Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 7.djvu/360

 352 NOTES AND QUERIES. [11 s. vn. may 3,191a A Cumberland Song (11 S. vii. 289).— This song was composed by Robert Ander- son, " the Cumberland Bard," who was born at Carlisle in 1770, where he died in 1833. In the complete edition of ' Anderson's Cumberland Ballads,' published at Wigton some years after the poet's death (no date is given), the song appears on pp. 14 and 15, and consists of five stanzas, each followed by a few lines of " patter." It is entitled ' Watty,' and is far too long to quote in these pages. Perhaps I may be allowed to give the opening stanza, which is as follows :—• If you ax whear I come frae, I say the Fell Seyde, Where fadder, an mudder, an honest fwok beyde ; An my sweetheart, O bliss her! she thowt nin leyke me, For when we shuik lians, the tears gush'd frae her e'e: Says I, " I mun e'en git a spot if I can ; But whatever beteyde me, I '11 think o' thee, Nan !" The word "spot " is defined in the Glossary as " a place of service." John T. Cubby. This will be found in ' Ballads in the Cumberland Dialect,' chiefly by R. Anderson, Cockermouth, 1870, p. 50. R. Oliver Heslop. Newcastle-upon-Tyne. A Letter op Scott's : " Mutale " (11 S. vii. 145, 258). — For Jacobite songs see Peter Buchan's ' Prince Charles and Flora Macdonald ' (" Herd's Collection " of 1776); and Johnson's Musical Museum, the first number of which appeared in 1787, being an effort to preserve the songs and music of Scotland, in which the publisher and editor was assisted by Robert Burns, then but little known. Jacobite songs form a section in ' The Illustrated Book of Scottish Songs from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century,' published by Nathaniel Cooke, Milford House, Strand, 1854. William MacArthur. Dublin. The Iron Mask : a " Feminist " Theory (11 S. vi. 428).—Eugene Lawrence has an article in Harper's New Monthly Magazine of June, 1871 (vol. xliii.), on ' The Man in the Iron Mask.' On p. 106 the author says :— " It might be suggested that the prisoner was a woman : some victim of Madame de Maintc- non's jealousy ; some noble associate of Brin- villiers or Fouquet. There seems scarcely suffi- cient positive evidence to indicate even the sex of the prisoner." Edward Denham. New Bedford, Mass. Signs of the Fifteen Last Days of the World (US. vii. 266).—I may supple- ment my note by adding that in the Tal- mudical treatise ' Sanhedrin,' cap. ' Chelek,' p. 97, quoted in Bartolocci, ' Bibl. Magna Rabbinica,' iv. 51, are enumerated seven signs that were to precede the coming of the Messiah, but these are quite different from those which Jerome is said to have found in books of Jews. J. T. F. Apart from the absence of details of the stained window in All Saints', York, I am inclined to reply in the negative to your learned correspondent's query. Yet inas- much as the subject-matter per se possesses a wide interest, I trust I may be permitted to put on record all available "negative" evidence. With the exception of one citation from the Talmud to be referred to later, I have found no direct evidence of Simoneem or signs of that kind in the writings of the Hebrews; moreover, if such be in existence, it may with confidence be declared that they are far from being " horrible." If we abide by the axioms governing this and kindred matters in the Talmud (' Megillah' 25 and elsewhere), we must believe that the " signa quindecim horribilia de fine mundi " existed only in the fruitful imagination of the author of ' The Pricke of Conscience.' Presumably— I say presumably because the evidence is very shadowy—the only books of an esoteric type available at that time to Jerome, which specifically treat of Gnosticism, Kab- bala, and Sodoulh (mysteries), are the ' Sepher Yetzirah' ('Creation') and one or two doubtful Midrashic books, attributed to Rabbi Shimmon Ben Yechuee, the leading Kabbalist of his age, whose intrepidity in denouncing the consular power nearly cost him his life. The first century of the Christian era was a brilliant one for Kabbala. It pro- duced Rabbi Akiba, the finest intellect of the post-Biblical era, if the praises of his contemporaries are trustworthy ; Rabbi Myer, who retired from the study of it a sadder man ; and lastly, that freelance Elisha Ben Avuya, known subsequently as " Acher " or " the Stranger," because he lost his balance, and went " all to pieces," through overstudy and searching into things beyond mortal power (' Chagiga '15). It is sad to think of the fate of this genius and of his luminous legal decisions, scattered all over the Talmud, from which ho derives no other glory than a barren anonymity, for they are always referred to as acheirim omru