Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 7.djvu/518

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. VIL JUNE i, 1907.

Some of the men did not come very regularly as haymaking was on ; and some were occupied at home during the morning. A diagram was given against each man's name : thus n, a square, represented a full day's work. He began from the east, so meant work in the early morning, and J up to midday. The addition of a stroke to the west U indicated the hours after noon ; and the square enclosed D as already shown, indicated that the man had worked up to seven o'clock, and was entitled to a full day's wage. J. H. RIVETT-CARNAC.

Schloss Rothberg, Switzerland.

GOOD KING WENCESLATJS. The hero of this venerable carol resembles Santa Glaus, and in pictures he is usually represented with a long white beard like the other hristmas worthy. I do not know whether any tradition of his benevolent act is at- tached to the real St. Vaclav (German Wenzel, latinized Wenceslaus), to whom the Bohemian hymn is addressed " Svaty Vaclave, pomiluji nas." According to the ' Story of Prague,' by Count Liitzow, D.Litt.(Oxon), Prince (knez : not king, kral) Wenceslaus received the tonsure in a church built by the first Christian ruler, Borivoj. Having received from the German king Henry I. the arm of the youthful St. Vitus, he proceeded to found a church on the Hradcany, where the present cathe- dral of St. Vitus stands, the resting-place of the Bohemian kings. (The possible con- nexion of St. Vit with the ancient Slav deity Svantovit has been discussed by my erudite friend Prof. L. Leger, a first-rate authority on Slav antiquities.) In 935 Prince Wences- laus was murdered by his heathen younger brother Boleslav at Stara Boleslav (Alt Bunzlau), and in 939 his remains were brought to the church on the Hradcany. On the gates of the present Wenceslaus Chapel of St. Vitus's Cathedral is the ring to which the saint is said to have clung when murdered. Illustrations of the murder which I have seen show a man in his prime, not the venerable crowned figure of " good King Wenceslaus."

Last Christmas my friend Prof. V. Zeithammer, of Kutna Hora, an excellent master of English, translated our carol into Cech, and, thanks to assistance from a local choirmaster, his version, set to the traditional tune, became very popular among students and schoolchildren. Kutna Hora, or Kut- tenberg, is the ancient mint and mining town, not far from the battlefield of Kolin, where the " decrees of Kutna Hora," grant-

ing the supremacy of the Bohemian nation at Prague University, were signed by King Vaclav IV. in 1409. Not many years after- wards the grim Zizka won victories at this town over the troops of the Emperor Sigis- mund.

Here is the first verse of Prof. Zeithammer's rendering :

Oknem hledel Vaclav kral

O Stepana svatku, Vysoko kdy snih zaval

Uvoz, pole, chatku. Luny polil jasny trpyt Mrazern stuhle nivy ; Starci svitil jeji svit, Jenz tu sbiral drivi.

F. P. MARCHANT. Streatham Common.

" DUMP." In remote villages in Suffolk this name is given to flat pieces of lead which little children push about in their play. Halliwell attaches several meanings to the word, and appends to No. 2 in the list : "A clumsy medal of lead cast in moist sand (East)."

In ' Hood's Own ; or, Laughter from Year to Year,' issued in 1839, much of which is a reproduction from the * Comic Annual,' is a poem of several stanzas entitled ' Mrs. Trimmer,' representing an elderly lady about to apply her birch to a small boy. His offences are enumerated in several witty lines, one verse of which is :

To-day, too, you hindered the cook,

By melting your dumps in the skimmer. Don't kneel ; you shall go on my knee,

For I'll have you know I'm a Trimmer. In " The more modern ballad of ' Chevy n hace ' " in the ' Percy Reliques ' we find : For Witherington needs must I wayle,

As one in doleful dumps ; For when his leggs was smitten off,

He fought upon his stumpes. Butler in ' Hudibras,' Part I. c. iii., thus parodies this stanza :

Till down he fell, yet falling fought, And being down, still laid about ; As Widdrington in doleful dumps Is said to fight upon his stumps.

JOHN PICKFORD, M.A. CHARM FOE, BURGLARS. One is familiar with the carrying of lumps of coal in the jocket of burglars as a " mascot " ; but the newspapers of 30 April chronicle the 3arrying of " extra strong " peppermint sweets by two members of a gang, one of whom affirmed that " they deaden the sound when you are in anywhere." H. P. L.

"FRITTARS OR GREAVES." On p. 192 >f ' Naufragia,' by J. Stanier Clarke, F.R.S.,