Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 5.djvu/162

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io< h s. v. FEB. 17, im

mention of it in any of the recent handbooks to Rome, and not one visitor out of a hundred appears to notice it. The other day, on one of the guardians of the church being questioned about it, he stated that "a wealthy Englishman caused it to be done." FREDERICK T. HIBGAME

CROSS LEGGED KNIGHTS. In Cologne Cathedral some of the knights carved in stone are represented as cross-legged, and others are not. Is there any period in church history marking the distinction ?

JAS. CURTIS, F.S.A.

[Some notes on cross-legged effigies will be found at 8 th S. v. 166, 252, but they do not touch the point now raised.]

BALLIOL. I should be much obliged for information as to the descent from the Balliol family of any of the following per- sons : Any one of the royal Bruces or of James I. of Scotland ; William Keith, fourth Earl Marischal ; John Douglas, second Earl of Morton ; John Stewart, fourth Earl of Athole ; Archibald Campbell, second Earl of Argyll; Sir Duncan Campbell of Gleriurquhy, who married Jean Stewart in 1574 ; George Douglas, fourth Earl of Angus ; and Patrick Haliburton, fifth Lord Dirleton.

A. C ALDER.

MESSENGER FAMILY. I should be obliged for any information about the Messenger family, formerly of Fountains Hall, Yorks, and later of Cayton Grange, near Ripon The last representative died about 1806, anc it is the latter part of the pedigree that I particularly want say from 1600 down wards. RICHARD TRAPPER LOMAX.

The Manor House, Chatburn, Clitheroe.

PKACOCK AS A CHRISTMAS SYMBOL. (10 th S. v. 69.)

L. P. G. ASKS, How is the peacock symboli of Christmas ? and what is the origin of th Christmas peacock pie 1 I doubt if the pea cock was ever regarded as symbolic of th Nativity. In Rome the peacock came int fashion in the time of Cicero, about 75 B.C and was valued not merely for the beauty its plumage, but as an expensive luxury t minister to the pomp and pleasure of th emperor, and to gratify the pride of th opulent by seeing on their table a costly dis beyond the means of most men to procure The banquet given by Lucius, the brother o Vitellius, with its 2,000 various dishes of fis

nd 5,000 fowls, is on record. The extravagance f Vitellius is notorious. Gibbon, in a foot- ote to * The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,' vol. i. chap. iii. p. 217, says, "He onsumed in mere eating six millions of our noney in about seven months." As a pair of )eacocks fifty year^ later were valued at Uhens at 1,000 drachmae, or 32. of our noney, the price of peacocks at Rome would e considerably higher.

Horace, 'Satires,' Book II. Sat. ii. 11.23-6,

emarks, "If a peacock were served up, I

ould not prevent your eating it, rather than

a, hen, because this rare bird is bought with

gold."

Juvenal, Satire i. 11. 140-43, censures those ourse. How gross, he writes, is that luxury A'hich sets before itself whole boars, and, .uffering from the undigested peacock, visits lie bath !
 * vho devour whole patrimonies at a single

In England the peacock was very common n the middle of the sixteenth century, tenner recommends it "as best to be eaten in winter " ('Via Recta ad Viam Longam,' 1628) ; and Dr. Muffet, in ' Health's Improvement,' 1655, speaks favourably of peacocks as food, and says they "should be well souced in pure wine, for without it they are unwholesome." Massinger, in 'The City Madam,' 1632, Act II. sc. i., writes: "Men may talk of country Christmasses or Court gluttony, their pheasants drench'd with ambergris, the carcasses of three fat wethers bruised for gravy to make sauce for a single peacock."

The only mention of Christinas peacock pie that I have found is in Washington Irving's ' Sketch-Book,' published in 1820, where he describes "the Christmas dinner " at Bracebridge Hall, and the butler bringing in the boar's head with a lemon in his mouth, the ancient sirloin, the standard of old Eng- lish hospitality, and

"a pie magnificently decorated with peacock's feathers. This the squire confessed was a pheasant pie, though a peacock pie was certainly the most authentical ; but there had been such a mortality among the peacocks this season that he could not prevail upon himself to have one killed."

A foot-note adds :

" The peacock was anciently in great demand for stately entertainments, sometimes made into a pie, at one end of which the head appeared above the crust in all its plumage ; at the other end the tail was displayed. Such pies were served up at the solemn banquets of chivalry when knights errant pledged themselves to undertake any perilous enterprise."

In Monstrelet's ' Chronicles,' translated by Johnes, vol. ii. chap. Ixxxii., a ceremony of this kind is described, when in 1457 an