Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 9.djvu/513

 us. ix. JUNE 27, 19H.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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until the lad tried the Malabar-nut cure. The other case was that of a young man who

" had consulted with divers Chyrurgeons and had been streaked by seven Seventh Sons and all to no purpose."

Dr. Baymond Crawfurd in his recently (1911) published lectures on 'The King's Evil ' does not mention the fact that, besides k'ngs, septuagenarians and seventh sons also " touched " for scrofula.

At 11 S. ii. 326 I published the title of an^ old French treatise on the curing of " ecrouelles par 1'attouchement des septe- naires," quoted by a German writer, Justinus Koerner, in the Stuttgart Morgenblatt of 8 Aug., 1829, who in the same article referred to Dr. Thomas Garnett's ' Tour through the Highlands of Scotland ' (1800), in which the case is mentioned of an old man named Junis, living on the island of Icolmkill (lona) in 1798, who professed to cure scrofula by touching and rubbing the neck on two consecutive Sundays and Thursdays, free of charge, as accepting money would have prevented the cure : the old man was a seventh son. According to Koerner, the succession of seven sons was not to be inter- rupted by the birth of a daughter, but he quotes no authority for this statement.

L. L. K.

[The article on John Pechey in the ' D.N.B.' shows that he has often been confused with a medical contemporary of a similar name.]

MOUNTAIN MEADOW MASSACRE BY THE MORMONS : FATHER DE SMET. A letter written by the famous Jesuit missionary, dated from St. Louis on 1 Nov., 1859, shows that he was chaplain in the expedition of the United States forces for the punishment of the Mormons. He says :

" On the 28th of May, 1858 I accompanied

as chaplain an army sent out. . . .against the Mormons and Savages .... In September, 1857, 120 emigrants from Arkansas. . . .are said to have been horribly massacred by the Mormons in a p'ace called Mountain Meadows." Father de Smet then gives instances of the Mormons having defied the U.S. authorities, and relates how on two occasions the Oovernor and subaltern officers had met with such strong Mormon opposition that they were forced to quit Utah. Congress therefore sent a third Governor with 2,000 soldiers, who were to be followed by from two'to four thousand others in the next spring. Father de Smet gives the terms of his chap- laincy appointment by the Minister of War, and then describes his journey to take up the same at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas

Territory. He took his place in the 7th Regiment, composed of 800 men, of which he gives an interesting account.

" The most remarkable thing that I met [he says] on this occasion were the long wagon trains engaged in transporting to Utah provisions and sinews of war. If the journals of the day are to be believed, these cost the Government 15 mil- lions."

Then follow a few sentences confirming the description given by J. Y. Nelson, one of the guides to the expedition, and printed in ' N. & Q.' ante, p. 325. Each train con- sisted of twenty-six wagons, each wagon drawn by six yoke of oxen ( ? mules), and containing near 5,000 Ib. The Quarter- master-General told Father de Smet that, according to a calculation he had made, the whole train would make a line of 50 miles.

M. N.

LEGISLATIVE UNION OF ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. In the Parish Registers of Inver- esk, under May, 1707, occurs the following note :

" The fatall State of Brittain commences from ye 1st of May by an unhallowed union." Below this is written in another handwriting of the same period :

" The Clerk in a fatal Mistake. The Union The Riches & chief blessing of the Country." CHAS. A. BERNAU.

FIELDING'S ' TOM JONES.' As a great Fielding scholar, MR. [FREDERICK S. DICKSON of New York, has discussed in a recent number of ' N. & Q.' (p. 425) certain dis- crepancies which have been alleged to occur in 'Tom Jones,' it seems opportune to inquire if any readers of the Foundling's history can explain what appears to be a topographical slip in book viii. chap. viii. The passage in question, 4, runs thus :

" Besides Mr. Jones and the good governess of the mansion, there sat down at table an attorney of Salisbury, indeed the very same who had brought the news of Mrs. Blifil's death to Mr. Allworthy, and whose 'name, which I think we did not before mention, was Bowling : there was likewise present another person, who styled himself a lawyer, and who lived somewhere near Lidlmcn, in Somersetshire. This fellow, I say, styled him- self a lawyer, and was indeed a most vile petti- fogger, without sense or knowledge of any kind ; one of those who may be termed train-bearers to the law ; a sort of supernumeraries in the pro- fession, who are the hackneys of attorneys, and will ride more miles for half a crown than a post- boy."

Now there lies in Dorsetshire, situate three miles from Sturminster Newton Station and eleven miles south-west of Shaftesbury, the village of Lydlinch; but certain it is no