Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 3.djvu/177

 n s. in. MAR. 4, mi.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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superseded in England by the noble, a coin of Edward III. It was used by Wyclif to translate both the Latin words talentum and drachma. A quotation from E. Cham- berlayne (1667) is : " The gold offered by the King at the Altar, when he receives the Sacrament, is still called the Byzant."

ERNEST B. SAVAGE, F.S.A. St. Thomas', Douglas.

[Replies also from W. B. H., J. H. M., L. S., C. C., H. J. B. C., W. C. B., E. A. F., and M. C. L.j

WALTER HADDON (11 S. iii. 128). Walter Haddon (1516-1572) was a fairly well- known personage in the reigns of Ed- ward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth. By the last- named he was appointed Master of Requests, an Ecclesiastical Commissioner, and Judge of the Prerogative Court. In his earlier days he had been Regius Professor of Civil Law at Cambridge, and had held in succession the Mastership of Trinity Hall and the Presidency of Magdalen College, Oxford. His life by the late Mr. Thompson Cooper fills nearly six columns in the ' D.N.B.,' and there is a long list of his works and of the authorities for his life in ' Athenae Cantabri- gienses,' where will be found the inscription on his monument in Christchurch, Newgate Street, as it existed before the great fire.

His * Lucubrationes ' and * Poemata ' were collected and edited by Thomas Hatcher in 1567. On p. 46 of the present volume of ' N. & Q.,' I identified a Latin line written in a Cambridge MS. as being taken from a poem of Haddon's. EDWARD BENSLY.

" Gualterus Haddonus " is, of course, " Dr. Walter Haddon, one of the finest Learning, and of the most Ciceronian stile in England," as Strype says in his * Life of Sir Thomas Smith,' p. 200 in the edition published in 1698. Haddon was the friend of Sir John Cheke, Sir Thomas Smith, Roger Ascham, and other famous men of Tudor times. To Ascham' s ' Toxophilus,' printed in 1545, ' Gualterus Haddonus Cantabrigiensis ' contributes a Latin poem of ten lines in which he praises the author and his book. A list of his works, mostly written in the then " universal lan- guage," is given in Lowndes's * Biblio- grapher's Manual of English Literature ' (Pickering's ed., 1834).

JOHN T. CURRY.

For a full account of the above see (original edition), vol. xxiii. p. 429.
 * Dictionary of National Biography '

A. R. BAYLEY.

ADDERS' FAT AS A CURE FOR DEAFXESS (US. iii. 69, 117). Whether this specific for deafness has the support of antiquity or not, there is no doubt that the belief, mentioned at the last reference, in prepara- tions from the viper as remedies for snake- bite is a very old one. See Pliny's ' Natural History,' Bk. xxix., ch. 4, 69, foil., where he mentions a method of boiling down vipers' fat in oil. Jeremy Taylor reminds us of the change of " theriacum " into a homely English word when, in his sermon on ' The Christian's Conquest over the Body of Sin,' he writes : " Non solum viperam terirmLS, sed ex ea antidotum conficimus ; we kill the viper, and make treacle of him ; that is, not only escape from, but get advantages by temptations." Readers of ' Lavengro ' will remember the old viper-hunter in chapter iv. who tells Borrow : "I hunt them mostly for the fat which they contain, out of which I make unguents which are good for various sore troubles, especially for the rheumatism." EDWARD BENSLY.

At the first reference the man killing adders is spoken of in the present tense as still carrying on operations on the line from Tunbridge Wells to Brighton. In the second reference a correspondent relates how a man was similarly employed near the same locality about sixty years ago. Jesse's ' Gleanings in Natural History,' first published about 1835, corroborates the second statement. The author says : " When I was lately at Brighton, I met with a man who employed himself in summer in catching adders, the fat of which he preserved and sold as a sovereign remedy for hurts and swellings." Is there anything hereditary in this employ- ment ? SCRUTATOR'S adder-killer cannot possibly be the same person that Jesse speaks of. O.

EAR- PIERCING (11 S. iii. 149). As to ear-piercing in boys for initiatory rites I know nothing, but from long experience in hospital work I can state that many cases have come before me in which the ears have been pierced for the cure of chronic eye disorders especially phlyctenular ophthal- mia and blepharitis. The procedure may not be wholly superstitious, because the slow healing of the wounded ears, likely to occur in such patients, might conceivably benefit the eyes or eyelids by acting as does a seton or blister. More scientific remedies have quite discredited setons, but fifty or sixty years ago these \\ere commonly used. A well-known ophthalmic surgeon