Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 3.djvu/41

 ii s. in. JAN. u, i9ii.i NOTES AND QUERIES.

in Derby a couple of suits for him, taking to do it the best part of a week. We had him seated on a big table in the kitchen-place, and as he went on a good eye was kept on " the cabbage " he made, for it was an article of faith with all that the tailor "cabbaged" all that he possibly could. There was not a village which could support a tailor.

It was different with the cobbler, one being able to do all that was needful in patching, soleing, and heeling, as well as making for a couple of villages. Women needed but little " in shoe and leather," for all rough work, indoor and outdoor, was done in pattens, which a handy cobbler made, all but tlie ring - irons fastened to the wooden sole,

The itinerant tailor went to most of the farmhouses. The women folk helped each other to make their own clothes, but there was a dressmaker who cut out, and made bonnets. Most women made their own caps-. THOS. RATCLIFFE.

WESTMINSTER CHIMES (11 S. ii. 509). The Westminster chimes are, subject to a more or less different arrangement of the notes, so much like many other chimes that it seems rather open to doubt whether they were in fact arranged to an ancient hymn-notation. The words attributed to them I have long understood to be

Lord, through this hour Be thou our Guide. For by thy power No foot shall slide.

D. O.

' WALRUS AND THE CARPENTER ' PARODY : "SACKBUT" (11 S. ii. 469, 496). I may perhaps be permitted to record an anony- mous witticism recalled to me by the men- tion of the sackbut.

When I was at Oxford ten years ago, the vogue of " ping-pong " was at its height, and in many a college room the game was kept up till far into the night, to the no small annoyance of those who desired either to sleep or to work. The nuisance became so pronounced that at length the Dean of a certain college affixed to the notice-board an intimation to the effect that " In future ping-pong will be considered as a piano, and is therefore prohibited after 11 P.M." (pianos were prohibited after that hour). The following day appeared beneath the official edict the following parody : "In future the buttery cat will be considered as a sackbut, is therefore prohibited at all hourV

H. 4, B.

KNOTS IN HANDKERCHIEFS : INDIAN CUS- TOM (US. ii. 506). This custom is supposed to have had its origin in the shoe-string (or boot-lace), corrigia, suspended from charters, in which the subscribing party made a knot. J. HOLD EN MACMICHAEL.

CORPSE BLEEDING IN PRESENCE OF THE

MURDERER (US. ii. 328, 390, 498). This superstition was not confined to the "vulgar." On 21 August, 1669, in a letter from Mr. Henshaw to Sir Robert Paston, there is the following item of news :

" Monday I carried my wife and daughter to Greenwich to see the Granpois [grampus], which, though it was but a very little whale, is yet a very great fish ; the skin, like that of all Cetaceous animals, is like that of an eel's, and the flesh as white as a conger's ; the humours of his body, though he was dead, were in a brisk fer- mentation, and out of a hole where they struck the iron that killed him, there yested out blood and oil like barm out of a barrel of new ale. It put me in mind of some slain innocent which bleeds at the approach of his murderers ; but the stench was so uncouth that it was able to discompose my meditations." Hist. MSS. Com., Sixth Report, p. 367.

The correspondent, Thomas Henshaw, was a barrister, and one of the first members of the Royal Society, and contributed several papers to the Philosophical Transactions ; he also edited Skinner's ' Etymologicon Linguae Anglicanse,' 1671. The recipient was likewise a member of the Royal Society, and considered " a person of great learning."

A. RHODES.

In John Timbs's book on * Predictions realized in Modern Times ' (London, 1880) is a note on ' Murder Wounds Bleeding Afresh ' (p. 58). Timbs quotes Dray ton's lines on this subject : If the vile actors of the heinous deed Near the dead body happily be brought, Oft 't hath been proved the breathless corpse will bleed.

The popular belief existed in Scotland as late as 1668, and was referred to with approval by a Crown counsel, Sir George Mackenzie, in a speech made at the trial of Philip Standsfield. H. G. WARD.

Aachen.

ARTEPHIUS, * DE CHARACTERIBUS PLANE- TARUM ' (11 S. ii. 407). Is there any trust- worthy evidence that this book has ever been written or published ? The same author's ' Clavis Majoris Sapientiso ' ap- peared among the ' Opuscula qusedam Chemica ' at Frankfurt, 1614. Copies of this are in the British Museum and the Biblio- theque Nationale in Paris.