Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 1.djvu/452

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s. i. JUNE 3, wie.

years' imprisonment. He was ordained priest at Laon, June 11, 1588, and left for Paris on the following Sept. 28.

All the above seem to have been Lon- doners.

Philip Sherwood, a priest of the diocese of York, who had formerly held a benefice in the diocese of Durham, was at the English Oollege, Douay, from 1570 till he returned to England, March 19, 1575/6. He was sub- sequently imprisoned at Hull, and exiled in 1585, and died abroad in or before 1588. JOHN B. WAINE WEIGHT.

SOME IRISH FAMILY HISTORIES. (See 11 S. vii. 483 ; viii. 124, 173, 213, 335, 403 ;
 * ix. 24, 66, 223, 263.)

Coghill. ' The Family of Coghill, 1377 to '1879. With, some sketches of their maternal -ancestors, the Slings bys of Scriven Hall, 1135 to 1879.' By James Henry Coghill. Small 4to. Cambridge (U.S.), 1879.

Coppinger. ' History of the Copingers or Coppingers of the County of Cork, Ireland, and the Counties of Suffolk and Kent, England.' By Walter Arthur Copinger. Manchester and Lon- don, 1884.

O' Sullivan More in ' Thoughts on the Early .Ages of the Irish Nation,' &c. (1790).

' Irish Names : Family and Personal.' By Bev. J. J. MacNamee. 24 pp. Dublin, C.T.S. of Jreland.

Numerous references to Irish family history are scattered through the pages of
 * N. & Q.' J. ARDAGH.

' ARYMES PRYDEIN VAWR.' In its ap- plicability to the circumstances of to-day C. S. B.'s query, ' The Ghent Paternoster ' '{ante, p. 328), reminds me of an ancient Welsh poem printed and rendered by W. F. Skene in ' The Four Ancient Books of Wales,' 1868, No. 7, ii. 123. This poem, the ' Arymes Prydein Vawr ' or ' Prognostication of Prydein the Great,' is hopefully attributed to '{jrolyddan, the court bard of Cadwaladyr the Blessed (t664), and is preserved in the '* Book of Taliessin,' a MS. written early in irhe fourteenth century and now in the Hengwrt collection at Peniarth.

In Welsh oilman (pi. allmyn, ellmyn] means any foreigner ; but the adj. allmaeneg xmeans High Dutch, German. Line 142 of the poem runs :

Nyt a hont Allmyn or nen y safant

Syt pant talhont seith weith gwerth digonsant,

Ac agheu diheu y gwerth eu cam.

'That is : The Germans shall not go from the places they stand on | Until they shall have paid seven times the value of what they did | And until Death shall scatter to the value of their wrongdoing.

There are six mystical references to the Germans, and as many as twelve to the English, of whom it is said, in 1. 191, that they are at anchor on the sea continually :

WBTH AGOB AB VOB PEUNYD.

Layamon, a writer of the reign of King John, tells us, in his * Brut ' (ed. Sir F. Madden, 1847, ii. 446), about the treachery of the Kaiser towards King Arthur, and reveals his opinion of the German warrior in the follow- ing sentences :

" So soon as the Germans landed at Totness they slew the folk there ; they, drove away the churls that tilled the land there ; they hung the knights who defended their country ; all the good wives they stuck with their knives ; all the maidens they killed cruelly ; and they burnt all the clergymen alive. They felled castles, ravaged the country- side, burnt the churches, and drowned the sucking children in the water."

ALFRED ANS COMBE.

SIR WALTER SCOTT : AN UNPUBLISHED LETTER. To those interested in the details of Scott's life, the following unpublished letter from Lockhart to one of his most intimate friends offers a puzzle not easy of solution. As to the date of the letter there is absolutely no room for doubt or question. It is perfectly clearly written. Lockhart became editor of The Quarterly Review in 1825, and settled in London shortly after- wards, and in November of that year he had heard that Constable's London banker had " thrown up his (Constable's) book."

From 1817 onwards Scott had been liable to spasms in the stomach, and one occasion in 1819 he was so ill that he sent for his sons to take leave of them. But in 1826, prior to the date of this letter, he had made an enjoyable trip to Belgium, and on his return had been feted and lionized in London, and was apparently in the best of health. Neither in his own nor in Mrs. Hughes' s Diaries, nor in Lockhart's ' Life,' is there any reference to this illness, whilst the financial difficulties had been on the ebb and flow for more than a dozen years : MY DEAR Milton, Lanark, Nov. 5, 1826.

Your wife and you will be glad when I tell you that my daughter is to be married (1 think probably at Easter) to a worthy young friend of ours, who is just taking possession of an estate of some 10,000?. a year in this shire John Nisbett of Cairnhill. You may remember his excellent father and also

his mother, nee Isabella Scott of Millenie I shall

be in London again very speedily. Next week I shall be with Sir Peter in Edinburgh, and then move towards my desk ....

I fear we are too likely to have bad news about poor Sir W. Scott ; for by last accounts his state was such that the doctors entertained hardly the least hope of his recovery Liver brought on by hunting in the sun !