Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 7.djvu/97

 10 s. VIL JAN. 26, 1907.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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<3ombs, and chose that of St. Victoria, which lay in the cemetery of Lucina. A stone bore this inscription : " Vixit victoria annos xviii. menses x. dies xv. horas x." On 12 March, 1782, the petition was granted, and the remains were placed in a handsome urn, together with the vase which had contained a portion of the martyr's blood. But it was not until 19 January, 1785, that the relics were embarked on the Tiber, whence they were carried to Genoa, and afterwards to Barcelona, where they arrived on 6 June, 1785, and, a few days later, were deposited in the church of St., Augustine in the town of Vinaroz, where they have remained ever since.

St. Victoria was born of patrician parents at Tibur, now Tivoli, a few miles from Rome. She had been promised in marriage to Eugenius, but, as he was a pagan, she re- fused to wed him ; whereupon she was denounced as a Christian, thrown into prison, and, refusing to adore the goddess Diana, she was stabbed through the heart by the executioner. Her death occurred in the third century of our era, in the time of the Emperor Decius, one of the cruellest persecutors of the Christians.

JOHN T. CURRY.

The heading is, I think, incorrect, as H.M. immediately after her marriage an- nounced that she wished to be referred to as Queen Victoria Eugenie. I gather from HELGA'S query that the banquet took place on 23 December. On that day in the year 250 St. Victoria of Tivoli, Virgin and Martyr, suffered death. Her life is told in verse ,by St. Aldhelm.

St. Eugenia of Rome was martyred on Christmas Day, 258, and she was formerly commemorated in some French dioceses instead of St. Anastasia at the second Mass on that day. Her feast is kept on 30 Decem- ber at the Church of the Holy Apostles, Rome, where the greater part of her relics are preserved. Some of them are said to have been taken to Spain in the eleventh century, and others are in France.

Another St. Victoria (of Cordova) is men- tioned in the Roman ' Martyrology ' under 17 November. JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT.

Her Catholic Majesty, when she was con- ditionally baptized, only took in addition to her other names that of Mary, in honour -of Our Lady. The occasion, however, to which HELGA ref rs, when the Queen gave a reception in the palace, wa^ the feast of St. Victoria, Virgin and Martyr, com- memorated in the ;Roman ' Martyrology ' on

23 December, and was therefore quite correctly described as her name day. St. Victoria's relics are venerated in Rome, according to a MS. in my collection, in the churches of S. Adriano, S. Ignazio, and Sant' Andrea at Quirinale.

HARTWELL D. GRISSELL, F.S.A. Oxford.

The answer to HELGA'S query is very simple. On 23 December the Church keeps the feast of St. Victoria, Virgin and Martyr, by which name the Queen of Spain was baptized. Hence it is most properly called her " name " day. It is not her birthday, or the day on which she was reconciled to the Catholic Church, as we know that cere- mony took place in the spring of last year. ENGLISH CATHOLIC. [MR. E. S. DODGSON also thanked for reply.]

PENNELL'S ' LIFE OF LELAND ' (10 S. vii. 25). The oath in question is a comparatively mild version. Teremtette means " he has created it," and is the second word in the Hungarian Old Testament. I have seen the oath twice in print recently : in Glase- napp's 'Life of Richard Wagner ' (Leip- zig, 1904-5) and in the maestro's poems (' Gedichte von Richard Wagner,' Berlin, 1905). It must have been in common use in Budapest in 1863, or the composer would not have picked it up. Of course, he knew as little about its meaning as Leland or Mrs. Pennell.

A stronger version of the oath is in use amongst the lowest order of the Magyars and their fellow-countrymen the Slovacks. A friend of mine has heard it among the Tatars in the Caucasus ; and according to Lexer's ' Mittelhochdeutsches Handwo 'ter- buch ' (s.v. ' Serten ') it is used in Germany also. Old Eberhart Windecke, in the fif- teenth century, complains that when he reminded Sigismund about a debt he owed to a Bruges merchant, for which the chro- nicler had become surety, the emperor became angry and used the stronger version of the oath (Dr. Wilhelm Altmann's edition, Berlin, 1893, p. 81).

The equivalent of the first word of the Hungarian oath is very frequently used as an adjective by the lower class of English work- men. L. L. K.

" PLUMP " IN VOTING (10 S. vi. 148, 212, 276, 377). At the last reference M\JOR BUTTERWORTH quotes a literary extract showing the use of the word in 1807. I had previously sent direct to DR. MURRAY quotations from the Poll and Squib Book