Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 4.djvu/83

 us. iv. JULY 2.M911.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

77

GORCOCK will find the lines quoted by him in Menenius's speech (' Coriolanus,' I. i. 101). v^hakspere of course got the parable from North's ' Plutarch.' I believe something to the same effect is to be found in Camden's
 * Remains.' P. A. MCELWAINE.

2, Lansdowne Gardens, Dublin.

The exact words are found in Shake- speare's ' Coriolanus,' Act I. sc. i.

Menenius Agrippa was the author of the fable, which is briefly related by Livy y was, according to general opinion, composed in 1610, it might well be that the dramatist made use of the version given in Camden's * Remaines,' the first edition of which appeared in 1605. See the chapter entitled ' Graue Speeches and wittie Apo- thegmes of worthie Personages of this Realme in former times.' There is considerable similarity, at all events, in the language employed by the two writers.

JOHN T. CURRY.

The apologue is in ' Coriolanus,' Act I. by Menenius Agrippa is given in Plutarch tLife of Coriolanus) and Livy, ii. 32. The fable seems to be of remote antiquity, and is found in India. EDWARD BENSLY.
 * c. i. The story of its political application

[MB. E. E. STREET, MB. W. JAGGARD, and MR. 'ToM JONES also thanked for replies.]

SON AND MOTHER (11 S-. iv. 9). The story is told by the Spanish humanist J. L. Vives, "who describes it as well known in book ii. chap. x. of his * De Institutione Feminse Christianas,' dedicated to Catharine of Arragon. The young man was being led to execution. He justified his treatment of his mother to the bystanders on the ground that if she had punished him when a boy for his first theft, that of a schoolfellow's book, he would never have become the criminal that he then was.

There is a curious similarity in one point between this story and that related by Valerius Maximus, III. iii. ext. 3. Zeno, the Eleatic philosopher, who had taken part in a conspiracy to assassinate the tyrant Nearchus, was being tortured. Pretending that he wished to make a private communica- tion to Nearchus, he was unbound from the rack, and used his opportunity to bite off the tyrant's ear. EDWARD BENSLY.

GORCOCK will find this story in Fables (No. 37 in an edition of 1632, Leyden).

J. B.

BATTLE ON THE WEY : CARPENTER, CRESSINGHAM, AND ROWE FAMILIES (US. iv. 24). MR. PIERPOINT has brought to light a document of peculiar interest, and, in- cidentally, has indicated the manner in which it may possibly be accounted for. The " cunning Contrivance " ascribed in the document to Hugh Cressingham is identical (mutatis mutandis) with the strata- gem attributed by Blind Harry to Sir William Wallace at the battle of Stirling in 1297, where Cressingham was slain. Blind Harry tells how Wallace visited the bridge over the Forth before the English army appeared on the scene, taking with him a skilled workman

A wricht the suttellast at thar was,

And ordand him to saw the burd in twa ....

The tothir end he ordand for to be,

How it suld stand on thre rowaris off tre,

Quhen ane war out, that the laiff doun suld fall

Him selff wndyr he ordand thar with all,

Bownd on the tresl in a creddill to sit,

To louss the pyn quhen Wallace leit him witt.

Bot with a horn, quhen it was tyme to be,

In all the ost suld no man blaw bot he.

And so, at the blast of Wallace's horn, the man in the cradle (whose name, according to the minstrel, was John Wright) knocked out the pin, and the bridge gave way, drowning those who were crossing at the time, and leaving the English army divided in two.

It may further be pointed out that Wallace, the Scottish patriot leader, is generally termed by English chroniclers William " le Waleys " or " the Welshman," from a mistaken impression that he was a native of Wales instead of being a man whose ancestors had lived in Scotland for more than a century before his birth. This mistake has been laid hold of by the compiler of the Carpenter document for the purpose, as it would seem, of presenting a kind of topsy- turvy version of acknowledged history.

The part played by Hugh the carpenter in the English version is paralleled by that assigned to John the wright in Scottish annals. Scottish historical writers, it is true, reject Blind Harry's account of the stratagem adopted by Wallace. At the same time, the minstrel's story has obtained a strong hold on local tradition. Describing the battle of Stirling in the ' Ordnance Gazetteer,' the late F. H. Groome says :

" The cognomen of ' Pin ' Wright was given to the man who undertook to ' louss the pyn ' ; and a descendant who died recently in Stirling still bore the name, the family having for their coat of arms a carpenter's axe, the crest being a mailed arm grasping an axe, and the motto