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NOTES AND QUERIES. [ii s. iv. JULY i, 1911.

Maginn ? Above all, if we pronounce Allan Cunningham an offender beyond the pale of pardon, how are we to acquit Burns, whose alterations and amplifications of old Scottish songs are admitted to have laid the world of literature under great and peculiar obligations ? SCOTUS.

AUTHORS OF QUOTATIONS WANTED (11 S. iii. 468). M. M.'s second quotation, " Smug and silver Trent," is from the First Part of ' King Henry IV.,' Act III. sc. i.

G. T. W.

M. M.'s third query has recalled some lines I saw scribbled in a book circa 1854 :

The cook, her book,

Long may she live herein to look ;

Not only to look, but to understand,

For learning is better than houses or land,

For when house is gone and money spent.

Then learning is most excellent.

EDWARD G. VARNISH.

SHEEP: THEIR COLOUR (11 S. iii. 466). The belief that the colour of sheep and cattle, and the hair and complexion of human beings, are affected by the water that they drink is very old. Burton refers to it in the ' Anatomy of Melancholy,' i. 2. 2. 1 :

" Axius, or as now called Verduri, the fairest riuer in Macedonia, makes all eattell blacke that tast of it. Aleacman now Peleca, another streame in Thessaly, makes eattell most part white, si potui ducas."

Pliny. 'Xat. Hist.,' ii. 230 and xxxi. 13, 14. besides the Axius and Haliacmon, mentions several springs and rivers sup- posed to possess similar properties.

Addison in his 'Remarks on Several Parts of Italy : wrote :

<k ln my way hence to Terni I saw the river Clitunmus, celebrated by so many of the poets fora particular .juality in its waters of making cattle white that drink of it. The inhabitants of that country have still the same opinion of it, as I found upon inquiry, and have a great many oxen of a whitish colour to confirm them in it." Bohn's edition of Addisorrs work?, vol. i., p. 409.

EDWARD BENSLY. Aberystwyth.

_ SIR ^WILLIAM ASHTOX, KT., M.P. (11 S. iii. 387, 477). A pedigree of the Asshetons is to be found in Foster's ' Lancashire Families,' and if SUTOC.S will refer to it, he will find full particulars of the relation- ship between the Asshetons of Great Lever and the Asshetons of Midclleton.

Mr. Samuel Ashton, who appears to have lived in the parish of Middleton, and who is alluded to by SUTOCS, was not, so far as

I know, descended from the distinguished family who owned large estates in that neighbourhood, and whose seat was Middle- ton Hall. I am not aware of the existence, at the present time, of any male descendants of the Asshetons of Middleton.

A short pedigree of the family to which Mr. Samuel Ashton belonged is, however, given in Foster's ' Lancashire Families,' but no connexion with the Asshetons of Middleton Hall is attempted to be shown. These Ashtons acquired great wealth as cotton manufacturers and Manchester mer- chants, I believe.

The late Mr. Ralph Assheton of Down- ham Hall (M.P. for Clitheroe 1868-80) told me about ten years ago that his father, Mr. William Assheton of Downham Hall, became the head of the Assheton family on the death of the well-known Mr. Thos. Assheton- Smith, of Tedworth, Hampshire, and of Vaynol, Carnarvonshire, sometime M.P. for Andover. W. H.

A MURDEROUS LONDON BOATMAN OF 1586 (11 S. iii. 446). MR. AXON does not think Fournier's narrative very convincing, but the story has perhaps some foundation arising out of loss of life on the river. It may not be wholly irrelevant to mention that an Act of 1603 (1 James I. c. 16) recites the loss of life caused by unskilful ferry- men between Windsor and Gravesend, and proceeds to regulate the apprenticeship necessary before becoming a ferryman.

P. A. McELWAINE.

ST. PATRICK : ST. GEORGE (11 S. iii. 467). There is absolutely no trace, in any of the ancient or mediaeval lives of St. Patrick, of the legend of the saint using the shamrock to illustrate the doctrine of the Trinity not even in the most legendary of them all, the twelfth- century life by Jocelynof Furness. It is a modern myth which has caught the popular imagination, and can be traced back, according to Prof. Stokes, no further than A.D. 1600. Apart from St. Patrick, the Irish reverence for the trefoil may be much more ancient, dating possibly to Druidic times. A prolonged controversy about St. Patrick and the shamrock took place in ' N. & Q.' nearly fifty years ago (Third and Fourth Series, beginning in 1862).

As to St. George, no one can possibly assign a date to his first connexion with the dragon. The legend, of course, comes from Eastern antiquity, as the venerable myths of Apollo and the Python, Bellerophon