Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 8.djvu/406

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [11 s. vn. MAY 17, uw

DANCING ON " MIDSUMMER NIGHT " (11 S. vii. 269). About a dozen years ago I was staying over St. John's Eve at Skei on the Volstervand, south of the Nordfjord, in Norway, and I was told that in the evening there would a bonfire and a dance on the hillside above the inn. After dinner I went to the spot where the pile of Wood had been built, and found it surrounded by a number of young men and lads, who were running races and jumping, and rolling as good cart- wheels as any London street arab could cut, round the pile ; this continued all the time I Was there (a good quarter of an hour), and seemed to be a part of the usual order. The scene brought vividly to mind the efforts of the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel, when " they leaped about the altar Which was made " (1 Kings xviii. 26, R.V.). Later in the eveninig, when it was sufficiently dark, the fire was lighted, the music began, and dancing continued till well on into the early hours of the morning. I counted thirteen other fires on the hillsides and by the shores of the lake, and no doubt the same scene was being enacted in each place. I heard nothing about any visiting of springs of water ; and there can be little doubt that the fire and the dance Were relics of the very ancient worship of fire.

I have spent two St. John's Eves in Nor- way, south of Bergen ; in each case there was but a single fire, and no dancing, and one could not but suspect that the fire was lighted for the benefit of the visitors from a distance. In 1872, however, there were posted up at St. Paul, on the Mississippi, notices in Norwegian and English of a gathering and dance to be held on St. John's Eve. C. S. TAYLOR.

Banwell Vicarage, Somerset.

THE ASSYRIANS AND FISH AS RELIGIOUS SYMBOL (US. vii. 310). The fish on the back of Prof. Lethaby's ' Westminster Abbey and the King's Craftsmen ' is a repro- duction of Fig. 17 on p. 46 within, viz., a tile from the Chapter-House : " the salmon of St. Peter." A. R. BAYLEY.

The fish was, I think, in the first instance associated in the religion of the Babylonians and Assyrians with the legend of the Crea- tion described by Berosus, the Chaldean priest. According to him there was a time when the world had no existence, but space was filled with water. In time this great ocean brought forth strange monsters, with bodies of animals and having human heads. Some ended in fish-like form with the tail of a fish <

The cuneiform texts and other sources give additional detail, and prove that this legend was handed down in modified form to the later Assyrians.

A woman, Omoroka or Omorka, in Chaldean Thamte, written in the texts Thalath, probably according to Dr. Budge a corruption of Thamte, the Babylonian for "sea" or "ocean," ruled over the marine deities and monsters.

is also used for a cave or hole fre- quented by fish. The fish idea dominates. -\

The Assyrian sculptures represent a deity with the body and head of a man joined on to that of a fish : possibly the Oannes of the Chaldeans " Lord of the Lower World," " Lord of Darkness " who was said to have sprung from the sea and taught the earlier races the arts of civilization. I should have associated it with Omorka, but the head is generally a male head.

The cuneiform letters are sometimes arranged in the form of a fish, as signifying that word.

I cannot just put my hand upon the volume of the Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology which contains a special article on the subject, but it was there shown that the word meant a part of Nine- veh, and that the Jonah legend of the whale did not mean " a whale," but the name of a part of that city.

The fish used as a decoration to a wavy border in Assyrian sculpture have no religious symbolism, but merely indicate that the border represents either a river or the sea. The Dagon of the Philistines may be equated with the fish -like deity. The Assyrian name for Nineveh was Ninua (Ninu=fish), i.e., " fishes," sacred through the fish myth. SYDNEY HERBERT.

Carlton Lodge, Cheltenham.

MORLAND'S RESIDENCE (US. vii. 348). This was Pleasant Passage, not Pleasant Row. I visited it some twenty years ago, and my memory is evidently at fault. Wm. Collins, Morland's friend, father of the R.A., and grandfather of Wilkie Collins, in his ' Memoirs of a Picture,' in 1805 says :

" He [Morland] looked out for and took a neat small house with a very pretty garden to it, in a place called Pleasant Passage, at the back of Mother Black Cap's on the Hampstead Road."

Pleasant Passage still exists.

I am glad that MR. JONAS has given me the opportunity of correction.

THOMAS J. BARRATT, Bell-Moor, Hampstead Heath, N.W.