Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 4.djvu/477

 s. iv. NOV. ii, loos.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 395 the city, at a distance of 2,347 feet from tli western angle of the walls, which it is highly probable dates from the same period,althougl no excavations have hitherto been made t< determine its age. This is a roughly square sided intrenchment on the summit of Holgat Hill, the length of the sides being abou 45 yards. Standing little less than 1(X feet above the Ordnance Survey datum, i commands the Tadcaster, Wetherby, am Boroughbridge Roads, while its elevation gave it an important position for the bom bardment of the walls. GEORGE A. AUDEN. York. FEMALE CRUCIFIXES (10th S. iv. 230).—Undo, the names of Uncumber, Debarras, Gehull Entropia, Wilgefortis, Liberata, &c., the sain referred to by MR. E. S. DODGSON as Librada has had many devotees, and she has before now occupied the attention of the readers and writers of ' N. & Q.'; vide 1st S. ii. 381 iii. 404; 2nd S. ix. 164, 174 ; 4th S. vi. 559 8th S. x. 24, 78, 122, 166, 246. She is com memorated on 20 July, and may be read of in Baring-Gould's ' Lives of the Saints' in pages devoted to the hagiology of that day. The legend concerning her is briefly this. She •was the daughter of a king of Portugal, who wished her to marry a king of Sicily. Being vowed to virginity, she prayed for, and ob- tained, a beard, moustache, and whiskers, and so became abhorrent to the suitor. Her baffled parent caused her to be crucified. The image of Sainte Wilgeforte at St. Etienne's, Beauvais, moved M. J. K. Huysmans to pen the article headed 'Sainte Debarras' in ' De Tout,' pp. 273-80. In an appendix (pp. 309-11) he confesses that when he wrote the story of this saint he thought her cult was confined to Beauvais, but finds the case is otherwise, and states that at Wattetot-sur-Mer, in Normandy, there are two statues of her (one quite modern), which are visited by crowds of pilgrims on 20 July. She is also honoured at Wittefleur and at Fauville, both in Normandy, and at Wissant, in the Pas-de-Calais. M. Huysmans asserts that relics of Sainte Debarras are preserved at Mazeres, in the Hautes - Pyrenees. Mr. Baring-Gould's teaching is that the body is "at Siguenza, in Spain, but other relics, in- dulgenced by Pope Urban VIII., existed in Brussels before 1695." ST. SWITHIN. Many instances are recorded of female saints suffering martyrdom by crucifixion. That of S. Librada at Bayona, mentioned by MK. DODGSON, is not an exceptional case. I remember only a single instance, however, in this country, of a medieval painted repre- sentation of one, and that may be seen in the ancient church of St. Mary at Worstead, situated some three miles from North Wai- sham (Norfolk). There we find St. Wilge- fortis, clothed, and wearing a crown, suspended to a cross by ropes. In some old illustrations abroad of this virgin martyr she is shown bearded, the unnatural growth having, tradition says, been obtained by prayer as a protection of her chastity. Husenbeth, in 'Emblems of Saints'(third edition, 1882), mentions St. Julia (23 May, 443) and St. Eulalia (10 December, 290), both of whom suffered death by crucifixion. In a very rare book entitled 'Trivmphvs lesv Christi Crvcifixi,' printed at the Plantin Press at Antwerp, 1608, no fewer than ten full-page illustrations occur of female martyrs suffering death by crucifixion. MR. DODGSON mentions St. Librada's Day is kept at Bayona upon 20 July. This will, therefore, be a local festival, as in the Spanish calendar that date is given as the feast of St. Elias the Prophet. HARRY HEMS. Fair Park, Exeter. SPLITTING FIELDS OF ICE (10th S. iv. 325).— MR. THOMAS BAYNE will find that not all the poets have thought of frost as performing a " silent ministry." (And, if he quotes Cole- ridge's ' Frost at Midnight,' should not the word be secret ministry ?) Doubtless Words- worth, in the passage quoted from 'The Prelude,' referred to a thaw inducing the air to utter a "protracted yelling," but Thomson evidently had heard, or heard of, air growling under ice during a frost, and of its escaping roar at thaw - time too. As witness ' The Seasons : Winter ':— The loosen'd ice, Let down the flood, and half dissolved by day, Rustles no more; but to the sedgy bank Fast grows, or gathers round the pointed stone, A crystal pavement, by the breath of heaven Cemented firm ; till, seized from shore to shore. The whole imprison'd river growls below. And later on, of the thawing floes of ocean :— Those sullen seas That wash'd th' ungenial pole will rest no more Beneath the shackles of the mighty north ; But, rousing all their waves, resistless heave. And hark ! the lengthening roar continuous runs Athwart the rifted deep : at once it bursts, And piles a thousand mountains to the clouds. Haply, by the way, I may be allowed a vord of regret that Thomson is now so sadly Mid unreasonably neglected. No publisher 'homson's poems ; and yet (as the great )octor said) " he thinks always as a man f genius ; he looks round on nature and on
 * hinks of issuing a leather-bound reprint of