Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 4.djvu/484

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NOTES AND QUERIES. m s. iv. DEC. 9, mi.

It puts forth webs in narrow denies, their thickness vying with that of a strong rope ; scarcely a tiger, a leopard, an elk or a deer touches the net, but it gets in so complete a tangle as to be unable to escape; thus it perishes and rots, whereupon the spider eats it. For the seamen who Would wander over the place to gather fire- wood it is therefore necessary to go a hundred of them together, each handling a flambeau with which to burn out the webs. Some one opines that man could walk the sea without drowning if he put on shoes made of the spider's skin.

" During the period of Yuen-ho, a man named Su Tan went several tens of miles over Mount Tsioh-shan, and beheld afar amongst the crags a large white brilliant orbicular light 10 feet in diameter. Thinking it was a sacred spot, he approached it. But no sooner had he touched the light than he uttered a long shriek and was instantly enveloped with webs so densely as to look like a cocoon. At the same time there ran towards him a black spider as huge as a basin. His servant cut open the webs with a sharp sword, but found his master already dead with his brain abstracted.

" Fei Min, passing across a mountain, met a spider which began to surround him with its webs. He shot an arrow, which killed it. Its shape was like a wheel. He brought home several feet square of its webs, and used to apply an inch square of them to the sword-cuts of his servants to stop the bleeding, which it did instantaneously.

" Once upon a time a Taoist temple near Mount Tai had its old belvedere blown down by a storm. It was found full of human bones, amidst which an aged spider squatted ; it was as big as a tea-kettle of 5 litres capacity, and measured several feet round when its legs were extended. As previously many children of residents in the vicinity had mysteriously disap- peared, it was now concluded they had been netted and devoured by this monster. So they burnt it, and its stench was quite perceptible at the distance of ten miles and over."

The Japanese warrior Minamoto 110 Yorimitsu (d. 1021) is reputed to have anni- hilated a dangerous spider that measured 7 ft. in length (Oowada, ' Yokyoku Tsukai,' 1906, torn. i. p. 151).

KUMAGUSTJ MlNAKATA. Tanabe, Kii, Japan.

"FENT" : TRADE TERM ( 1 1 S. iv. 410,458). The word is not confined to Lancashire. It is seen over shops in Sheffield ; and the 'N.E.D.,' which gives its history, has one example from a Whitby glossary.

G. C. MOORE SMITH.

"Fent" is also used in Yorkshire, and I once saw an announcement concerning the sale of fents in York itself. As MR. BRESLAR knows, fents are, generally speaking, rem- nants, and particularly rejected ends taken off woven materials when they are removed from the loom. In French fente is a split, crack, crevice, slit, and so forth.

ST. SWITHIN.

BARNARD FAMILY (11 S. iv. 328). In The Home Counties Magazine for January, 1909, appeared an article on Sir John Barnard, Lord Mayor of London, by W. L. Rutton, F.S.A., where mention is made of his son John Barnard. He is stated to have lived, apparently unmarried, as a rich man and collector of works of art, in Berkeley Square, and died worth 200,OOOZ., and having no issue he left to his nephew f Thomas Hankey, Esq., his real and personal estate, and to his " cousin " Joshua Payne his estate called Playtiatch, in the parish of Sunning, Oxfordshire. He died in Berkeley Square in November, 1784, and was buried on 1 December in the vault under the chapel of the burying-ground of his parish, St. George's, Hanover Square, on the Uxbridge Road. So far as can be ascertained there is no memorial to his memory. If he were married, the register of that parish might possibly give his wife's Christian name, as her remains would most probably rest in the same vault with his. L. H. CHAMBERS.

LEARNED HORSES (11 S. iv. 285, 354). The story of Banks' s wonderful horse " Morocco " ascending to the vane of St. Paul's is, of course, fictitious. After the fire of 1561 the steeple was never re- built, and until April, 1566, the roof of the nave was under repair. The horse was in being circa 1595, when there was no vane to climb to. George Daniel, who possessed a copy of Banks' s excessively rare pamphlet, brings a story of the horse's intelligence into ' Merrie England in the Olden Time,' ii. 285. ALECK ABRAHAMS.

"BURWAY" (11 S. iv. 169). This seems the same word as burwe, which the ' N.E.D.' explains as an obsolete form of " borough " and " burrow." Probably the former signi- fication is the one required.

N. W. HILL. New York.

' SLANG TERMS AND THE GIPSY TONGUE ' (11 S. iv. 409). I do not know the articles in Baily's Magazine, and I cannot refer to them ; but it is possible that they are the work of Mr J. Crowther M. Harrison, a Hull timber-merchant, who died in 1891.

W. C. B.

FROST ARMS AT WINCHESTER (11 S. iv. 330). With reference to MR. FROST'S in- quiry, I find that both in Berry and Edmond- son the Frost arms are given : Arg., on a chevron sa., between three owls gu., a quatre- foil az. H. B. R. j