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NOTES AND QUERIES. [ii s. iv. OCT. 7, ion.

drew it from the pack, " without being told who they were."

It could " distinguish colours, persons, and names of kings " ; could drink like a human being, drink and sit up like a dog, and finally went round and begged for alms.

L. L. K.

[LADY RUSSELL contributed at 10 S. ii. 281 a very interesting article on Banks and his wonder- ful horse, drawn forth by a short note on Hans, the German prodigy, by our late Editor.]

THE BELLS OF BOSHAM. There are numer- ous legends of bells that have been stolen and that have proved too heavy a burden for the vessel that was to bear them away. There are stories, too, of subaqueous bells that are yet able to ring a message to the world above perhaps, as some one remarks, because they are wringing wet but the mode in which the Bosham bells are to be recovered is, to me, a novel expedient, and I feel sure that the following para- graph, furnished by The Morning Post of 16 September, will be read with interest by some of the brotherhood of * N. & Q.' now, and by many a searcher in its pages in later times :

"The architectural worker will find in Bosham Church a wealth of interesting matter ; it is Early Norman, or possibly late Saxon, in parts, and at any rate has several different architectural styles well illustrated and one or two unique features. The lover of legend will be told of the fate of the earlier bells how the Danes, driving up the river in their black war-galleys, harried and burned and pillaged, taking with them the bells of the church, which by the anger of the gods were made to pierce a hole through and sink the ships, while they them- selves found rest at the bottom of the creek. Legend also tells that any successful attempt to raise the bells must be made by the aid of a team of absolutely white oxen. On one occasion a bell was brought right up to the very bank, and poised on its side, but it fell back into the water just as another pull would have swayed it on to the land, and it was discovered on examination that there \vas a black hair in the coat of one of the team. Superstitious inhabitants bid you listen ts the sound of the submerged bells chiming in tune to their successors in the adjoining belfry."

ST. SWITHIN.

CHURCH CLOSED ON VICAR'S DEATH. It used to be the custom and may be so still in some places for persons who had lost a relative to stay away from church should a Sunday intervene between the death and the funeral. By so doing they were supposed to " show respect to the memory " of the departed. Many years ago I heard a story in which this custom reached the climax of absurdity, for on the

death of a certain clergyman the church- wardens shut up the church in token of respect ! This I took to be a fiction.

But a correspondent of The Church Times has sent to that paper a copy of a broadsheet, which runs as follows :

In consequence of the lamented death of the

Rev. J. Kirk,

the Churchwardens have thought it proper, as a mark of respect to his memory, that Divine Service should not be performed in St. Mary's Church, until after his interment, which will not take place before the ensuing week.

Scarborough, Nov. 9th, 1827. The correspondent adds : "I think the accompanying gem deserves to be put on record." And so think I.

E. L. H. TEW. Upham Rectory.

THE CASSITERIDES, SCILLY ISLES, AND LYONESSE. Herodotus. Pliny, Strabo, Festus Avienus, Tacitus, Diodorus Siculus, and Publius Crassus all contain allusions to the Cassiterides. Among more modern writers on the subject I have noted the following :

Leland, 'Itinerary' (1533).

Camden, ' Britannia ' (1599).

Carew, ' Survey of Cornwall ' (1602).

Robert Heath, ' Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly ' (1750).

Rev. John Troutbeck, 'Scilly' (1751).

Borlase, 'Antiquities' (1754).

Borlase, ' Observations on the Scilly Isles ' (1756).

Gilbert White, ' Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne.'

Da vies Gilbert, ' History of Cornwall.'

Hitchins and Drew, 'History of Cornwall ' (1817).

Yarrell, ' British Birds.'

Rev. I. W. North, 'A Week in the Isles of Scilly '(1850).

Walter Cooper Dendy, ' The Beautiful Islets of Britaine ' (1860).

J. O. Halliwell, * Rambles in Western Cornwall by the Footsteps of the Giants, with Notes on the Celtic Remains of the Land's End District and the Islands of Scilly '(1861).

Dr. G. Smith, 'Cassiterides' (1863).

Sir Walter Besant, ' Armorel of Lyonesse.

Baring-Gould, ' Book of the West.'

T. Thornton Macklin, M.D., 4 The Climate of the Isles of Scilly.'

Great Western Railway Company, ' The Cornish Riviera ' (1905).

Transactions of the Geological Society of Corn- wall.

J. C. Tonkin and Prescott Row, ' Lyonesse,' with preface by Sir Walter Besant (the Homeland Handbook of the Isles of Scilly, 1906).

Robert Shackleton, ' The Strangest Corner of England' (Harper's Magazine, some time between 1904 and 1910).

Q (A. T. Quiller-Couch), 'Major Vigoureux' (about 1907).

J. Harris Stone, 'England's Riviera' (1909).