Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 5.djvu/454

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io> s. v. MAY 12, im.

Usually, I think, the sheep and lamb are connected with good fortune in folk-lore. What do other correspondents of *N. & Q.' say ? G. W.

Ulysses and Diomed go out to the Trojan camp in the night-time. And the black ewe may be promised by Nestor in honour of the goddess Night. In the sixth book of the '^Eneid,' ^Eneas sacrifices to Night and to her sister a black lamb :

Ipse atri velleris agnam ^Eneas matri Eumenidum magnseque sorori Ense ferit.

Heyne in a note says that the mother of the Eumenides is Night. E. YARDLEY.

"GORDON'S FORMULA" (10 th S. v. 238). In Trautwine's pocket - book .the well - known column-formula is ascribed to Prof. Lewis Gordon, of Glasgow. In the British Museum Catalogue his full name is given as Lewis Dunbar Brodie Gordon, although on the title- page of his * Lectures ' held before Glasgow University (1849), his name is plain Lewis Gordon. L. L. K.

VOWELS ON MONUMENT (10 th S. v. 169). Wilkins, 'On Real Character,' pt. iii. c. xi. says :

"These letters are called Vociles, in pronouncing of which by the instruments of speech, the breath is freely emitted."

^The breath of life freely emitted and yielded up at death is prayer. "Prayer is the Christian's vital breath." AEIOU are an invocation.

The following citation from Elworthy's 4 The Evil Eye,' London, 1895, p. 441, throws light on the question :

" It was an ancient belief that each of the vowels of the alphabet represented the sound uttered in its revolution by one particular planet ; these all combined form one eternal harmony to the glory of the Great Creator of the Universe. This is the meaning of the lines in Addison's well - known hymn :

For ever singing as they shine The hand that made us is divine. Another interpretation of the seven vowels is that the mystic Jehovah, the great 1 AM."
 * they represent the ineffable Name of the Creator,

T. B. WlLMSHURST. Tunbridge Wells.

The Latin expansion of the five vowels as "Austrise est imperare orbi universo" has been cleverly turned into a German phrase of the same meaning : " Alles Erdreich 1st Oesterreich Unterthan."

FORREST MORGAN. Hartford, Conn.

THE GUNNINGS OF CASTLE COOTE (10 th S. v. 323). I should be glad if any reader could tell me the relationship, if any, between the beautiful Miss Gunnings and the two daughters of Sir Robert Gunning, of Horton, Northamptonshire, one of whom married Mr. Stephen Digby, Fanny Barney's "Mr. Fairly," and the other Lieut.- General Alexander Ross, the friend of Marquis Cornwallis.

H. C. F.

R. Y. : " IRISH STOCKE " (10 th S. v. 249, 297). This " Company's business in Ireland" was scarcely a voluntary speculation, they being "undertakers" in the colonization of Ulster at the command of King James I., the City companies taking Coleraine and Derry, which was thus renamed London- derry. The capital was found by subscrip- tion, and several guilds still hold their shares, administered by the so called "Irish Society." Their first official in charge was a Mr. Beresford, progenitor of, the present Marquis of Waterford. A. H.

RAMSGATE CHRISTMAS PROCESSION (10 th S. v.208). This custom is undoubtedly identical with the universal "mummings" and "guis- ings " which survive to this day with all the old enthusiasm, especially at Lerwick in Shetland. (See The Shetland Times, 4 Feb- ruary, 1905, a copy of which was very kindly sent to me by the Rev. J. W. Willcock, of St. Ringan's Manse, Lerwick, a reader of 4 N. &Q.')

The Ramsgate Hodening or " Champion- ing" so called because one of the chief characters, the Dragon, wore a "hoden," " hooden," or wooden head, and because the principal character was the Champion St. George is described, in a manner similar to the account in The European Magazine, in Brand's 'Antiquities,' ed. Ellis (Bohn, 1853, vol. i. p. 474, 'Going a-Hodening'). As to its continuance at the present day, Halli- well ('Diet, of Archaisms') describes it as a custom "formerly prevalent in Kent on Christmas Eve, when a horse's head was carried in procession. This is now dis- continued, but the singing of carols at that season is still called hodening." However, Mr. H. F. Abell, in a very interesting article in The Home Counties Magazine for April, 1901, entitled 'Some Surviving Kentish Beliefs,' says that the Kentish" raaskings known as hodenings are "almost, if not quite extinct, but were within living memory a universal item in the festivities of the season." One of the chief characters among the Kentish "Hoodeners" wore a "hooden" head, "filled with hobnails for teeth, which