Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 7.djvu/240

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. VIL MARCH 9, 1907.

headed one. Thirty years later a proces of what was called illumination came into fashion. It was a similar process of painting in body colour, put on as dry as possible ; and it required the same kind of brush as before ; but it was not on thin paper. The stumpy round-headed brush seems to have retained its name long after both processes went out of fashion. I sent this information direct to DR. MURRAY ; but I am afraid it was lost in the post. FRANK PENNY. 3, Park Hill, Baling.

HICKFORD'S ROOM, BREWER STREET (10 S. vii. 128). An interesting note on this old concert-room from the pen of the late Mr. A. J. Hipkins, F.S.A., with a full-page view of the interior from a photograph by Mr. W. J. Hardy, may be found in The Home Counties Magazine, vol. iv. (1902), p. 280.

To show that the locality was more or less fashionable 150 years ago the writer mentions that then the Portuguese Embassy (now Leighton the bookbinder's) was next door ; but the main theme of the article is a concert advertised in The Daily Advertiser of 13 May, 1765, as follows :

"For the Benefit of Miss Mozart of thirteen and Master Mozart of eight years of age : Prodigies of Nature.

" Hickford's Great Room in Brewer Street. This Day, May 13th, will be A Concert of Vocal and Instrumental Musick : with all the Overtures of this little Boy's own Composition. The Vocal Part by Sig. Cremonini, Concerto on the Violin, Mr. Bartholomew, Solo on the Violoncello, Sig : Cirii ; Concerto on the Harpsichord by the little Composer and his Sister, each single and 'both together, etc.

' Tickets at 5-s. each to be had of Mr. Mozart, at Mr. Williamson's, Thrift Street, Soho [now Frith

Of late years the room has been occupied by a German club, which extended its shelter to a Blue Hungarian Band. It is now a French club, as MR. HIBGAME men- tions. ALAN STEWART.

" LIFE-STAR " FOLK-LORE (10 S. vii. 129). The fiery apparition recorded by W. B. H. is evidently coincidental, as to customary belief, with the appearance of the corpse- candle. A candle in old English was by no means understood to be necessarily a column of wax or tallow Math a wick in the middle ; it also meant a light or fire in various forms in fact, as the etymology of the word shows, anything that shone or gave light. That which, in the Midlands, is known as a " life-star " is apparently identical! with the fire-drake or fire-dragon, one of the many erratic forms taken by the ignis fatuus, or

will-o'-the-wisp. In Chapman's tragedy of ' Csesar and Pompey,' 1607, is an allusion to this death omen :

So have I seene a fire-drake glide along Before a dying man, to point his grave, Arid in it stick and hide.

That the appearance of the life-star or the Tan-we or Tan-wed, as it is known in Wales should occasionally be coincidental with the death of a person is of course natural, but, like all these quaint old superstitions^ the reasonableness of the notion vanishes in the reflection that death is very far from being infallibly coincidental with the occur- rence of the phenomenon. Walking on one occasion from Dunmow to High Roothing at night, I saw an extraordinary, almost terrifying instance of this fiery phantom. It was travelling towards High Roothing and Little Canfield, but, although I was living in that part, I never heard of any death as a sequel. The belief, however, is that a large light denotes the death of an aged person, and a small light, of a pale bluish colour, synchronizes with that of a

Child. J. HOLDEN MACMlCHAEL.

Deene, Streatham.

The night before Julian the Apostate was mortally wounded, he saw in a dream the genius of the empire with his head veiled.. Waking, he left the tent, and beheld a fiery meteor, which shot across the sky and vanished. Plutarch tells how supernatural fire foretold the fall of Csesar. Such appear- ances generally announce the death of great people :

'Tis thought the king is dead : we will not stay. The bay trees in our country are all withered,' And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven.

And Calpurnia says : When beggars die there are no comets seen ; The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.

In the song in ' The Lay of the Last Minstrel ' it is narrated that before the death of lovely Rosabelle a blaze of supernatural fire was seen.

I know that on a very small estate in South Wales the servants always saw, or imagined that they saw, a ball* of fire, or something of the sort, just before the death of the landlord or any of his family.

E. YARD LEY.

If one person has a " life-star," surely all others have : and though I never heard the term in the Midlands, yet there was a belief that some notable person's life ended coincident with the appearance and bursting of a shooting star. I remember