Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 3.djvu/496

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NOTES AND QUERIES. &IS.IIL JUNE 21, 1911.

Provence, who was alive about 1292, but died before 1315, married Annabel (or Ama- bella), a daughter of Sir Thomas de Bam- ville, of Storeton, and probably widow of Hugh de Corona, lord of Adlington in Cheshire. Simon held the same lands in Little Saughall for life by grant of Edward I.

Who was this Guy de Provence ? Ormerod says he was the ancestor of the Oldfields of Northwich, of whom there appears to be a pedigree in MS. Hajl. 2119, 125. Mr. Sulley in his ' History of Wirral,' p. 73, speaks of " the famous knight Guy de Pro- vence," and elsewhere calls him " County Guy." Why " famous," and why " County Guy " ? The only " County Guy " I know of is the one named in the song sung by the Lady of the Lute in ' Quentin Durward,' chap, iv., and he seems to have been an imaginary person.

A remarkable fact is that the lands in Little Saughall retained the description of " lately held by Guy (or Simon) de Pro- vence" down to the seventeenth century.

R. S. B.

LUSH AND LUSHINGTON SURNAMES. Is

there no explanation forthcoming of these fairly common names, given up by Canon Bardsley ?, H. P. L.

'A VOICE FROM THE BUSH.' (11 S. iii. 48, 114,214,271.)

ALTHOUGH the authorship of this poem has been satisfactorily settled by your corre- spondent C. W. at the last reference, a few words in corroboration of his statement may not be undesirable, and I therefore venture to append some extracts from Mr. J. Howlett- Ross's ' Memoir of the Life of Adam Lindsay Gordon,' published by William W. Gibbings in 1892 :

" Of the miscellaneous poems hitherto appearin- in the poet's collected works, the authenticity of ' A Voice from the Bush ' has been doubted, and the late Marcus Clarke has been credited with inserting and altering a poem not written by Gordon. As a matter of fact, Clarke always had doubts as to Gordon being the author of the poem. Referring to the subject on one occasion, he said : ' For my own part I do not think that Gordon wrote " A Voice from the Bush " at all. The lines are spirited certainly, but rugged to a degree. Gordon's ear for rhythm was acute as is Kendall's or Swinburne's. The penultimate stanza, beginning " I watch them, but from afar," is surely not by the pen which wrote the ' Ballad of Britomarte." ' He further says: Mr, J. C. F. Johnson and Mr. Lavington Glyde

both write positively asserting that Mr. Clark told them that the verses were written by Mr. Morris. " When speaking to Mr. John Howard Clark about some verses of my own, ' Found Dead,' about the authorship of which a question was raised," says Mr. Johnson, " he distinctly told me that the poem now credited to Gordon was written by Mr. Morris." Mr. Lavington Glyde is even more circumstantial. " I well remember," says he, " saying to my old friend Mr. J. Howard Clark, ' Who is your new poet ? ' on the day when those verses first appeared as ' Under the Trees ' in ' Geoffrey Crabthome,' for I recognized the true ring of genuine poetry in them. He declined to tell me, but on my pressing him, whispered ' the Cherub,' as Mr. Morris was popularly called in tho=edays. I thought Mr. Clark was joking at first, but he assured me that Mr. Morris was the author, and I believe his information was correct. Soon after Mr. Morris left the colony, I was surprised to find the piece, under the title of ' A Voice from the Bush,' in Temple Bar of May, 1873." '

"... .There is, however, indisputable evidence that the poem was not written by Gordon, it having been emphatically claimed by Mr. Mow- bray Morris in a letter written some years ago to Major Ferguson of the S.A. Rifle Brigade. He writes :

" ' Certainly the verses are mine. I remember both the time and place where I wrote them, lying on my back in a cave at Robe in the autumn of 1871. . . .1 was not aware that there was any similarity, unconscious or otherwise, to any verses of Gordon's. I have two volumes of his verse by me, and I cannot detect any conscious plagiarisms. Certainly there were none con- sciously committed. Mine they are, every line and every word, and they have no business among the writings of any one else.' "

" Plagiarism " is an ugly word, but there were certainly some unconscious imitations, which were perhaps not unnatural in the case of one whose mind was imbued with the wi itings of Gordon. Thus in ' The Sick Stockrider ' we find the lines : With a running fire of stockwhips and a fiery run of hoofs,

Oh ! the hardest day was never then too hard i

In ' A Voice from the Bush ' are the follow- ing : '

Older, but men to whom

In the pride of their manhood strong, The hardest icork is never too hard, Nor the longest day too long.

Again, in ' The Sick Stockrider ': For good undone, and gifts misspent, and resolu- tions vain,

'Tis somewhat late to trouble. This I know / should live the same life over if I had to live again,

And the chances are I go where most men go.

In ' A Voice from the Bush ' :

Of the seed I 've sown in pleasure,

The harvest I 'm reaping in pain ; Could I put my life a lew years back,

Would I live thai life again ? Would I ? O course I would ;

What glorious days they were !