Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 5.djvu/591

 io s. v. JUNE 23, 1906.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

487

victorious head Tamburlaine. Hold thee,

Cosroe; wear two imperial crowns; Think thee invested now as royally, Even by the

mighty hand of Tamburlaine Cosroe. So

do I, thrice renowmed man-at-arms ; And none shall keep the crown but Tamburlaine. Thee do I make my regent of Persia, And general- lieutenant of my armies" (II. iii. 51-4, and II. v. 1-9). H. C. HART.

(To be concluded.)

LAFONTAINE'S MILKMAID. A story popu- larly current in the present day in Syria is thus given by Mr. Henry Minor Huxley.

There was a recluse at the house of a rich man, who every day gave him a little clarified butter and a little honey. One day the recluse was sitting on his mat, collecting the butter and the honey in a jar. He said, "I shall sell a jar of this butter and honey and buy a she-lamb, and this she lamb will bear another, and this one another, until they multiply. Then I shall sell them and be rich. I shall marry the daughter of such- and-such a merchant, and I shall have such a wedding as there never was before ; and I shall invite the merchants and the nobles, and I shall have wedding feasts. And after- wards I shall have a son ; and when he grows up, I shall teach him philosophy and engi- neering, and if he is disobedient to me I shall take this stick and beat him with it." He raised his stick to beat his son with it. The stick struck the jar of honey and broke it, and the butter and honey fell on his beard (Journal of the American Oriental Society, 1902, xxiii. 263).

This, it will be seen, is one more variant of that much-travelled tale to which Lafon- taine has given its most famous form in European literature. Max Miiller took it as an object lesson for his study of the migration of fables, as the readers of his * Chips from a German Workshop ' will well remember. Some other variants are given in my paper on * Gil Vicente and Lafontaine' in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Litera- ture, Second Series, xxiii. 215.

WILLIAM E. A. AXON.

Manchester.

BOOK SIGNATURES. In 4 The Knights of England,' by Dr. Wm. A. Shaw, just pub- lished, there is a very curious thing from a bibliographical point of view. In the first volume the thirty sheets are numbered in the modern style, but in the second volume they are lettered, but not as usual, all the letters of the alphabet from A to z being made use of. I have never seen this before

in any book, as the letters J, v, and w are, for some reason, always omitted.

FREDERIC BOASE. 21, Boscobel Road, St. Leonards-ou-Sea.

EARL OF HUNTINGDON. (See 10 th S. iii. 472; iv. 51, 114.) I have just discovered in the ' New Annual Register ' for 1790, under 4 Deaths,' the following :

" April 5. George Hastings, Esq., son of Mr- Hastings, of Folkestone, the supposed claimant of the earldom of Huntingdon."

R. J. FYNMORE.

FUNERAL INVITATIONS IN SCOTLAND. The following seventeenth-century document is taken from 'Prying among Private Papers,' by the author of 'A Life of Sir Kenelm Digby ' :-

'"John sixth Earl of Cassillis to Alexander sixth Earl of Eglinton : My noble lord, It hath pleased the Almightie to call my deir bedfellow from this valley of teares to hir home (as hirselff in hir last wordis called it) : There remaines now the last duetie to be done to that pairt of hir left with ws, quhilk I intend to performe vpoun the fyft of Januar next. This I intreat may be hounered with your lordships presence heir at Cassillis that day, at ten in the morning, and frome this to our burriall place at Mayboill, quhich shalbe takin, as a mark of your lordship's affec- tioun to your lordship's humble servant, Cassillis. Cassillis the 15 December 1642.' MSS. of the Earl of Eglinton, 52."

With the above may be compared an invi- tation, so recently as 1897, to attend the funeral of a wealthy laird :

" Mrs. Z. requests the favour of your presence at the Funeral of her Husband, Y. Z. of X. on Friday First, the 9th July, from this House, to the Churchyard of W. at Two o'clock afternoon. X. 7th July, 1897. Service will be held in the House at a quarter before Two o'clock, to which you are invited."

MISTLETOE.

REYNOLDS'S PORTRAIT OF GIBBON. The World, in one of its society paragraphs, mentioned, in connexion with Lord Sheffield's return to Sheffield Park, that 4< the house contains the celebrated Reynolds portrait of Gibbon." I saw this portrait recently at the Exhibition of Historical Portraits at Oxford. According to the catalogue, the portrait now belongs to Lord Rosebery, by whom it was lent to the exhibition. The accuracy, or otherwise, of such paragraphs in The World is not, perhaps, of much consequence ; but in this instance it gives an opportunity of recording in ' N. & Q.' the change of owner- ship of so important a portrait. B. M.