Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 1.djvu/461

 ii s. i. JUNE 4, i9io.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

453

garbled and debased of saints and shrines familiar in pre -Reformation churches. Old people in Norfolk could identify most of them then. Y. T.

There was a somewhat similar ' ' song '- l amongst children when I was quite a little boy. Song, however, it was not, but a sort of recitation, said by two girls, boys merely looking on. It began

I '11 sing you a song of one ! Well, what is your one ?

Then it went on much the same as in B.M. A.'s version ; but I cannot remember the lines.

"The lily-white boys" were, I think, flowers.

The construction of the third line reads right when written

Eight of are the gable strangers, meaning the gabble ho unds = Gabriel hounds, which used to frighten people greatly at night. Another name was ' ' gabble ratchet." For an explanation of their cries see 7 S. i. 206. THOS. RATCLIFFE.

Works op.

This is nothing but the nearly extinct echo of a didactic song, ' ' Die mihi quid sit unus,'* formerly known in the whole of Christendom, and found even, under another form, in Mussulman Asia. One might fill a volume with the variants of it.

H. GAIDOZ. 22, Rue Servandoni, Paris (VI e ).

This folk-song has been exhaustively discussed in earlier issues of ' N". & Q.' I subjoin a list of the references, so far as observed, occurring in the first seven series : 1 S. ix. 325 ; 4 S. ii. 324, 452, 557, 599 ; iii. 90, 183 ; x. 412, 499 ; 5 S. xii. 509 ;

6 S. i. 61, 305, 314, 481 ; ii. 254 ; xii. 484 ;

7 S. i. 96, 118, 206, 315, 413 ; vii. 264, 337, 438, 495.

In connexion with these references it might be well to consult a series of articles by Mr. Andrew Lang in Longman's Magazine, xiii. 326, 439, 556, as well as Mr. W. H. Long's ' Dictionary of the Isle of Wight Dialect, 1 Reeves & Turner, 1886.

There are twelve stanzas, instead of ten, in the song as communicated to ' N. & Q.* According to Mr. Lang, the words are, perhaps, " a rude memoria technica of Catholic doctrine, or even something older than that, a reverberation from Celtic legend." Mr. W. H. Long regards them as " a Christianized version of a rhythmic chant derived from the ceremonies of the Druids." Col. Prideaux, on the other hand, has not the

slightest doubt that an old Latin religious song, "Die mihi quid sit unus," is "the original source from which the many versions of [the popular form of the song] are derived." Mr. W. H. Long also refers to the Latin song (see 4 S. ii. 557) current in the north-west of France, and supplies its stanzas thus " Unus est Deus," " Duo [sunt] testamenta," " Tres sunt patriarchs, &c." At the same time he believes that " the references in the Christianized version to the lily-white boys clothed all in green, the seven stars, and the triple Trine, unmistakably proclaim its [Druidic] derivation." W. SCOTT.

[Further communications are not invited.]

ADMIRAL TRYON (11 S. i. 288). After the death of Admiral Tryon a story was circu- lated that a lady at Lady Tryon's reception expressed her surprise to a friend that she had seen the admiral there as she thought he was still in the Mediterranean. Her friend answered that the admiral was of course still with his fleet. On the following day arrived the news of his death.

I lately heard it said that all the guests at Lady Tryon's saw the admiral ! Thus are ghost stories manufactured out of mistakes or hallucinations. I do not know if any account of this has appeared in print.

M. N. G.

PRODIGAL NABOB (11 S. i. 367). Byron (' Don Juan,' xiii. 37) says :

A bottle of champagne ? Frozen into a very vinous ice,

Which leaves few drops of that immortal rain, Yet in the very centre, past all price,

About a liquid glassful will remain.

Byron was almost as great a desultory reader as Macaulay, and he may have come across that nabob in the course of his reading.

W. A. H.

INDEX TO THE CHRISTIAN FATHERS (11 S. i. 248, 334). I have a little book which con- tains a list of early editions of the Fathers. Its title is : "A View of the Various Editions of the Greek and Roman Classics, with Remarks, by Edward Harwood, D.D. The

Fourth Edition London MDCCXC."

Pp. 152 to 180 enumerate the printed editions of the Fathers. FREDK. A. EDWARDS.

WYCLIF AND "SISTER ME NEEDETH " (11 S. i. 247). Alexander Ross in his ' View of all Religions ' makes the same charge against the Manichseans, though in far less delicate language. I did not know that this charge had ever been made against Wyclif. M. N. G.