Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 3.djvu/219

 12 S. III. MARCH 17, 1917.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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tration from an instance in the Bodleian. But the valuable list of Early Drawings and Illuminations in the British Museum by Birch and Jenner contains about sixty. It would be most interesting to know the special character of each of them, and to ascertain if they are of British origin or not. Their dates would, perhaps, help us to de- termine when St. Barbara was adopted as a patron saint by soldiers and sailors, for the first appearance of this cult is not yet known. Without further investigation I feel inclined to believe that she became the patron saint of warriors on land and sea long before the invention of gunpowder. The tower may have given rise to this veneration as the emblem may have been wrongly interpreted as a military feature, part of a castle or stronghold.

For a similar reason, I think, she was invoked against thunder and lightning. In France my grandmother had a charming praj^er for this purpose, commencing " Sainte Barbe, Sainte Fleur, lavez les pieds denotre Seigneur. ..." (I always fancied this mys- terious Sainte Fleur meant St. Mary Magda- lene, who is very often represented along with St. Barbara.)

Because of her power against lightning, bells were named after her both in England and on the Continent. The Rev. P. H. Ditchfield in his interesting book, ' The Village Church,' mentions an inscription on a bell in Leonine verses, which begins :

Me melior vere non est campana sub aere

O cidus (sic) cell Barbara crimina deli (sic) ....

By the way, I may mention that thunder? bells, and towers were always connected together in olden times. We must re- member that bells were used not only for calling the faithful to church, but more especially for mystical purposes : helping by their sound the souls of the deceased to find their way to heaven, driving away evil spirits, and protecting men and beasts against lightning.

MB. WATNEWRIGHT mentions a church dedicated to St. Barbara in Italy in the eleventh century. This is very interesting, for it is one of the earliest examples of this cult in the West. It remains to be ascer- tained when it reached this part of Europe, and whether it was not brought back from the East by Crusaders or travellers, as seems to be the case with St. George. If it is so, the image must have been here anterior to the legend, and may have given rise to it.

A study of the name " Barbara " should lead us to inquire if this is not rather a

general appellation, meaning that she was, by birth, neither a Greek, Jew, nor Romart (her partner in martyrdom, St. Juliana, was probably a Roman). We ought to be- interested in these Barbarians because they were probably of Celtic origin. It was in. Bithynia that the Gauls settled before going" to the country which took its name from them, Galatia, and from which they were- afterwards driven back again to the shores, of Bithynia. If Barbara were really a Celt,, it would be most interesting to know whether the earliest images of the Saint represent her with a round tower, similar to- those which are found in Ireland and other Celtic districts, and which, I am inclined to- believe, were of Christian origin, and prob- ably erected for religious purposes in the- place of the megalithic standing stones venerated by the Celts in pre-historie times. It is at all events very curious that so many of the unexplained round towers; in Ireland are in close proximity to a church. But I am afraid of being led into a digression- foreign to the present subject, and will merely add that there should be no difficulty in ascertaining whether, in this part of Asia, Minor, there remain any vestiges of Celtic civilization and particularly round towers- similar to the Irish ones.

May I say in conclusion that in my country St. Barbara is universally honoured as the patron saint of miners, and of a very ancient free corps of artillery, the" Canon- niers Sedentaires de Lille," the origin of which goes back to the Middle Ages ? As such, she had a chapel behind the chancel in St, Maurice's Church. In this there is a good modern window in which she is- represented amongst soldiers. This church was the only interesting old church in the- town, and therefore, according to German, ideas, merited destruction. This the Huns carried into effect in their useless and wanton bombardment of the city in October, 1916.

" Sancta Barbara, ejice Barbaras." P. TURPIN.

Folkestone.

MR. MONTAGUE SUMMERS thinks that it- is " unscholarly nonsense " to say that St. Barbara is " a wholly mythical personage." Then what about the greatest of hagio- graphs, the pious and honest Le Nain de- Tillemont ? In his ' Memoires pour servir- a 1'histoire ecclesiastique,' Venice edition,, vol. iii. p. 267, he wrote : " Nous ne disons rien de la vie de cette sainte, parce qu'on ne trouve rien de certain." He has a not&