Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 5.djvu/397

 ii s.v. APRIL 27, i9i2.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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Customs and all other Officers and Ministers whom it may concern.

I have used the words " copyright " and "pirated" as being close enough to the meanings in the Latin, English, and French phrases. ROBERT PIERPOINT.

INSCRIPTION AT STA. MARIA DEGLI ANGELI, ROME. Tn the Bodleian Library, among the ' Carte Papers,' vol. ccviii. (Xaime's Papers), is the following note :

. " Journal du sejour de S.M.B. a Borne, 1717 [James III.}. Lundi 21 [Juin] Jour anniver- saire de la naissance du Roy. . . .Vers 1'heure a peu pres de la naissance du Roy Mgr. Bianchini s'etant transporte a 1'Eglise des Chartreux y fit placer une inscription gravee sur du cuivre dans un endroit ou le soleil doit luire justement dessus le jour et heure de la ditte naissance en memoire de ce que S.M. s'est trouvee ce jour la a Rome cominencant sa 30 me annee dans le moment in erne que le soleil est dans le solstice a son plus haut point de FEcliptique ; et ce qui est plus remar- quable selon Mgr. Bianchini, ce n'est justement qu'apres une revolution de 29 ans complets que le soleil se peut retrouver exactement a ce point al'heure precise que S.M. a et6 nee." Fos. 349 v., 350.

Does the above inscription still exist in situ in the church of Sta. Maria degli Angeli ? R. TWIGGE, F.S.A.

LONGFELLOW'S SONNET ON ST. JOHN'S, CAMBRIDGE. This begins :

I stood beneath the tree, whose branches shade Thy western window, Chapel of St. John ! And hear its leaves repeat their benison On him whose hand thy stones memorial laid.

As this sonnet stands (Albion ed.) between another on ' Woodstock Park ' and a third on 'Boston' (Line.), the reader naturally takes it to refer to our St. John's College, Cambridge, and its chapel. This was con- secrated in 1869, its foundation stone having been laid in 1864 by Mr. Henry Hoare, a generous contributor to the cost of the tower. In 1868 Longfellow visited Cambridge, and also St. John's College, as appears from his ' Poems of Places ' (1876) all of which relate to England and Wales. The sonnet first appears, I believe, in an edition of 1879. Unfortunately no tree, in living memory, ever stood on the spot described, nor is the expression " stories memorial " quite suit- able to a foundation or corner stone.

There is no doubt that the poet means " St. John's Memorial Chapel (Cambridge,

U.S.) built in 1870 by Robert M. Mason of

Boston as a memorial of his wife and brother .... not only for the students of the (Protestant Epis- copal Theological) School, but also as a free church for the students of Harvard." ' Harvard and its Surroundings,' by King and Ivy, 1878, 7th ed., 1886.

The expression " stones memorial " now becomes clear, and the "benison"- has ; more point. Neither tree nor sonnet is mentioned, but at p. 86 is an engraving which shows a tree close to the west window. The school is not connected with the Uni- versity : hence neither it nor the chapel is mentioned in the ' Official Guide ' to the latter (1899*). There are several editions of Longfellow with notes, but in none have I found any note on this passage.

The church and school, to judge from the map, are within a stone's throw of the poet's old home, Craigie House. The St. John meant is, as appears from the rest of the sonnet, the Evangelist. W. A. C,

Cambridge.

HUMAN SKULLS AS DRINKING-CUPS. It may be worth while to observe as pointed out, for example, by O. Schroder in his- ' Real-Lexikon der Indogermanischen Alter- tumskunde ' of 1901, p. 277 how closely related in different languages are various expressions signifying a cup, or bowl, and a skull or cranium. Compare, e.g., Fr. tele and Med. Lat. testa, M.H. Germ, kopf and Med. Lat. cuppa. The statements of ancient and mediaeval historians, such as Herodotus, Livy, and Paulus Diaconus, frequently quoted, to the effect that human skulls were used as drinking-cups among several barbarous tribes, have been corroborated by excavations of prehistoric human skulls which served this purpose with savage or primitive races all over the earth. There is, however, the strange phenomenon to be noted that such drinking- cups were, and are still, found to be used for two entirely opposite reasons either as trophies of a slain enemy or serving as loving- cups, and kept as sacred relics in memory of a dear relation or friend to whom they originally belonged. Cf. ' MenschenschadeL als Trinkgefasse,' by Richard Andree (the well - known ethnologist, recently called away), in the Zeitechrift jiir Volkskunde,. 1912, fasc. i. H. KREBS.

" MY MONKEY 's UP." The expression i* familiar in the sense of "I am angry." I came upon a classical parallel lately in the ' Lysistrata ' of Aristophanes : Awrto rqv >VT7> iV eyw 8j (w. 683-4). The gender of us is, of course, explained by the fact that a woman is the speaker.

ALEX. LEEPER.-

Trinity College, University of Melbourne.


 * The onlv one I have been able to consult.