Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 12.djvu/41

 ii .s. xii. JULY io f 1913. j NOTES AND QUERIES.

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proclaims " Christ is risen from the dead," a custom mentioned by ST. SWITHIN in his first communication on the subject. That this long Liturgy should be gone through three times before daylight is, to my mind, incredible. Moreover, to call any three services that end before daylight by the names of the three Roman Masses on Christ- mas Day, seems absurd, for the Messe de 1'aurore should be so timed that the sun may rise during its celebration ; whilst the Messe du jour should, of course, be later in the morning, in broad daylight.

W. A. FROST.

Miss BARSANTI (MRS. RICHARD DALY) (US. xi. 452, 498). Jenny Barsanti is one of the most engaging appearances in Fanny Burney's ' Diary.' She was a favourite pupil of Dr. Burney, and made her first appearance in public at Oxford on 22 June, 1769, as the principal singer in the anthem performed as his exercise for the degree of Doctor in Music. On this occasion she " was terrified to death, and her mother, who was among the audience, was so much affected tiiat she fainted away." We are relieved to hear that Jenny " came off with flying colours and met with great applause." In

1771, having entirely lost her voice, she wished to go on the stage. Dr. Burney asked Samuel Crisp to hear her " spout," and she herself with Miss Burney and a friend acted some scenes at Chesington from Gibber's ' Careless Husband.' Of this we have a charming account in the ' Diary.' Fanny was present at Miss Barsanti's first
 * i])[ earance at Covent Garden on 21 Sept.,

1772, and at her benefit on 10 May of the next year. In October she sees her as Charlotte Rusport in Cumberland's ' West Indian,' and on 11 June, 1777, as Portia at the Haymarket (see Mrs. A. R. Ellis' s note in the ' Diary ' ). Miss Burney calls her friend's first husband "Lister"^ in a letter written to Susan Burney in June, 1779, very shortly after his death. In a note to the

Diary ' for June, 1769, Mrs. Ellis states, on the authority of Laetitia Hawkins's Reminiscences,' that Miss Barsanti

" \\MS the daughter ot ' a little old Lucchese,' a humble musician, and of a Scotch woman, who, in later days, when her daughter Jenny acted in Dublin, was known by the Irish as ' the big woman.' "

t What is the connexion between this

humble musician " and the Francesco

Barsanti from Lucca (c. 1690-1760) of

whom there is a brief notice in Meyer's

1 Conversations- Lexicon ' (1844)? He is

there described as an " angesehener Kom- ponist und Virtuos auf der Flote und der Oboe," and said, after studying law at Padua, to have come to England with Geminiani in 1714, to have played in the orchestra of the Opera, to have gone to Scotland in 1719 and collected folk-songs, to have returned to England in 1750 and played the fiddle in the orchestra at the Opera and at Vauxhall, and to have died in 1760. If the date of his death is correct, he could not be Jenny's father, assuming that Miss Hawkins is right when she speaks of the actress's father having a paralytic stroke at the time when his daughter was playing in Steele's ' Funeral,' her first appearance on the stage. But Miss Haw- kins is not infallible. EDWARD BENSLY.

" SACRAMENTUM " (11 S. xi. 430). The formula for this oath has been found inscribed on a bronze plate in Portugal. See Orelli, ' Inscriptiones Latinse Selectse,' 1828, vol. ii. No. 3665 (=C.I.L. ii. 172):-

" Ex mei animi sententia ut ego iis inimicus ero quos C. Cffisari Germanico inimicos esse cog- no vero et si quis periculum ei salutique eius in- feret intuleritque armis bello internecino terra marique perse qui non desinam quoad pcenas ei persoluerit neque me liberos meos eius salute cariores habebo eosque qui in eum hostilis animi fuerint mihi hostes esse ducam. Si sciens fallo fefellerove turn me liberosque meos lupiter Optimus Maximus ac Divus Augustus caeterique omnes Di immortales . . . . em (=exsulem, or ex- torrem, or expertem) patria incolumitate fortu- nisque omnibus faxint ! "

EDWARD BENSLY.

EPIGRAM ON THOMAS HEARNE (US. xi. 454). Osborne's Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Kearne " and of another Gentle- man of Note " for the sale on 16 Feb., 1735/6, bears on the title-page a small portrait 6T Hearne, with this couplet underneath :

Pox on't, quoth Time to Thomas Hearne,

Whatever I forget You learn.

The first line, it will be seen, differs slightly from the version quoted by XYLOGRAPHER. See vol. iii. p. 1 98 of Dr. 'Bliss's ' Reliquise Hearnianse,' and p. 176 of W. Y. Fletcher's ' English Book Collectors.'

EDWARD BENSLY.

HERALDIC QUERY : BOTELER ARMS (11 S. xi. 399, 496). If P. M. will consult Burke's ' General Armory ' under the surname " Butler," he will find that Theobald Walter, Chief Butler of Ireland (temp. Henry II.), who estab- lished in that kingdom the family of Butler, from which so many peerages have sprung, bore for anns Quarterly, 1 and 4,