Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 8.djvu/181

 ii s. VIL MA*, i, i9i3.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

177

sympathy with modern democratic ideas may think it only proper that a prince of the blood should be lodged in more stately fashion than his fellow-students.

D. O. HUNTER-BLAIR, O.S.B. Fort Augustus.

I think the statement of Mortimer Collins must be put down as an exaggeration on the novelist's part, and that it would be impossible to give chapter and verse for the words " by statute." But the Kings of England and the Royal Family in general, from Henry VI. onwards with the well- known exception of James II. have looked upon the College with a favourable eye ; and many of them have stayed within her walls where State bedrooms are kept for their reception. Magdalen has been visited "by, among others, Edward IV., Richard III., Henry VII., Arthur, Prince of Wales, Eliza- beth, James I., Henry, Prince of Wales, Charles I., Prince Rupert not to mention visits of later days. She possesses some splendid tapestries commemorating Prince Arthur's ill-starred alliance with Katharine of Arragon. Wood says that, on his visit in 1605, Prince Henry was matriculated as -a member of the College ; but no record of this has ever been discovered, and it seems to be a mistake of Wood's. Dr. Thomas West, who gave a portrait of this Prince to Magdalen in 1756, " on Gaudy-day in July used to send down from the High -Table to the Bachelor-Demies to say that he drank their health, as being of the Blood Royal, because Prince Henry. . . .called the Demies, in an affectionate speech addressed to them,
 * Fratres Fraterrimi.' "

Prince Christian Victor of Schleswig- Holstein was a member of the College.

A. R. BAYLEY.

[The REV. W. D. MACRAY also thanked for reply.]

MOONWORT OR " UNSHOE THE HORSE " "(11 S. vii. 108). There are several moon- worts ; it was the lesser lunary (Botrychium) to which the name " unshoe the horse " was given. The superstition is much older than Culpeper, and it survived him. Cole ( quo ted by Folkard) " chaffs " Culpeper for holding it, but admits that it was " be- lieved by many." Friend says it still survives in Normandy and Central France, and quotes from Aubrey an anecdote of Sir Bennet Hoskins's keeper, in which a wood- pecker is said to have drawn out a nail by means of " some leafe " from a hole in which it had built its nest. Aubrey adds,

" They say the Moonewort will doe such things." The earliest literary reference to the superstition is, so far as I know, that of Du Bartas, thus englished by Sylvester :

And Horse, that, feeding on the grassie Hils, Tread upon Moon- wort with their hollow heels ; Though lately shod, at night goe bare-foot home, Their Master' musing where their shooes become. O Moon-'wori ! tell us where thou hid'st the Smith, Hammer, and Pincers, thou unshoo'st them with ? Alas ! what Lock or Iron Engine is't That can thy subtle secret strength resist, Sith the best Farrier cannot set a shoo So sure, but thou (so shortly) canst undoo ?

' Divine Weekes and Workes ' ' The Third Day of the First Week.'

c. a B.

From a reference to Hogg and Johnson's ' \Vild Flowers of Great Britain ' (1866). I gather that this legend is referred to by Gerarde, Bauhin (' Historia Plantarum '), Coles (' Adam in Eden '), and Wither (Abuses Stript and Whipt ').

JOHN T. PAGE.

[DR. S. D. CLIPPIXGDALE also thanked for reply.]

MISLEADING MILESTONES (11 S. vii. 30, 112). Here are some definite examples asked for by your correspondent W. S. B. H. In the West Riding of Yorks, near Shipley, is a stone giving the distance to Leeds as 6 miles ; it is, in fact, 9. At a junction of Keighley and Bradford roads another stone states the distance to Halifax as 8 miles ; it is really 12. At the junction of the Gisburn and Carleton roads a stone gives the distance to Gisburn as 6 miles, whereas it is 8. There are other examples in the neighbour- hood of Settle, Sedbergh, Otley, and Pateley Bridge. Further details as to these stones may be found in a paper by Mr. J. J. Brigg, M.A., in part Ixxxv. of The Yorkshire Archaeological Journal.

I am communicating again with my Devon friend as to the exact location of the two- kilometre boundary stones in the Princetown district. J. LANDFEAR LUCAS.

Glendora, Hindhead.

PRIMERO (11 S. vii. 1, 23, 41, 94). There can be no doubt that the extract at 11 S. iv. 443 given by H. I. B. relates to Gleek, and it is the earliest dated English reference to it (27 May, 1527) we seem to possess. I have noted only one other instance where c is used as the initial letter in the name of that game : " I '11 make one at Cleek " (Thomas Shadwell's play of ' Epsom Welle,' 1673). See The Gentleman's Magazine, cclxxxvii. 359. J. S. McTEAR.

6, Arthur Chambers, Belfast.