Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 8.djvu/320

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NOTES AND QUERIES, [ii s. VIL APRIL 19, 1913.

who was noted for his performance called ".killing the calf." The performer went behind a curtain, and imitated alternately the butcher who declared that he was going to kill the calf, and the calf which pleaded for its life, and finally died in appropriate agonies. Raine himself could remember Joney Davey's son in his father's perform- ance, and asserted that he had once seen an account of a similar performance before the Princess Mary, Henry VIII. 's daughter. He suggested that the story of Shake- speare's killing a calf in the grand style arose from the fact that the youthful Shakespeare used to do this traditional bit of acting.

M. H. DODDS.

WESTON PATRICK, HANTS, AND KING FAMILY (US. vii. 29, 112). There are many families of the name of King in Munster, and their name in Irish is Mac an Hi, Son of the King, and now usually spelt Mac Curoi. The arms Azure, three crowns or, were the arms of the Kings of Munster, and are now the arms of that province.

T. O'NEILL LANE.

Tournafulla, co. Limerick.

LIONS IN THE To WEB (US. vii. 150, 210. 272). There are at least one volume and two broadsides on this subject:

" The Tower Menagerie ; comprising the Natural History of the Animals contained in that Establishment." London, 1829.

" The Lions' Elegy ; or, Verses on the Death of the Three Lions in the Tower." Folio sheet. London, 1681.

" A pleasant funeral-oration at the interment of the three [lately deceased] Tower-lyons [sic]." Folio sheet. London. 1681.

The last menagerie stood on the site of the refreshment room, and, with the waxworks in the White Tower, were the principal popular attraction. All early pocket guides to London refer to the menagerie.

THE ' LONDON,' ' BRITISH,' AND ' ENGLISH ' CATALOGUES (US. vii. 127, 196, 238, 256). I erred in good company in identifying the catalogue now said to be William London's as Clavell's. The copy before me was lettered 'London's Catalogue of the Most Vendible Books,' and William Maskell has added in MS. on a blank " wrongly lettered."

It is only as a thankoffering that I correct the corrector. The fourth edition of Clavell's ' Catalogue of Books printed in England since the Fire' was issued in 1696, not 1693. Its lists are complete until Michaelmas, 1695. Vide the copies in the B.M., ref. 618 i. 18, and 129 e. 2.

ALECK ABRAHAMS.

MEMOIR OF JOHN WILSON CROKER (11 S. vii. 270). With reference to the query of the EDITOR OF 'THE IRISH BOOK LOVER * concerning the article on John Wilson Croker which appeared in The Quarterly Review of July, 1876, I think there is no reason why I should not now state publicly that it was written by the late Sir William Smith, who was at that time editor of The Quarterly.

JOHN MURRAY.

50, Albemarle Street, W.

" THE LOWING HERD WINDS SLOWLY O'ER

THE LEA" (11 S. vii. 270). The natural inference from the situation depicted is that the cattle were leaving the pastures and going to their stalls for the night. Every- thing is designed to show the gathering twi- light, the cessation of outward signs of life and activity, and the loneliness of the pensive observer amid the homes of the departed. The tolling of Curfew announces the neces- sity for suppressing the household fires ; the homeward movement of the lowing herd indicates that pasturing for the day is over ; and the footsteps of the ploughman passing forward to his cottage proclaim that the poet beside the mouldering heaps is left alone with the coming darkness. Had the cattle been moving outwards over the lea r instead of -leaving it for the night, their comparative nearness and action Would have infused life into the scene, and dis- turbed the serene calm which the poet deemed indispensable for his delineation.

In the Aldine edition of Gray's poems Mitford furnishes several parallels, the first of which runs thus :

"In the 'Dioseni.' of Aratus, this picture is

drawn similar to that of the English poet, ver. 387 t

"H 5' 6're ^I'/CTjfyuoZo TreptTrXetoi

\ei/j./3o(rtoio.

THOMAS BAYNE

I have always admired the line

The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, apart from its poetic beauty, as a singularly accurate description of a scene familiar to me as a boy in one of the last of the Warwick- shire parishes to be enclosed that of Whit- church, near Stratford -on -Avon. The cows belonging to the several occupiers were turned out together from spring till autumn, and tended all day by an old man and a little lad on the pasture and meadow, which was unfenced from the alternate plough " lands " and green " balks " of the " arable field." Towards milking - time, when the old man either sounded a horn or called the