Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 4.djvu/62

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NOTES AND QUERIES. rn s. iv. JULV is, mi.

saints' days are fewer. With St. Luke, 18 October, autumn begins ; he cools the soil and fits it for sowing.

At the new year critical days are again observed. Candlemas, 2 February, is criti- cal for the weather of the next forty days. A quotation in the ' E.D.D.' under there are often three stormy days which February has borrowed from January. This idea of one month borrowing days from the preceding, or from the following, month, for good or for evil, seems to be widespread. In Italy there are i giorni della Ve-cchia, at Mid-Lent, when expected spring often begins with very cold weather. For the reason of this name I must return to Pro- vence, though doubtless Italian folk-lorists may be able to give the Italian legend of these days, the Provencal days
 * February ' shows that in the Highlands

quand la Vieio encagnado mando a Febri6 sa reguignado (' Mireio,' vi.),

when the angry old woman sends a kick back to February. These jour de la Vieio are the last three of February and the first three of March. The legendary old woman, seeing February about to pass off favourably for her pasture, said, like Dante's blackbird (' Purgatorio,' xiii.), " Now I fear thee no longer " : but February went to March and borrowed three days from him, and was thus able to punish the old woman by six days of such cold that her flock of sheep perished. The old woman kicked : she bought some cows, but, not having learnt wisdom, she rejoiced again towards the end of March. This month, having three days left, borrowed four days from April, and punished the old woman's cows so effectually that these seven days are called li Vaqueirieu or li jour negre de la Vaco, the black days of the cow. Since then farmers have taken care not to halloo till they are well out of the risk of the bad weather likely to come in the critical days from February till the end of June.

I have told the story only of the Knights' days and of borrowed days, but a good many saints throughout the Southern calendar, which is different from the Northern, have something said for or against them as influencing weather.

It is not easy to say how far the saint, or the day bearing his name, is made respon- sible for the weather, but the Southern peasant reckons seasons rather by saints' days than by dates ; and in a country where a saint who fails to send rain in answer to prayer may find his statue put out in a sun-

burnt dry ditch to see how he likes the- drought, it seems that general opinion considers the saints responsible for the- weather, rather than the dates attributed! to them in the calendar.

EDWARD NICHOLSON. Neuilly.

[For St. S within and St. Medard see ante p. 45 ; for " borrowing days " in England and? Provence see the notes by ST. SWITHIN at 9 S. xii- 23, 351.]

MUMMY USED AS PAINT BY ARTISTS^ (US. iv. 7). In the lists issued by many artists' colourmen of England, France,. Germany, and Italy an oil-paint figures as- mummy, momie, Mumie, or mummia. I think the question asked by MR. G~ McMuRRAY of New York may best be an- swered by the following quotation from my ' Chemistry of Paints and Painting,' 3rd r ed., 1901, pp. 236-7 :

" ' Mummy ' as a pigment is inferior to prepared but superior to raw asphalt, inasmuch as rfc has been* submitted to a considerable degree of heat, and has thereby lost some of its volatile hydrocarbons^ Moreover, it is usual to grind up the bones and other parts of the mummy together, so that the resulting powder has more solidity and is less fusible than the asphalt alone would be. A London colourrnan informs me that one Egyptian- mummy furnishes sufficient material to satisfy the demands of his customers for twenty years^ It is, perhaps, scarcely necessary to add that some- samples of the pigment sold as ' mummy ' are- spurious. Mummy was certainly used as an? oil-paint at least as early as the close of the six- teenth century."

ARTHUR H. CHURCH.

Shelsley, Kew Gardens.

' The Stanford Dictionary of Anglicised* Words and Phrases ' (Camb. Univ. Press, 1892) quotes, s.v. mummia, from Richard? Haydocke's ' Tract e containing the Artes of Curious Paintinge, Carvinge, and Build- inge,' 1598, Book iii. p. 99, translated from Lomatius : " The shadowes of carnation' are the earth of Campania, and Vmber called Falsalo, burnt verditer, aspaUum,. mummia." Lomatius is Giovan Paolo Lomazzo, who wrote ' Trattato dell' Arte della Pittura, Scoltura, ed. Architettura.'

With regard to the medicinal use of mummy, Dr. Greenhill, in commenting on Sir T. Browne's ' Hydriotaphia,' chap, v., " Mummy is become merchandise, Mizraim cures wounds, and Pharaoh is sold for balsams," remarks that it appeared in * The London Pharmacopreia ' as late as 1721.

Mummy was at one time a regular article
 * of commerce. Southey in his ' Cominon-
 * place Book,' iii. 605, has a note from a passage-