Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 5.djvu/603

 .V.JUNE 23, 1906.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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north side of St. Michael's Chapel, in the churchyard, is used from which to preach to the immense number of pilgrims congregated to do honour to a St. Valentine, known as the "Boy Martyr." The beautiful church, with its noble peal of five bells, is dedicated to him and St. Dionysius.

JOHN A. RANDOLPH.

" GULA AUGUSTI " (10 th S. v. 408). Under 1 Gule of August,' in Hazlitt's * Dictionary of Faiths and Folk-lore,' is the following quota- tion, which may interest readers who have not access to the book :

" Pettigal derives Gule from the Celtic or British Wyl or Gwyl, a festival or holiday, and explains Gule of August to mean the holiday of St. Peter ad Vincula in August, when the people of England under popery paid their Peterpence. This is con- firmed by Blount, who tells us that Lammas day, called the Gule or Yule of August, may be a corruption of the British ^word Gwyl Awst, feast of August. Vallancey says'that Cul or Gul in Irish implies a complete wheel, a belt, an anniversary. Spelman observes the word often occurs in ancient legal parchments for the feast of St. Peter ad Vincula."

Prof. Rhys in his Hibbert Lectures points out the great importance once attacned to Lammas, Gwyl Awst, among the Welsh,

" shown by the fact that the Welsh term in the modified form of Gula Augusti passed into the latinity of the chronicles, and even into a statute

of Edward III The echoes of a feast or fair held

on the first of August have not yet died out in Wales, where one still speaks of Gwyl Awst,"

fairs being still held in some parts at that date.

The wheel, which Vallancey says is the (or an) equivalent for the Irish word Cul or Gul was used in the old Runic Fasti to denote the festivals of summer and winter solstices, and rolling the wheel to denote the sun's beginning to descend from the highest place in the zodiac.

The legend connecting St. Peter ad Vincula with the beginning of August is given by Miss Arnold Forster in ' Studies in Church Dedications,' vol. i. p. 54. T. S. M.

J. J. Bond's * Handy Book for verifying Dates ' says as follows :

" Gule of August. See Petrus ad Vincula, A.D 439, Aug. 1. Gula Augusti, so called from yula, a throat, for this reason : One Quirinus, a Tribune having a daughter that had a disease in her throat ; went to Sixtus III., the Bishop of Rome, anc desired of him to see the chains that St. Peter had been chained with under Nero, which reques being granted, she, kissing the chains, was curec of her disease ; whereupon this feast was institutec in honour of St. Peter, hence its name."

J. SCHOMBEEG. Oxford.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &o.

Portraits and Jewels of Mary Stuart. By Andrew

Lang. (Glasgow, MacLehose & Sons.) ' FALSE portraits of Mary, Queen of Scots, are nfinite," says Horace Walpole; but there are many genuine, as may be expected of a woman who was ^ueen of France, Dowager of France, and Queen of Scotland, and, adds Mr. Lang, " was Queen of England in the opinion of the great Catholic party /hat regarded Elizabeth as disqualified by birth and religion." \\hile doubting the existence of many enuine portraits that is, portraits painted from the life Mr. Lang opines that there exist portraits and miniatures enough to provide a pictorial history of Mary from 1552, when she was in her tenth year, to 1584-6, the years before her death. Upon these much has been written at home and abroad ; among recent contributors to the literature of the subject being the late Sir George Scharf, Mr. Lionel Oust, Mr. J. J. Foster, and Dr. Williamson in his 'History of Portrait Miniatures.' To the list, which might be Further enlarged, may be added Mr. Lang himself, whose present work is a revision and an expansion, with additional illustrations, of what has previously seen the light in The Scottish Historical Review. Among those who can in no sense be regarded as experts the feeling must prevail that all the repeated portraits cannot be accurate, and that of those most probably genuine there are few which convey an idea of the extreme beauty with which Mary was blessed or cursed. Regard- ing as rhapsody or fable the utterance on the scaffold of Chatelard concerning ''the fairest and most cruel queen on earth," and Mr. Lang's opening comparison with Helen of Troy as described by Marlowe, we accept the historical certitude that " Mary was either beautiful or she bewitched people into thinking her beautiful." But few of the surviving portraits answer the expectations generally formed concerning her graces. It is pleasant to find Mr. Lang, notwith- standing the doubts of other authorities, voting in favour of the portrait in the possession of the Earl of Leven and Melville, which serves as frontispiece to his volume. Of the many portraits reproduced in the volume this, both as regards features and expression, is the most seductive. Apropos of the wealth of jewels in which the face is environed, this suggests to Mr. Lang a test for the genuineness of portraits by the extent to which the jewels depicted correspond to those known to have been in the possession of the queen. Among many portraits reproduced are a bridal medal of Mary and the Dauphin, Mary as Dauphine after a sketch by Clouet or Jehan de Court ; a wax medallion from the Breslau Museum, ' Le Deuil Blanc,' a con- temporary nude caricature of Mary as a mermaid, the Sheffield portrait by P. Oudry, and the Morton portrait. A final and interesting chapter is on the 'False Portraits of Mary.' The book is an im- portant contribution to our knowledge of a subject which offers unceasing attraction.

The Pageant of London. By Richard Davey. Vol. I. B.O. 40 to A.D. 1500. Vol. II. A.D. 1500- 1900. (Methuen & Co.)

' THE PAGEANT OF LONDON ' is a title happily de- scriptive of a pleasant and popular book, interest- ing alike from the historical and the topographical