Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 4.djvu/237

. iv. SEPT. 2. loos.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 195 Priory and its skulls—for two are preserved there; but although much is said of the troubles which have followed repeated at- tempts by various tenants to get rid of the death's-heads—hideous noises, the sickness and death of cattle, &c.—the date of the skulls' occupation is not given. Parts of the priory were built in the reign of Henry IV. Speaking of one of the relics, a volume of the Sussex Archreological Society says :— "The tradition of the neighbourhood is that the •!• "II belonged to a man who murdered an owner of the house, and marks of blood are pointed out on the floor of the adjoining room, where the murder is supposed to have been committed." As usual, no washing or scraping will remove the stains. CHAS. GILLMAN. Church Fields, Salisbury. I know nothing of " the Screaming Skull " at Warbleton Priory ; but it has been my fortune to come across several English skull- legends. In J. Nicholson's 'Folk-lore of East Yorkshire,'1890, there is a story relating to Burton Agnes Hall, which concludes with the words :— " The skull, whose displacement causes so much trouble, is believed to belong to one of the reputed builders of the mansion. All is quiet and peaceable so long as the skull is left alone on its table. There is a similar tradition respecting the Manor House »t Lund, where the skull has been walled up in the attic to prevent its removal." Another form of the story is connected with a house in the neighbourhood of Wigan, Lancashire ; but at the present moment I forget the name of the parish in which the haunted building stands. M. P. ' CORYATE'S CRUDITIES ' (10th S. iii. 426,494). —This is not a particularly scarce book, and copies can occasionally be obtained from the leading booksellers at prices varying from forty to sixty guineas. The sum of 1501., which LORD ALDENHAM says was asked for a copy in 1902, would of course be a very out- side price. This identical copy was sold at Sotheby's on 2-2 March last (lot 521), and realized 551. It was a large and perfect copy, and was described by the auctioneer in the following terms:— " A very important copy, being that which was doubtless given by Coryat to his friend the poet, John Davies of Hereford. Davies was the author of the five pages of the Commendatory Verses and the poetical description of the frontispiece to the 4 Crudities." This is a most precious copy, for a MS. Continental Itinerary on the fly-leaves, numerous satirical anil emendatory remarks in the margins, an original Quatrain signed 'Jo. Davis,' and the signature ' Jo. Da." on E 8, are all in Davies's auto- graph. In addition to these five pages of manu- «cnpt, Davies has added several MS. notes in the margins throughout the text." This description may be of service to those who, like myself, take an interest in tracing the pedigree of books which have a history. Of the three copies in the British Museum, it may be mentioned that that in the Gren- ville Collection is the only perfect one. Of the remaining two, one lacks sig. C 7 and Bbb 4 to the end, and in the other pp. 491-8 and the portrait of Coryat at p 262 are missing. Another copy, in inferior condi- tion, and with less interesting antecedents, was sold at Sotheby's on 25 May (lot 186) for 45Z. W. F. PRIDEAUX. EASTER DAY AND THE FULL MOON (10th S. iii. 281; iv. 136).—MR. WILSON DOBBS is quite right. But what I wished to point out was that, when the whole world is taken into account, no single expression will suffice. The full moon and the fourteenth day of the moon will both differ in different parts of the world, so that the only way to be uniform is to adopt some cycle and strictly follow it, explaining to those who wish to know that the full moon (which for this purpose will do as well as the longer expression) means not the actual full moon, but the calendar full moon by the cycle. All these perplexities would be avoided by taking the second Sunday in April as the day of Easter, and we may hope that at some future time this rule will be adopted in both the Eastern and the Western Churches. I pointed out, at the former of the above references, that the cycle-rule does not secure—what the early Church was so anxious to secure — that Easter shall not be kept on the same day as the Jewish Passover. It was so kept in 1903. Had the rule about the full moon (or the fourteenth day of the moon) been applied to the actual time, instead of an artificial full moon calculated by a cycle, this would have been secured by the sup- plementary provision (unnecessary in the present form of the rule, but retained for emphasis) that " if the full moon falls on a Sunday, Easter Day is the Sunday after." W. T. LYNN. Blackheath. It may, perhaps, be of interest to call attention to the fact that the commonly received opinion as to the Council of Nictea having desired to prevent the occurrence of Easter and the Passover on the same day has recently been challenged. In a paper con- tributed by Prof. Mahler to the Proceed- ings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology (vol. xxvi. pp. 153-62, 197-206), entitled 'The Subject of Easter at the Councils of Nice and of Antioch,' it is contended that