Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 7.djvu/483

 ii s. vii. jdnb 14,1913] NOTES AND QUERIES. 475 Author of Quotation Wanted (11 S. v. 108).— Vice may give pleasure, Virtue may give pain. True ; but how long will such a Truth remain ? This was said to be "a thought stolen from Cato." The source is to be seen in Aulus Gellius, xvi. 1, where the following is quoted as occurring in a speech of Cato " quam dixit Numantise apud equites ": — " Cogitate cum animis vestris, si quid vos per laborem recte feceritis : labor ille a vobis cito recedet, bene factum a vobis, dum vivitis, non abscedet; sed si qua per voluptatem nequiter feceritis, voluptas cito abibit, nequiter factum illud apud vos semper manebit." Gellius says that when he read this he recognized it as containing an earlier ex- pression of the same sentiment that he had learnt when a boy as Musonius's. "A* ti Trp&iw KaKbv furi r6rov, 6 fiiv ir6vos otxtrai, ri Si kuXSv )Uvti • av ti toit^jis aUrxP^" iwra ijSovijt, ri fiiv r/Sv otxfrai, ri> Si alaxpi" fii'C Edward Bensly. extraordinary fountains in ireland, Brittany, and Sicily (11 Sf vii. 129, 236).— Analogous to the wonder-working fountain in Armorican Britain, there is in this province of Kii a rocky Rain-making Pool by the river Hiki. It was formerly believed to be governed by a huge supernatural toad. Every time when an extreme drought pre- vailed, the distressed people used to throw into the pool an ox's head. To wash away the uncleanness thus caused, the batrachian deity would instantly bring down heavy showers of rain. More or less similarly, some Orinoco Indians are said to have been accustomed to keep a toad in a vessel and pray to it for fine or rainy weather, flogging it in case their prayers proved ineffectual (J. Collin de Plancy, Dictionnaire Infernal,' Bruxelles, 1845, p. 147). Giraldus Cambrensis's account of "a most wonderful fountain in Sicily," quoted by Mr. Ceredio Davies at the first refer- ence, is paralleled by the Japanese and Chinese stories of " Water of Jealousy" (10 S. i. 147), to my query on which there has appeared no reply. The subjoined Japanese tradition some- what resembles the Irish legends of the fountains having overflowed and become lakes owing to breach of rule :— there is_ the celebrated lake Hachirdgata (lit. Hachiro's Lagoon], about whose origin villagers tell the following tale. Anciently there stood a mountain where the lake now exists. One day three men visited it to hew wood. Hachird, one of them, went down alone into a fen and caught three fish. He made a fire and roasted them, with the intention of partaking of them with the other two men. But the fish emitted so seductive an odour that it made him unable to desist from devouring them all without awaiting his friends. Now he began to be excessively thirsty; he lay- down in the fen and endeavoured to drink all its water, when his two companions came and found bis figure much altered. Hachird told them what had happened to him, and urged them promptly to run homeward. No sooner had he finished his words than he was completely metamorphosed into a huge serpent 160 feet long, which crushed out all cliffs and dales, and turned the mountain into this lake, seventy [Japanese] miles long and from twenty to thirty miles broad."—Tobe, ' Oou Eikei Gunki,' 1698, torn. v. Kumagusu MlNAKATA. Tanabe, Kii, Japan. The Hessian Contingent : American War of Independence (11 S. vii. 364, 436). —The alleged letter given in the extract quoted by Col. Southam is obviously satirical, and has several times been ex- posed in this country as such. In one version the writer of the letter is stated to have been the Landgrave of Hesse, in another version " the Count de Schaumbergh "— a fictitious person. The person to whom the letter was addressed—variously called " Baron de Hohenberg," " Baron Hohen- dorf " or " Hogendorff "—was also fictitious, for the commander of the Hessians in America was Lieut.-General Philip von Heister. The satirical letter has often been printed since 1864; but when or where it first appeared has never been ascertained, nor is the author known with certainty. Many American writers attribute it to Franklin, though there is no proof that he wrote it. In a letter to Prof. Winthrop of Harvard College, dated Paris, 1 May, 1777, Franklin said :— " The conduct of those princes of Germany who have sold the blood of their people has sub- jected them to the contempt and odium of all Europe... .The King of Prussia's humor of obliging those princes to pay him the same toll per head for the men they drive through his dominions, as used to be paid for their cattle, because they were sold as such, is generally spoken of with approbation, as containing a just reproof of those tyrants. I send you enclosed one of the many satires that have appeared od this occasion."—' Works,' ed. Bigelow, vi. 98. The satire enclosed has not been preserved, so one cannot tell whether it was the letter in question or another. The Lausanne paper quoted by Col. Southam says that " of this total of 29,166 men there perished 11,853." This state- ment is erroneous, so far as the number of
 * Y' In the district of Akita, province of Dewa,