Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 10.djvu/503

 12 s.x. MAY 27, 1922.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 413 Smith on a foul. The late Lord Redesdale occupied a seat next to me, and told me that the last combat of the kind at which he had been present was when Sayers and Heenan contested the championship in April, 1860. His Lordship wrote a very graphic account of this fight in his own reminiscences, and as a young man he was exceptionally handy with his fists himself. I remember his telling me that the best account ever written of that historical battle at Farnborough appeared in The Times newspaper, which, down to that date, had not reported a prize-fight for some forty years. He told me he had been to The Times office to try and find out who wrote it, but his endeavours were fruitless. " I can tell you, my Lord," said I. "It was written by Nicholas Woods, who also wrote an account of the laying of the first Atlantic cable, and furthermore he was the corre- spondent of The Morning Herald in the Crimean War." Lord Redesdale was astonished and delighted at my being able to impart this information to him, and I was mightily pleased myself at having remembered reading a statement to that effect which had appeared in a sporting contemporary 23 years previously. WlLLOUGHBY MAYCOCK. I take the following from Sala's ' Life and Adventures,' ii. 206 : Nicholas Woods, who had been in the Crimea for The Morning Herald, who, at the outset of the Franco- German War, had been commissioned to enlighten North Britain as to the conduct of the campaign. . . . Nicholas Woods died far too early, but not too prematurely to have gained the love of a large number of friends. . His journalist masterpieces [included] his narra- tivein The Pall Mall, I think of what befell him when, having assumed a ragged garb, he got himself locked up ... in the cells attached to the Grand Stand at Epsom, on the Derby Day. (Sala's ' Life and Adventures,' ii. 206.) J. ABDAGH. AN ILLUSTRATION OF THE BESTIARY ? (12 S. x. 366). Your correspondent is right in surmising that the illustration from the British Museum MS. (Add. 27,695) noticed by Cutts in his ' Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages,' does not represent the whale-fishery in the fifteenth century. The scene represents an incident in the wanderings of St. Brendan, or Brandon, the Irish saint, and his companions in search of the Isles of the Blessed. There are at least twenty versions of St. Brendan's life amongst the MSS. at the British Museum, but I will quote only from the first one, which appeared in 1483 from Caxton's press, included in Jacobus de Voragine's ' Golden Legend.' There it is recorded that, during their wanderings, St. Brendan's companions landed upon an island, weening to them that they had been safe, and made thereon a fire for to dress their dinner, but S. Brandon abode still in the ship, and when the fire was right hot and the meat nigh sodden, then this island began to move, whereof the monks were afeared, and fled anon to ship and left the fire and meat behind them, and marvelled sore of the moving. And S. Brandon comforted them and said that it was a great fish named Jasconye, which laboureth night and day to put his tail in his mouth, but for greatness he may not. And then anon they sailed west three days and three nights ere they saw any land. . . . Jacobus de Voragine, Archbishop of Genoa, first compiled the ' Golden Legend ' in 1275, and in the course of succeeding years others made additions and alterations, until Caxton printed it at Westminster in English, and first included in it the Life of St. Brendan. The British Museum versions of the Life range from as early as the tenth century. But the tale of the fish-island pre-dates St. Brendan, and the monkish writers did but give ifr a religious setting by grafting it on to the saint's life. It is found in ' The Arabian Nights Entertainments,' that collec- tion of travellers' tales which date back untold years, and were probably contem- porary with the Odyssey, sung by Homer. Anyone can find it there in the adventures of Sinbad the Sailor. HERBERT C. ANDREWS. BRITISH SETTLERS IN AMERICA (12 S. x. 368). I should be much obliged if MR. SETON-ANDERSON would tell us more about Evelynton, and also about the American Evelyns. May I meanwhile correct inaccu- racies in his communication ? George Evelyn was the son of Robert and grandson of the first George Evelyn of Wotton, Surrey. He was a first cousin of John Evelyn of ' Sylva ' and ' Diary ' fame. He was born in London, Jan. 31, 1592/3. He went to Maryland, not from Shropshire, but from the King's Bench Prison, where he had been shut up for debt. He was Governor of Kent Island. According to Lord Liver- pool he left Maryland in 1649, not in 1638. He is the Captain Evelyn, interested in architecture, mentioned more than once in the ' Diary.' His son, Mount joy Evelyn, settled in Virginia. His brother, Robert Evelyn, also emigrated and died in America.