Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 3.djvu/303

 12 S. III. MAY, 1917.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

297

ON^A LEGEND USED BY SHAKESPEARE. A traditional rather than a literary source can sometimes be found for legends re- ferred to by Shakespeare in his plays. In a previous number of ' N. & Q.' (ante, p. 168), I indicated the essentially popular character of the legend of Herod's cock, which, it is said, crew on the night of our Saviour's birth. The first reference to this legend is in an interpolation in the writings of Nicodemus, which have been printed in Tischendorf's ' Evangelia Apocrypha.' Like many apocryphal legends it became current in popular lore, and it is possibly as an oral tradition that Shakespeare refers to it in the lines in ' Hamlet ' :

Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated The bird of dawning singeth all night long.

It will be noticed that Shakespeare writes " some say," thus indicating an oral rather than a written source. That the legend was incorporated into English tradition is to be inferred from the' existence of the early ballad of St. Stephen and Herod, and from the following remark of Child in his introduction to it in his ' English and Scottish Popular Ballads ' :

" There is a sheet of carols headed thus : Christus natus est ' with a woodcut. .. .repre- senting the stable at Bethlehem, where, among the usual figures in a crib, there is also a cock, which a commentary represents as announcing the Saviour's birth."

This note of Child's would add force to the suggestion that Shakespeare is using a legend received from direct oral tradition. It has not been suggested, so far as I know, that it was from popular oral tradition Shakespeare derived the legend.

In considering the legend the common apotropaeic functions of the cock in European tradition must be taken into account.

JOSEPH J. MACSWEENEY.

A MARCH HARE. On p. 62 of vol. ii. of Rowland Hurst, at Wakefield, in 1801, we read : " mad, by Jupiter ! gone off as strong as a march hare ; catch him who can." Perhaps this item, is worth adding, under the words " hare " and " March," to the Oxford Dictionary, where that leaper is referred to as " mad," but not as " strong." E. S. DODGSON.
 * The Knight and the Mason,' printed by

CLERICAL BIOGRAPHIES AND TESTAMEN- TARY BURIALS. I have recently come into possession of a number of MS. books, containing brief biographical notes of some .hundreds of clergymen, evidently the nucleus

of a Clerical Biographical Dictionary. The names are chiefly those of persons living between c. 1650 and c. 1850. Many of the entries are fairly complete (parentage, date of birth, college, livings, marriage, death, burial, &c.); others only give parentage, or living, or death, or marriage. With them are a number of volumes of Testamentary Burials. As " it's the little bit that I know, and the little bit that you know, and the little bit that somebody else knows," which make the full story, I shall be pleased to place the information at the disposal of any querist of ' N. & Q.'

J. W. FAWCETT. Consett, co. Durham.

CURIOUS AUDITORY ILLUSION. Such of your readers as are psychologists and machine gun officers may be interested in discovering the explanation of the following phenome- non : If a Hotchkiss or Lewis gun be fired at a high rate in bursts of four or five shots, the shots can be counted. If six shots are fired, they are almost invariably counted as five, and some demonstration is needed to overcome the obstinacy of the aural illusion. J. C. WHITEBROOK.

24 Old Square, Lincoln's Inn, W.C.

rus.

WE must request correspondents desiring in- formation on family matters of only private interest to affix their names and addresses to their queries, in order that answers may be sent to them direct.

MARY DAVIES. I am engaged in writing a book about Mary Davies and the Manor of Ebury. The Duke of Westminster has kindly given me access to his archives. The book will add fresh materials to the topographical history of London. It has occurred to me that if I confide some outline of my researches to readers of ' N. & Q.' I may be spared the aggravating experience of some one saying when the work is com- pleted, " If only I had known you were doing that I could have supplied you with valuable information."

Mr. Rutton's article on the Manor in ArchcEologia is not strictly accurate in its later part, which deals with the transition of the property from the Crown to the Grosvenor family. He says that Mary Davies married Sir Thomas Grosvenor in 1676, which should be 1677. He goes on, " the estate "grew." He should have said " the estate diminished," because valuable