Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 12.djvu/420

 NOTES AND QUERIES, [ii 8. XIL NOV. 20, 1915.

Bomething fresh. Thus we do not remember to have seen before a story of a skeleton coming in a vision to a man, and instructing him most carefully in the articulation of the bones, with a view to his taking the place of the local bone-setter just deceased. There is a certain amount of rough humour in the collection, chiefly evinced in stories of people outwitting their neighbours. ,

Two things we greatly wish : first, that the tales had not been written down in a form so hopelessly confused and ungrammatical that parts of many of them are almost unintelligible. We suppose this arises in some measure from the writer giving us the ipsissima verba of the illi- terate persons from whom he received them ; but there is no sense in carrying this principle out to the point of making a mere jumble of words. Next, somethV-^ in the way of introduction and notes would ha ; been acceptable. How far are we to understand that the superstitions recorded here are actually believed ? How many of the charac- ters which make then 1 appearance are real persons ? What relation can be made out between these legends and more ancient forms of them ? From whom was each derived as we have it here ?

We learn that Mr. Penny intends to publish notes he has collected on the monasteries near the river Witham. We look forward to examining this work, and hope that he will see his way to making in it those improvements which, bestowed on the present collection, would have rendered it more valuable than it now is.

An Account of Descriptive Catalogues of Strawberry Hill and of Strawberry Hill Sale Catalogues, togetJier with a Bibliography. By Percival

^ Merritt. (Boston, Mass., privately printed.)

COLLECTORS and students of Jthe eighteenth century would do well to make a note of this scholarly and careful monograph, the subject of which the writer has already treated in our own columns (see 10 S. vii. and xii.). It falls naturally into two divisions of which the first, on Horace Walpole's descriptive catalogues, is particularly good. Mr. Merritt has found, we think, the true explanation of the mysterious small quarto of sixty-five pages which Kirgate is supposed to have said was " printed only for the use of sei-vants in shewing the house "*; he gives good reasons for supposing that this was not a separate issue, properly speaking, bat a set of sheets of the 1774 ' Dascription,' taken from the press before that pamphlet was finished, and containing so much of the Catalogue as had not been included in two small pamphlets which were published in advance, ?. 1773, and which appear as Nos. 2 and 3 in the Bibliography of Catalogues ' at the end of the book. / t*~

Mr. Merritt has been generous and judicious in the choice of illustrations ; his essay is not only well-conceived and well-informed, but unusually well written, while the printing of the volume is excellent, and the " get-up " pleasing.

Corntcall Parish Registers : Marriages. Index to Vols. I.-VI. Compiled by A. Terry Satterford. (Issued to subscribers only.)

WE can well understand that, as the preface says, the question of the indexing this valuable series <rf Marriage Registers of which the series for Cornwall is now stated to run to twenty-four volumes should have presented itself to the

editors as a somewhat difficult problem. We think they have found the best solution possible in issuing a series of separate indexes, one to six or seven volumes of the published register. This will mean in each a compilation of the names of 50,000 or 60,000 persons every one of whom will appear with both surname and Christian names. The first instalment is now before us an ex- cellent piece of work. We can hardly tell the reason being what it is whether we are glad or sorry to learn that Mr. Satterford has been prevented from writing an Introduction on Cornish names. His time, we are told in the brief preface, is monopolized by military duties.

Essex. By G. Worley. (Bell & Sons, 5s. net.) THE rather too concise name which Mr. Worley has given to his book needs to be supplemented by its secondary title, ' A Dictionary of the County, Mainly Ecclesiological, in Two Parts.' It is only so far as it consists of parishes and churches that Essex makes an appeal to the writer, but these he has studied closely and personally visited. He disposes them in alphabetical order, "according as they belong to the Archdeaconry of Essex or that of Colchester, and brings down his careful and accurate survey to the present day. A certain want of proportion in the length of the articles is qbservable as a fault, and certainly if more matter of literary and historical interest bad been allowed admission the book would have gained. The statement that Willingale Doe may have got its name "from the Saxon Pillen ( = wool en) " is an obvious mistake due to the Anglo-Saxon letter for w- bearing a delusive resemblance to our modern p. The " Doe " affixed is known to have been bequeathed to the place by the Norman family of " d'Ou."

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LIEUT. -CoL. LAMBTON (" Vidit, et erubuit, lympha pudica Deum "). This is said to be Dryden's version of the last line of Crashaw's epigram on the miracle of Cana in Galilee, 'Epigrammata Sacra' (1634 cd., p. 299).