Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 12.djvu/215

 us. xii. SEPT. ii, 1915.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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of the saint, except in the shamrock which surmount, the white saltire.

If the national colour of a country depends upon that of the ribbon of the Order of its national saint, that for England should be dark blue, for Scotland dark green, and for Ireland light blue.

J. ^S. UDAL, F.S.A.

QUEEN ELIZABETH'S FIFTH PARLIAMENT ill S. xii. 159). The date given in the official return for the dissolution of Queen Elizabeth's fifth Parliament, viz., 14 Sept., 1585, is doubtless correct in view of the fact that the next Parliament was summoned to meet at Westminster on 15 Oct., 1586, and that more than one month was usually a 1 lowed for a general election.

It is curious that the published Index to the first volume of the Journals of the House of Commons contains no index of the Journals of the House during the reign of 'Queen Elizabeth after that of the third session of her fourth Parliament, held in the year 1580. What is the explanation of this ?

F. DE H. L.

This Parliament of the twenty - seventh <and twenty-eighth years of the reign began on 23 Nov., 1584, adjourned over the Christ- mas vacation, was prorogued on 29 March, 1585, and dissolved on 14 Sept., 1586.

A. R. BAYLEY.

' THE CLOISTER AND THE HEARTH ' (11 S. xii. 140, 185). 2. (a) Plutarch in his ' Life of Demosthenes,' 854D, says that there were many signs of what was impending before the battle of Chreronea. The scholiast on Apollonius of Rhodes, ' Argonautica,' iv. 1284 sq., where mention is made of statues of the gods sweating blood, illustrates it by o> reference to what happened at Thebes during this same war with Philip. See Arnold Schaefer, ' Demosthenes uiid seine Zeit,' vol. ii. 555.

2. (b) Cicero in his Third Speech against Catiline, 18, speaks of meteors and earth- quakes during his consulship, and in the next section reminds his hearers how two years before statues of gods and men amongst others that of Romulus suckled by the wolf were struck by lightning, and the bronze tab- lets of laws melted. Compare>Ben Jonson : The statues melt again, and household gods lu groans confess the travail of the city ; The very walls sweat blood before the change, And stones start out to ruin ere it comes.

' Catiline,' I. i.

Further information may be found in Julius Obsequens, ' De Prodigiis,' where it is stated, cap. 123, that the statue of Mars sweated.

4. The question about Ephis and his lion has been asked before. The name should be Elpis. At 10 S. iv. 351 I gave the reference in Pliny's ' Natural History,' viii. 16 (21), 57, 58. The story is this. Elpis was a native of Samos. In the course of a voyage he landed on the coast of Africa, and there saw a lion with its jaws alarmingly distended. He took refuge in a tree and offered up a prayer to Bacchus, because, as Pliny remarks, the most appropriate time for prayer is when we have no hope. Mark Twain, it will be remembered, thought that the dachshund was the kind of dog to sit down and pray when confronted by an elephant. But it turns out that the dis- tension of the lion's jaws which had so terrified Elpis was caused by a bone wedged

in its teeth. This is, of course, removed, and the grateful patient brings his benefactor presents of game during his stay on shore. On his return to Samos, Elpis dedicated a temple to Bacchus, which the Greeks named that of Bacchus with distended jaws (Aiovvcrou KeY^oTos)' The confounding of the deity with the wild beast recalls Mrs. Gamp's miraculous aspiration that the " Ankworks package " was in " Jonadge's belly."

5. " Jairi." Is this more than a sarcastic expression for those in authority, as Jairus was a " ruler of the synagogue " ?

9. According to the original edition of Meyer's ' Conversations Lexicon,' Aventinus, a native of Bourges, was a hermit at Troyes. He died in the year 540, and is commemo- rated on 4 February. EDWARD BENSLY.

11. " Quern quserimus adjutorem nisi te Domine," &c. The Latin prayer quoted is taken from the antiphon which was formerly sung with the Nunc Dimittis at Compline during fifteen days in the middle of Lent. According to an uncertain tradition, the antiphon was written by Nodker, a monk of St. Gall (ob. A.D. 912). It is said to have been used as a war song in the Middle Ages by the priests accompanying the armies before and during battle. But at the Synod of Cologne held in 1310 it was forbidden to be used, on account of the magical properties ascribed to it, unless by permission of the bishop.

Its English translation forms a portion of the sentences appointed to be said or sung at the graveside whilst the corpse is being made ready to be laid in the earth, in the form of service for ' The Burial of the Dead ' in the Book of Common Prayer.

See Palmer's ' Origines Liturgicse,' Oxford, 1832, vol. ii. pp. 235, 236.