Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 8.djvu/401

 10 s. VIIL OCT. 26, 1907.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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M. Leger cites an Italian, Guagnini, who wrote in 1578 that the Novgorod Perun " representait un homnie tenant dans sa main une pierre a feu semblable a la foudre." A Galician legend describes Pieron (Perun) as a huntsman, " un homme gigantesque, grand comme un arbre, arme d'un fusil long comme un tronc " a much later conception.

The historian Prof. A. Tratshevsky says that the arrowheads belonging to the Stone Age were known as " Perun stones," and Dahl (v.s.) gives peruny, lightnings.

According to the ' Mater Verborum ' { thirteenth century) Perun had a wife Letna (Latona), a daughter Dievana (Diana), and a sister Perunova. Prof. Leger cites these instances (' Esquisse sommaire de la Mytho- logie slave ') as warnings against the authenticity of the ' Mater Verborum,' which abounds in errors of analogy with Greek mythology. Anthropomorphism is absent from Slav mythology. Finally <' Russes et Slaves,' First Series), M. Leger writes that Perun owed his importance to his relationship with the Scandinavian Thor, Jotunheim is far more engaging and interest- ing. FRANCIS P. MABCHANT.
 * ' cette vieille barbe rouge." The hero of

Streatham Common.

Peroun, literally " the Striker," was the Slavonic thunder-god, corresponding to our own Thor. There is a description of the idol in the ' Istoria Rusilor,' which is a Russian history written in the Roumanian language by the Moldavian chronicler Costin (seventeenth century). I translate from the Roumanian text :

"Their great idol, named Peroun, was raised after the likeness of a man. His body was cast of silver, his ears of gold ; the legs were of iron, and in the hands he held a stone like a thunderbolt, adorned with rubies and carbuncles, that is, stones like fire. Before him fire was always burning, and if it happened that, through neglect of the priest, the fire became extinguished, then the priest was put to death, as a traitor to the divinity.

By a curious development, the verb peret, which originally meant " to strike," has come to signify in modern Russian of beating them in the washtub with a " dolly." JAS. PLATT. Jun.
 * ' to wash (clothes)," referring to the process

The earliest legendary record about Peroun and the destruction of his statue at Kiev, A.D. 988, is found in the Old Russian Nestor chronicle (chap, xliii., ed. Miklosich), but without containing any graphic descrip- tion or pictorial representation of it. Ac- cording to Kayssarow's ' Versuch einer

Slavischen Mythologie,' Gottingen, 1804 (a curious little treatise of 120 pp. with six engravings, which lies before me), this idol was made of wood, and supplied with iron feet. It is further said to have held in the right hand a stone in the shape of a trident. As his name Peroun (^Lithuanian Perkun, i.e., "Thunderer") implies, he was wor- shipped as the god of thunder ; like the Old Norse Thor and the ancient Jupiter or Zeus. As Prof. Leger remarks in his ad- mirable French version of the Nestor chronicle (p. 350), " Peroun had no temple, his statues having been erected upon hills. There were no temples in the religion of the pagan Russians." Compare what Tacitus says about the religion of the ancient Germans. H. K.

WOODEN CUPS IN EAST ANGLIA (10 S. vii. 489 ; viii. 56). Would not the cups in question have been used in connexion with one of the " ales " or " feasts " of the parish ? They do not seem to have any possible relation to the sign of " The Three Cups," which, if common in East Anglia, is not at all uncommon in other parts of the country, especially in London. Indications are that although only two cups (second and third) are borne in the Gold- smiths' arms, yet three were adopted as being thought to be, as was usual, a more fitting number on the signboard. There was a " Three Cups " in Bread Street, which appears to have been patronized by the Cheapside goldsmiths, Goldsmiths' Row having been, says Stow, betwixt Bread Street end and the Cross in Cheap. And it is perhaps either this " Three Cups," or the carriers' inn in Aldersgate Street of the same sign, not far from the Goldsmiths' Hall, which is alluded to in a black-letter ballad called ' London's Ordinarie ' :

The Goldsmith will to the Three Cups,

For money they hold it as drosse, And your Papists to the Crosse.

There was a " Three Cups " in St. John Street, Cler ken well, another carriers' inn (Taylor's 'Carriers' Cosmographie'); another was in High Holborn ; and at least one more in Southwark.

Then, again, " The Golden Cupp " was the sign of a goldsmith at 83, Lombard Street (Price's ' Signs of Lombard Street ') ; and a silversmith's shop, " The Golden Cup in Great Newport Street, near Leicester Fields, is advertised to be let in 1741. In at least three instances, however, it was the sign of a bookseller for what reason one