Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 9.djvu/525

 ii s. ix. JUNE 27, mi.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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20 Jan., 1638. There are three Clarendon por- traits. Frances, daughter of Sir Thomas Aylesbury, was christened 25 Aug., 1617, and married at St. Margaret's to the first Earl of Clarendon 10 July, 1634 ; their son the second Earl was christened 11 June, 1638. Samuel Pepys married on 1 Dec., 1655, Elizabeth Marchant De S nt Michell, and portraits of both are given. Sir Walter Raw- leigh, Knt., was buried in October, 1618 (the entries for the month are undated).

In the transcript of the registers the dates are altered from the Old Style to the New. The compiler tells us that the foot-notes are confined to such practical information as is likely to be of service to those who consult the registers, no attempt having been made to elucidate purely genealogical questions ; and, with a view to economizing space, everything has been done to ensure condensation and brevity, consistent with clearness and utility.

Parish Register of the Holy and Undivided Trinity in the City of Chester, 1532-1837. Transcribed, indexed, and edited by L. M. Farrall. (Chester, G-. B. Griffith, 11. 5s.)

THIS parish is a large one, and, during the time covered by the registers here printed, included a very various population. It was the port parish of Chester, so that numbers of seafaring men and their families were domiciled within it ; and within it also were situated many houses belonging to the gentry of the county. A church under this invocation has stood on the site of the present building for many centuries. The name of one priest, Walter, dating from the twelfth century is known ; then, at the end of the thir- teenth century with Alexander le Bel, begins the list of rectors, which comes down unbroken to the present day.

The work before us has been very competently carried out. The transcribed Registers of Bap- tisms, Marriages, and Burials are divided into three parts : from 1598 to 1653 ; from 1654 to 1812 ; and from 1813 to 1837. In the first of these are incorporated ' Odd Notes from the Register Book,' and in the last lists of the clergy officiating. Part IV. gives various notes, addi- tions, and corrections, connected chiefly with early burials ; and Part V. contains, what must have cost a greater amount of labour than any other section of the work, the excellent indexes no fewer than nine in number. Five of these are biographical, and give in a minimum of space a surprising amount of information of the kind that workers in this field will recognize as only to be collected with considerable trouble. For the merely curious reader is provided a ' Calendar of some Incidental References in the Register ' which sets out all the " plums." These are not specially numerous, but several are of consider- able interest. The issue is limited to 300 copies, and the type has been distributed.

Goode Olde Countree. By Charles A. Mace.

(St. Catherine Press, 6s. net.)

THIS is the kind of book which is calculated to produce diatribes a fine occasion for the display of wit, contempt, and power of diction on the part of a reviewer, and for resistance on the part of the author. We will not thus exercise either ourselves or him. The re-collection of the oft- collected ; the indulgence in small moralizings ; the cheerful repetition of thrice outworn cliches

in an obvious ignorance of their staleness ; and the jotting down of odd scraps of private histories, make up a harmless enough pastime. The book produces somewhat the same effect as a bower- bird's nest, and no doubt was equally delightful in the construction ; if we add to that delight the fact that some one has been found to print it, and the probability that some one will be found to read it, we seem to have amassed some reasons after all for congratulating the author.

Florilegio di Canti Toscani : Folk Songs of the Tuscan Hills. With English Renderings by Grace Warrack. (Moring, 10s. 6d. net.)

WE congratulate Miss Warrack on this result of her studies, which she describes very modestly in her Introduction as intended for readers " not already familiar with Italian traditional poetry and the literature that has grown up around it."

" Genuinely Tuscan poetry consists almost entirely of Rispetti and Stornelli, little songs of which it may be said that in their thousands they have love, the love of young man and maid, for motive and theme."

" Amongst the Tuscan Rispetti there are a good 1 many poems that are in construction Ottave, like the ottave rime of Italian literature that is,, octaves composed of six alternately rhyming line& followed by a rhyming couplet."

" Of the verse-form which belongs to the Sicilian equivalent of the Rispetto* the Canzona or Strambotto, an octave of lines alternately- rhyming, there is said to be only one example- amongst the Tuscan poems. There are some ten-- lined poems, however, which might be held to con- sist of this Sicilian octave with the addition of a rhyming couplet, not necessarily in ripvesa style ; and of the few twelve-lined poemos, while some are literary octaves with two couplets, others are- Sicilian octaves with two couplets." Miss War- rack gives one example of these, the poem, Moriro, moriro, sarai contenta = " I '11 die, I 'U die, thou shalt be pleased at last," which has some similarity to the beautiful octave Morirb* moriro, che ri averai ? = " Yes, I shall die ; what will it profit thee ? "

As the author explains, only the main part of the book, where the Italian poems are given,, can properly be called a Florilegio, or Anthology, and it is " chiefly the First Series that contains the ' Flowers of Tuscan Folk Song..' " In the Second Series many are of noted Sicilian origin, and in the other four Series there are folk songs, " genuine and interesting," which Miss Warrack considers to be " in their simple way flowers* but some of these, especially the Prayers, have nothing aboxit them peculiarly Tuscan." We. give an example of her translation :

The Appeal. Alas ! I can no longer see my star,

No more behold it rising in its place ; Nor find it in the sky, nor earth afar :

O God of heaven, disclose it me of grace ! O God of heaven, who art Thyself so blest, From out the storm disclose the star at rest ! O God of heaven, of all-availing might, Disclose for me the star that shineth bright.

The pretty small quarto volume contains 17 illus-- tratipns. Particularly beautiful are those from pencil drawings by the late Miss Hannah C v Preston Macgoun.