Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 4.djvu/371

. iv. OCT. 14, iocs.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 305 sacramentum (a military oath). To them the outside worm were simply "civilians," or pagani. It is suggested by historians that the use of " pagan " as opposed to " Chris- tian " may be found nearly two hundred years before " Christianity had been gene- rally accepted in the towns and cities of the Roman Empire." Dr. Bigg thinks that the first instance of this use is to be found in an inscription of the second century, given by Lanciani ('Pagan and Christian Rome,'p. 15). This inscription was written on the tomb of a daughter, of whom the father says, " quod inter fideles fidelis fuit, inter alienos pagana fuii.'1 But is fidelis here equivalent to " Christian " 1 This sense of the word fidelis does not appear to have come into general use before the time of St. Ambrose and St. Augustine. If Dr. Bigg is right, we have in this inscription a very early instance of the use not only of paganus, but of Jideiis, with a Christian connotation. A. L. MAYHEW. Oxford. ST. LUKE'S DAT, 18 OCTOBER.—In 1677 one John Smith, of Greatham, was charged in the Court of the Archdeacon of Durham with " plowing on St. Luke's day " (Surtees Soc., vol. xlvii. p. 228). W. C. B. " BELAPPIT."—In 'The Oxford Book of English Verse,' p. 69, Mr. Quiller-Couch gives Alexander Scott's "Hence, Hairt, with Hir that most Departe," assigning it the title 'A Bequest of his Heart.' The third stanza of the lyric, as modernized by the anthologist, opens thus:— Though this belappit body here Be bound to servitude and thrall, My faithful heart is free entier And mind to serve my lady at all. In a foot-note Mr. Quiller-Couch explains that "belappit" means "downtrodden." What should have induced him to think so is not very clear, especially with the context to suggest lapping or wrapping round and the thraldom of a bond slave. " Lap," no doubt, is also the past tense of " leap"; but in this sense it needs some such particle as "on " or "upon" to impart to it a transitive force. In its intransitive application it was never better illustrated than in the report given by a Scottish farmer of his experiences in taking the village schoolmaster home from the public-house. At one stage in the pro- ceedings the shoe of the tipsy dominie, having come off in the mud, had to be readjusted ; "and then," afterwards said his comrade, " he jamp an' he lap, an' he ture an' he swure," the whole animated display being strictly subjective, and only indirectly affecting others. Had the guide tumbled and been trampled on during such an effer- vescence of ecstatic rapture, it would have- been hopelessly inaccurate to say that he- was " belappit." On the other hand, Gavin Douglas's rendering of Virgil's genua. am- plexus, in the form " he lappit me fast by baith the theis" (.'^Eneid,' iii. 607), has direct kinship with Scott's terminology. THOMAS BAYNE. Glasgow. BLACK IMAGES OF THE MADONNA. (See 9ttt S. ii., iii., iv. passim.)—A letter in a London daily paper revives an old controversy. _It seems incredible that there should exist people who still think, as this writer appears to believe, that the " Black Madonnas " were invented by missionaries of the Western Church as a means of making converts- among Eastern peoples. The researches of Prof. Kondakoff on the miniatures of the Christian world produced before the eleventh century, and the numerous works on mosaic and on Byzantine painting, have evidently produced no effect on the general public. What are commonly called "Black Virgins" are not only known among the most cele- brated representations of " the Mother of God " in Spain, France, and Russia, but their history can be traced from the very earliest dates down to the eikons (almost exactly identical) which are still produced at Mount Athos for sale at Kiev and Moscow. The type is that of the Syrians, numerous in the Holy Land, to the present day. B. I. O. "THE FIRST WARLIKE KING."—No doubt there were many warlike kings before Agamemnon, but who was the first it would be hard to say, notwithstanding all our modern knowledge of ancient history. In 'Haydn's Dictionary of Dates,' however, we are told, under 'War' (twenty-third edition, p. 1368), that it was Osymandyas of Egypt. The only ancient historian who mentions this king is Diodorus Siculus, who places him eighth before the founder of Memphis, whom he calls Uchoveus. Twelve generations after the latter, he says, came Moeris, and seven generations after him a king called by him Sesoosis, evidently intended to be the same whom Herodotus calls Sesostris, and whose legend (it is really no more) became so famous, depicting him as the conqueror of a great part of Asia. As to Osymaudyas, Herodotus makes no mention of him, nor of any king except Mceris, between Menes and Sesostris. Diodorus gives a very elaborate account of a monument erected to Osy-