Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 3.djvu/389

 n s. m. MAY 20, ion.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

383

" an oratory in the vill which is called Assing, .... by the' resolve of the inhabitants them- selves, who were the founders of this same house of God."

" At the time of the Conquest," says Mr. Reichel, " the tithes were, in most places, in the hands of laymen " ; but, as he has shown in another paper (Trans. Devon Assoc., vol. xxx. p. 270), the tithe under King Edgar's Law (A.D. 958) " was to be paid to the ancient minster to which the district belongs, both from a thane's inland and from the villagers' land, wherever the plough goes."

Another enactment cited by him (Law 4 of Ethelred, 1014 A.D.) seems to hint at a more intimate relation between the church and the manor, thus :

" We charge that every man, for the love of God and His saints, pay the church shot and his lawful tithe, as he did in the days of our ancestors, when he did it best, i.e., the tenth acie. wherever the plough goes."

By the phrase " the tenth* acre M we are, perhaps, to understand, in this context, the produce thereof ; but does it not at least contain a suggestion of an original apportionment to the church, or its repre- sentative, of the tenth strip in each field, under the communal system of co-aration ? and may not such, in some districts at least, have been the method of carrying out the early Saxon dedication of "a tenth part of the land to God " (Trans, Devon Assoc., vol. xxx. p. 296) ?

As to the contribution of church shot (ciricsceat), Mr. Reichel quotes from Law 4 of Ine, King of the West Saxons, in 693 : " Church shot shall be paid according to the roof and hearth where a man shall be dwelling at midwinter " ; and he requotes from Kemble (ii. 560) documents relating to the churches of Wirecestre and Perscora, pro- nouncing the amount of church shot due to each to be *' one horse load of corn from each hide of land, whether free or village."

The apparent disparity between the reckoning in the one case being on the land, and in the other on the house-roof, vanishes for those who accept the theory advanced by Mr. S. O. Addy* (which indeed it would seem to corroborate), viz., that there was a fixed correspondence between the acreage of an agricultural tenant's holding or allot- ment and the size of his house, as calculated, for taxational purposes, on the number of

House.' See a series of contributions on the above subject to The Athenccum and to ' N. & Q.' in U>01 and 1902.
 * Author of * The Evolution of the English

gafols or " forks " (set at the prescribed intervals of about 16 feet) upholding its ridge-beam. ETHEL LEGA-WEEKES.

BURTON'S ' ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY.'

(See 9 S. xi. 181, 222, 263, 322,441 ; xii. 2; 62, 162, 301, 362, 442 ; 10 S. i. 42, 163, 203,. 282 ; ii. 124, 223, 442 ; iii. 203 ; iv. 25, 523 ; v. 146 ; vi. 143; vii. 103, 184; x. 383.)

THERE is a note by the present writer on the- title of this book in The Modern Language Review, vol. iv. p. 233. We are prepared to find a certain family likeness in dedica- tions, but Burton's to Lord Berkeley is- exceptionally near of kin to that in which the author of ' Mundus Alter et Idem ' inscribed his work to Henry, Earl of Hunting- don : " Honoratissimo Domino nee minu* virtute sua quam splendore generis illustri Dom. Henrico Comiti Huntingdoniae Mun- dum suum supplex vovet Mercurius Britan- nicus." Hall's book was not unknown to Burton, and. his pseudonym is mentioned close to the beginning of ' Democritus Junior to the Reader.'

Some of Burton's obligations to classical' and Renaissance writers in his Latin verses " ad librum suum " have been already in- dicated (9 S. xii. 362 ; 10 S. iv. 25). With the second line,

Te nisi fcelicem fecerit Alma dies, may be compared Manilius, iii. 187,

Tune si forte dies nascentem exceperit alma, which occurs in a part of the ' Astronomica " that should have had a special attraction fos- Burton as it deals with the twelve " Athla " and the method of casting a horoscope. In. Joseph Scaliger's commentary on Manilius; (1579) a figure of his own " genitura " is. inserted at this place.

L. 3, Vade tamen quocunque lubet, quascunque-

per oras.

The latter part is from Claudian, ' Pane- gyricus dictus Probino et Olybrio con- sulibus,' 133, " Pro te quascumque per oras. ! Ibimus." The run of the whole line suggests John of Salisbury's ' Entheticus in Policraticum,' 67,

Confer ei quoscuinque duces, quoscumque

potentes.

L. 5, " mystamque saluta | Musarum quern vis. ' ' Burton is very fond of * ' mysta ' ' and " Musarum mysta." Cp. I. ii. iii. xv., p. 140, ed. 6 ; Shilleto, i. 369, " he is our- Amulet, our Sun [the marginal quotation ' Nemo est quem non Phoebus, 1 &c., for which no^author or reference is given, is.