Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 2.djvu/151

ii s. vm. AUG. 23, i9i3.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

145 an important and influential Company should have records previous to the date of incorporation. All this Company's public feasts were paid for at the expense of the whole Society, and doubtless accounts of these would be kept. Princes, kings, and nobles patronized the Company, and up to the early part of the eighteenth century ninety-eight Lord Mayors were members. "In 1689 the Corporation settled 2,888l. per annum, as security for the payment of 30l. per annum during the life of any widow whose husband subscribed, in his health, 100l.," &c.

CONJECTURAL ORIGIN OF AN ' INGOLDSBY ' LEGEND. In a work recently published in Paris, * Campagne chi Capitaine Marcel en Espagne et en Portugal,' the tale re- counted by " Thomas Ingoldsby," under the title of * The Black Mousquetaire : a Legend of France,' is to be found in all its details. The hero is Capt. Collin, a French officer; the heroine, Adelina, a " nun of eighteen, pretty as a pastel in her severe costume," who acted as nurse at the hospital of Santiago de Compostella ; and the incident of the substitution of a girl resembling the deceased Adelina is located at Corunna.

It is thus possible that Barham, who wrote the " legend " in the forties, heard it from some Peninsular officer, and dressed it up in Louis XIV. disguise for literary purposes. The coincidence, at any rate, is curious. F. A. W.

ROLANDSAULEN. At Brandenburg, as I have read, and at Bremen, as I have seen, are giant statues of mediaeval origin which are tokens of certain powers and privi- leges accorded to those places. In German the name of the famous paladin seems to be a synonym for Riese, and my dictionary glosses Rolands-degen as " the sword of a Roland or giant," and Rolands?' ose as "a stately tall rose-tree or bush." The figures at Brandenburg and Bremen, said to be eighteen feet high, date respectively from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but they are substitutes for much older repre- sentations. At the feet of the Bremen example there lies a decapitated head, accompanied by lopped - off limbs, in evi- dence of the power of life and death which in certain cases might be exercised by the magistrates. A long mantle worn by the knight denotes the office of Justice of the

Peace, the gloves refer to market privileges, and a naked sword to the right over criminals to which I have just referred. A verse near the shield emblazoned with the Im- perial arms runs :

Vryheit do ik ju openbar,

De Karel unn mannig Vorst vorwhar

Deser Stede ghegheven hat,

Des danket Gode is min radt, the meaning of which I can but vaguely guess. It is believed in Bremen that the city would be in evil case if the Roland- saule were to be taken away ; indeed, it is popularly held that a little Roland ia kept in reserve in the Ratskeller to be ready as vice - Palladium should enemy or accident deprive the place of its natural protector (see ' Vaterlandische Geschichten und Denkwiirdigkeiten der Vorzeit der Lande Braunschweig und Hannover,' by Wilhelm Gorges, pp. 389, 390).

There are other Rolandsaulen than the two that I have mentioned ; who will tell us of them ?

In the Ratskeller there is a representa- tion of the musicians of Bremen, whom Grimm has made familiar in our English nurseries. They are much used to decorate the souvenirs with which the shopkeepers try to tempt visitors. I could not at first remember why the ass superimposed by dog, and cat, and cock seemed to be old friends to me. ST. SWITHIN.

BRITISH VIEWS ON CANADA IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

" Vous savez que ces deux nations sont en guerre pour quelques arpens de neige vers le Canada, et qu'elles depensent pour cette belle guerre beaucoup plus que le Canada ne vaut."

This hackneyed quotation from ' Can- dide ' (chap, xxiii.), which is part of a speech by Martin as the two are approaching England, unmistakably expresses Vol- taire's frank opinion in 1759, the date of the work. How unpopular it has remained in Canada may easily be verified in the angrily contemptuous verses of the late Louis Honore Frechette, the poet of French Canada, in ' La Legende d'un Peuple ' (crachat de Voltaire). That it continued to represent Voltaire's views is equally obvious through several references in his private correspondence at that time, and tales which need not be given here. But in the interest of distributive (and retrospective) justice, it must surely be noted that in this attitude Voltaire, among men of letters and even among those nearer to the centres of European activity than the secluded sage of Ferney, certainly did not stand alone.