Families Tom Taylor on Whewell 'Rebecca,' a Novel, 293 Parliamentary Quotation "Lamb" in Place-names Verses : Author Wanted Bssay Nelson in Fiction " Sax "Halls of the City Companies, 291 St. Sepulchre St. Thomas Wohope Split Infinitive, 295 Masons' Marks, 296 Authors and their First Books -The Egyptian Hall, 297.

NOTES ON BOOKS: 'New English Dictionary ' Pepys's ' Diary ' ' The Decameron ' ' The Heptameron 'Wall's Shrines of British Saints ' ' The Burlington Magazine.'

Booksellers' Catalogues.

Notices to Correspondents.

Stoles.

EASTER DAY AND THE FULL MOON.

THIS year the difficulty again occurs about reconciling the rule for keeping Easter with the date on which it is actually kept, and some uninstructed persons have fancied that there is a discrepancy. "Easter Day," says the Prayer-Book,

<l is always the First Sunday after the Full Moon which happens upon, or next after the Twenty-first Day of March ; and if the Full Moon happens upon a Sunday, Easter Day is the Sunday after."

(I pointed out in 6 th S. v. 265 the redundancy of the latter clause, which is implied in the rule ; but this by the way.) Now this year a full moon took place at four minutes before five o'clock in the morning on 21 March by Greenwich time. Why, then, it is thought, should not the following Sunday, 26 March, be Easter Day 1 ? Simply because the full moon in the precept for the observance of Easter does not mean the actual full moon (the local time of which differs according to the longitude of the place), but the day of full moon according to a cycle, which may be the day before or after that of actual full moon at any particular place. This cycle is formed from the Metonic Cycle, which has at distant intervals to be readjusted, as I

explained in 10 th S. i. 324. The readjustment was first made by the introduction of the Gregorian Calendar in 1582, not adopted in England until 1752. Before then Easter was regulated exclusively by the Metonic Cycle, according to the Golden Number, which, it was supposed, would bring the full moon to the same date at the end of each period of nineteen years, and then the following Sunday (easily found by the Sunday Letter in each year, A being the letter of the first day of the year, and that of the first Sunday, the Sunday or Dominical Letter) was the day of Easter. Thus, this year, of which the Golden Number is 6, by the old or Julian reckoning (still observed in the Eastern Church) the Sunday Letter is B, and by the table in old Prayer- Books headed "To find Easter for ever," 17 April is taken out at sight as the day of Easter. This is, of course, by the Old Style, which now differs thirteen days from ours, so that Easter Day in the Oriental Church is this year kept on our 30 April. But by the new Gregorian reckoning in the Western Church provision was made for adjusting the full moon to the Golden Number (the letter remaining as before), so that from the Paschal full moon (i.e., that upon or next after the 21st of March) and the Sunday Letter the day of Easter can be taken out from the revised table. This adjustment has to be repeated every third century, and was done the last time in 1900, a different table being given in the Prayer Book before and after that year. Thus, for the present year, with Golden Number 6 and Sunday Letter A (1 Jan. being a Sunday), we find the Paschal full moon by the table on 18 April, and Easter Day 23 April. The moon will really be full by Greenwich time on 19 April, about half- past 1 o'clock in the afternoon ; but there would be great inconvenience if we attempted to regulate Easter by the real full moon, as, being at a different local time in different parts of the world, it would in many cases make Easter on different days, even in the same country, if the meridian at which the moon was full at midnight passed through it. By adopting an artificial calendar full moon, the aate of which is independent of hours, this inconvenience is avoided. But it must be confessed that it sometimes causes Easter Day to fall, as it did last year, on the same day as the Jewish Passover, which the Council of Nicaea was so anxious to avoid that they decreed that if the Paschal Sunday fell on the full moon, Easter was not to be kept till the Sunday after. Those early Christians who had kept it always on the Jewish Passover (the fourteenth day of the