Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 2.djvu/102

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s. n. JULY 29, met

There is interesting matter about the Bear and Ragged Staff in Larvvood and Hotten's ' History of Signboards,' 6th edit., p. 136. ROBERT PIERPOINT.

I would refer your correspondent to what the late 3)r. Woodward, in his ' Heraldry : British and Foreign' (1896), in the chapter on ' Badges,' vol. i. p. 212, says upon this subject :

separate devices of the Beauchamps, Earls of War- wick, the bear being allusive to their remote ancestor Urso) were united by the 'Kingmaker,' Earl of Warwick, and the Dudleys who succeeded the Nevilles, into one badge, 'the rampant bear chained to the ragged staff.' "
 * ' The bear and ranged staff (originally two

j)r. Woodward gives the tinctures inquired about in a list of the principal badges in Appendix G to the same volume, p. 400, as follows :

" Bear, and Ragged-Staff Earl of Leicester ; the bear sabte, the staff argent, Earl of Warwick ; the Earl of Kent the reverse."

J. S. UDAL, F.S.A.

Mr. A. C. Fox-Davies's ' Heraldic Badges ' enables me to state that one of the cog- nizances of Richard de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, who died in 1439, was a " bear argent, muzzled gules, leaning on a ragged staff of the first " (p. 155).

ST. SWITHIN.

PEAT AND Moss : HEALING PROPERTIES (12 S. ii. 9). Peat, as such, has never, to my knowledge, had any recognized place in medicine, but it would doubtless possess the properties of the mosses present in it, and all mosses were considered cooling and astringent. They were much used for all fresh and " green " wounds, both to stop bleeding and to heal ; internally they were given (principally in wine) for haemorrhages. Club moss was also considered a provoker of urine ; and cup moss had a great reputation as a remedy for children's coughs, especially for chin-cough. Of tree mosses, that of the oak was, I think, most esteemed in England, but all were supposed to possess much the same properties, modified a little by the character of the tree on which they grew. They were thought to be sedative in cases of violent sickness ; ground mosses were more " cordial " than tree moss. Moss was official with us for a long time, as was also, until 1746, the moss of a dead man's skull. This was preferred for head diseases ; it was used as an application for bleeding from the nose, and as snuff as a cure for headache. Taken internally it was held good for

epilepsy. It was thought to be particularly efficacious if procured from the skull of a- man who had died a violent death, especially from hanging; and some cranks had the absurd notion that it was most PO if the victim had had but three letters to his name. These, of course, were not official require- ments, and indeed it does not appear that, in this country at any rate, the more en- lightened practitioners set much store by this Usnea cranii humani, or, I might say, by moss in general. C. C. B.

Sphagnum moss, owing to its capacity of" absorbing large quantities of fluid, is ex- tensively used in this war for making' splints. The moss is, of course, thoroughly- cleaned, sterilized, and treated with anti- septics before use. L. L. K.

THE MOTTO OF WILLIAM III. (12 S. ii. 26). " Non rapit imperium vis tua sed recipit 1T is the legend on the edge of tho medal that commemorates the landing of William of Orange at Torbay, Nov. 5 (O.S.), 1688. See Hawkins, Franks, and Grueber, ' Medallic Illustrations of British History,' vol. L p. 639, where casts of this medal with- out the inscribed edge are said to be common. Joshua Barnes, in his ' History of Edward III..' describes a coronation medal of that king having on the obverse *' a young prince laying a sceptre on a heap of hearts, with the motto ' Populo dat jura volenti,' ' and on the obverse " a hand held forth, as if saving a crown falling from on high, with the words ' Non rapit sed recipit.' ' But, according to the authorities just quoted, this- is " doubtless one of the jetons or counters struck in the Low Countries and in other parts of Europe in the sixteenth and seven- teenth centuries." EDWARD BENSLY.

' THE MAN WITH THE HOE ' (12 S. ii. 50). ' The Man with the Hoe, and Other Poems,' by Edwin Markham, was originally pub- lished by Doubleday & McClure, New York, in 1899* Dedicated " to Edmund Clarence Stedman, first to hail and caution me," the volume was well received in the United States, and its principal poem has had frequent reference made to it in the English press. In 1906 a spirited poetical rejoinder, by Henry Goodcell, a Californian, was published with the title ' The Man with the Spade.' Markham, who was born in Oregon City, Ore., in 1852, is of Puritan ancestry, one of his forebears on the paternal side being a first cousin of William Perm. For twenty years Markham was superintendent and principal of schools in California, and