Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 7.djvu/332

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. VIL APRIL 6, 1907.

bocca 465 denti. II qual Francesco io lo conosco, e lo viddi avanti, che 1 gatto gli desse la sassata con gli suoi denti, e dapoi molte fiate lo viddi ancora senza essl, perche gli perse, come e detto."

In my childhood I often heard old folks in this part say that if one picked up stones from the ground and threw them at a monkey on a mountain, the monkey would do the same to the man ; but that if the stones were taken out of a pocket and thrown, the animal would pluck hairs off his own body and strive to hurl them against the man. That the Chinese of the fifteenth century or there- abouts entertained a similar belief is mani- fested in their popular romance ' Si-yu-ki,' wherein the monkey-hero Sun Wu-Kung (see 9 S. xi. 490) is made repeatedly to dismay his numberless foes not only men and demons, but also gods by letting fly his own hairs, each single hair being instantly turned by magic into a fighting duplicate of himself.

Still more marvellous, perhaps, is what Sie Chung-Chi relates in sober faith in his ' Wu-tsah-tsu ' (written 1610, Japanese ed., 1661, torn, ix., fol. 15). The story is briefly that Mount Shi-Chu in Fu-Tsing swarmed with monkeys, which General Tseh Ki-Kwang (sixteenth century) captured and trained well in using fire-arms, and through their super-simian feats defeated and annihilated a band of predatory Japanese.

Further, the following account in Twan Ching-Shih's ' Yu-yang-tsah-tsu ' (written in the ninth century, Japanese ed., 1697, torn. iv. fol. 3b) would seem to imply an older Chinese belief in the capability of monkeys to throw missiles :

"The country of Po-mi-lan has in its west

a very precipitous, craggy mountain, on which abound gigantic monkeys, addicted to devastating field crops. Every year there are two to three hundred thousand of them ; so after the arrival of spring the people collect armed soldiers and join in battle with the, monkey*, of which they slaughter several tens of thousands annually, yet without extirpating them."

KUMAGUSU MlNAKATA.

Tanabe, Kii, Japan.

Reference may also be made to 7 S. xi. 462, 482 ; xii. 30 ; and 8 S. iv. 206.

A. COLLINGWOOD LEE.

Waltham Abbey.

PRETENDED PRINCE OF MACEDONIA (10 S. vii. 169). John Andrea Angelo Flavio got into trouble and gaol, not because he assumed the title of Prince of Macedonia, but because he pretended to be the " Magnus Magister Militiae Sancti Georgii." There is in the British Museum a tract press-mark

1897 b 18 (6) which was printed in Rome in 1603, and contains a long-winded decision by Joannes Franciscus Aldobrandinus, quash- ing a previous decision, and releasing the " Magnus Magister " from gaol. His title& are fully set out in the document. As far as I can understand it, he was deprived of hi& liberty in 1597. L. L. K.

PILLION : FLAILS (10 S. iii. 267, 338, 375, 433 ; iv. 72 ; vi. 274, 313). Contrary to what might be expected, the flail is still much in evidence among farmers in the Eastern States in this country. I have myself seen it often in use in Connecticut and New Jersey for thrashing wheat, rye, and oats during the winter months. It is not looked upon as an antiquated tool in these parts. I remember that on one occasion, when the engine of a thrashing machine gave out, the farm-hands at once adjourned to a very capacious barn near by, where, the sheaves being spread out on the floor, they set to work belabouring them with flails, though some of the European men soon showed themselves quite unsuited to the work. The manufacturers of agri- cultural implements turn out a large number of flails of an approved pattern the ends fastened together by an iron ring, the rod& shining with varnish ; but the home-made article of ordinary wood, the pieces bound together with leather thongs, is oftener met with. N. W. HILL.

Philadelphia.

A JUNIUS CLAIMANT (10 S. vii. 206). A quaint addition to the list of Junius claimants was made in the following paragraph, which appeared in The Morning Chronicle of 16 April, 1803 : -

" The controversy respecting the author of the celebrated letters of Junius has been so often and so- ingeniously handled, that nothing seemed to be left for future exertion on this subject. Theory after theory has been advanced, and each in their turn has only shewn that their respective inventors were totally ignorant of the subject on which they wrote with such an air of confidence. The public is sufficiently well acquainted with the arguments drawn in favour of particular writers from simi- larity of style, sentiment, and illustration. This kind of argument has gone but a little way to pro- duce conviction, because there was no known author at the time that the letters of Junius were written, who possessed that terseness, that classical purity of style, attic richness of satire, that peculiarly distinguish these letters, over whose origin there prevails such an unaccountable mys- tery. Ingenuity being exhausted in this way in Europe, a late attempt has been made in America to revive this controversy, and to discover the author, not by peculiarity of style or of sentiment, but by a medium of proof, which, if properly