Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 10.djvu/500

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [ii S.X.DEC. 19, 101*.

"MAGNA EST VERITAS ET (?)" (11 S. x. 389). See 'The Stanford Dictionary,' pp. 517 and 823 (Supplement). Bishop Jewel (1565) quotes the correct form with the present tense. But " Magna est Veritas, Truth will preuaile," from Purchas's ' Micro - <;osmus ' (1619), points to " prsevalebit," and it is the future apparently that is found in Thomas Brooks (1662). Scott in 'The Talisman,' chap, xix., and Thackeray in a ' Roundabout ' paper, are referred to for the same form.

Three causes might be suggested as having helped to give the wider currency to
 * ' prsevalebit."

Firstly, the rhythm of the sentence is more effective when it ends with a ditro- chseus ( ~ ).

Further, the 'future of " prsevalere " occurs in the Vulgate far more frequently than the present.

Finally, truth so frequently fails to win the day that we have more use for a text to console us with the hope of its final victory. EDWARD BENSLY.

OUDH (11 S. x. 448). The rulers of the state bore the title of Nawab Wazir until 1819, when they took that of King. Kaye's ' Sepoy War,' vol. i. chap, iii., might be consulted. T. F. D.

"BROTHER JOHANNES" (11 S. x. 370, 397, 418). Regarding this character (queried ante, p. 370) my researches have failed to identify him. There was a John of Paris who died in 1304, and left behind him a manuscript in the library of St. Germain : ' De Christo et Antichristo ' (the Benedictine ' Histoire Litteraire de la France,' tome xxv., 1869, edition of 1898). A contemporary of his, Abbot Joachim of Calabria, wrote on the same subject, and their combined visions were printed at Venice in 1516.

The visionary part of John's ' Antichrist ' (a separate work from ' De Christo') is given by John Wolf (1537-1600, not the famous Wolfius) in his ' Lectiones Memora biles et Reconditae ' (Frankfort, 1671, vol. i. p. 489). This is the second edition, the first dating 1600-1608. (Note the date 1600.) Here is a sample :

" Ecce Leo Gallicus obviabit Aquite, et feriet caput ipsius. Erit bellum immensum et mors yahda. . . .gentes ab omni natione, &c." [Punctua iion mine.]

Until we can find the Friar John Apoca- lypse, as given us in the Figaro, printed in one of the collections of visions by Adrien

Peladan (1815-90), we must suspend our judgment, and suspect that John of Paris las been revamped. Of course, we do not dispute the word of Josephin Peladan that the vision in question was among his father's Dapers, nor the statement that it hailed from those ancient Catholic centres Tarascon and Beaucaire. All that we want is a proof of correct transmission from the sixteenth century. Even, however, as a document antedating 1890, it is remarkable enough.

Incidentally I may add that the vision of the world-war by the late Count Tolstoy in 1910 is genuine. I am about to reprint it with the original French letter from Countess Nastasia Tolstoy, dated from Pskoff, " 4 Janvier, 1913." The vision appeared in Philadelphia in a Sunday paper on 23 Feb., 1913. There is no reason for Tolstoy's literary executor to know anything about it, for the great Russian dictated it to Countess Nastasia to please the Tsar. She only published it because she heard that some one else meant to.

ALBERT J. EDMUNDS.

Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

Correspondents may like to know that he who runs may read the predictions of this latter-day minor prophet. The following advertisement has lately appeared :

" Doom of the Kaiser ' Antichrist,' Monk's startling 300-year-old prophecy of Brother Johannes, post free, 12 copies Is., 30 2s. 3d., 100 6s. 6d. Morgan, Son, and Co., Ltd., 88, Chancery- lane, London."

The Yorkshire Herald says Mr. William Le Queux has been writing to The Daily Chronicle, quoting, from no less an authority than the Official Guide of the London and North-Western Railway, a prophecy ascribed to Taliesin, who lived some time in the sixth century. It runs :

A serpent which coils,

And with fury boils, From Germany coming with armed wings spread,

Shall subdue and shall enthral

The broad Britain all From the Lochlin ocean to Severn's bed.

And British men

Shall be captives then To strangers from Saxonia's strand :

They shall praise their God and hold

Their language as of old, But except wild Wales they shall lose their land.

All this seems to me to refer to events much more within Taliesin 's apprehension than twentieth -century probabilities, and, in any case, he would not use the term " British men " in the sense that we are accustomed to use it now.

ST. SWITHIN.