Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 3.djvu/45

 12 s. m. JAN. is, i9i7.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

May 10, 1725, with other references to their association in The British Journal for May 1 , 8, and 22 the last containing an account of the thief-taker's trial, as that of the 29th did of his execution. That Fielding, among so many imagined characters in ' Jonathan Wild, the Great,' should have dealt so strik- ingly with this decidedly real one, causes me the more to feel that he had a sufficiently intimate acquaintance with the criminal intelligence of the spring of 1725 to enable him to write the Mist articles, and so keenly to interest him as to bring him to weave certain of his memories of it into his great satiric work of many years later, continuing therein the line of thought and style of argument he had developed in the days when he commenced author.

While on the subject, I may. suggest that it would be of great interest to collect the various references in our literature, bio- graphical included, to Fielding's presentation of Wild. I quote one as an example, and that from the ' Croker Papers ' (vol. i. p. 340), giving Wellington's very frank opinion of Napoleon Buonaparte as a man :

" For my part I could see no magnanimity in a lie ; and I confess that I think one who could play such tricks but a shabby fellow. I never believed in him, and always thought that in the long-run we should overthrow him. He never seemed himself at his ease, and even in the boldest things he did there was always a mixture of apprehension and meanness. I used to call him ' Jonathan Wild the Great.' .... The truth was, he had no more care about what was right or wrong, just or unjust, honourable or dishonourable, than Jonathan, though his great abilities and the great stakes he played for threw the knavery into the shade."

ALFRED F. ROBBINS.

"DONKEY'S YEARS" = A VERY LONG TIME (12 S. ii. 506). This is not a new piece of slang. I have heard it for at least forty years in Wiltshire, though not in London.

B. B.

" ROSALIE " = BAYONET (12 S. ii. 506). The Patron Saint of Bayonne is its first bishop, St. Leon, martyr.

E. S. DODGSON.

FOREIGN GRAVES OF BRITISH AUTHORS, &c. : CHURCHILL AND CAMPBELL (12 S. ii. 172, 254, 292, 395, 495). In reply to the query raised, inter alia, by MR. JOHN T. PAGE at the last reference, I am glad to say, Yes. There is a mural monument in St. Mary's Church, Dover, to Charles Churchill, the poet. It is fixed on the south wall of the church, a little to the east of the door

on that side (south), and bears the following' inscription :

In memory of | ye late celebrated poet | Mr Charles Churchill | who died at Boulogne in | France JEt&tis 32 and I was buried in y 8 town r. Nov. 1764.

The rich and great no sooner gone But strait a monumental stone Inscribed with panegyric lays Such fulsome undeserved praise The living Blush, the Conscience Dead Themselves appall'd that truth is fled And can it be that worth like thine Should smoulder undistinguished sleep- At very thought the muses weep Forbid it gratitude and Love O for a glow like his to prove How much regretted Honest Bard

Accept this shadow of Regard. T. Underwood ye Impartialist

Erected June 1769.

A Line taken | from his Epistle to Hogarth At ye sole expense | of ye above T. Underwood The above is exactly as I transcribed it from the monument itself, when visiting Dover,

G. YARROW BALDOCK, Major. South Hackney, N.E.

0n Uaafes,

Journal of the Folk-Song Society, No. 20, being the Third and Last Part of Vol. V. (London? printed privately for the Members of the Society.)

THE first group of songs, seven in number, con- sists of Narrative and Historical Ballads and Ditties. Three versions of ' Sir Hugh ' are given, all collected in Somerset and by Mr. Cecil J. Sharp. All three are interesting ; in many places, indeed, corrupted into absurdity, but also pre- serving the rarer threads of the legend. Thus the second version says the little boy saw his mother plucking chicken in the Jews' kitchen a sorcerer's trick to entice him in ; and the first version concludes with the mysterious words :

All that will shine like any fine gold

Against the morning sun

the remains, as the editor points out, of some description of the light which shone from the murdered child's body. Another good song in this group, in two versions, is ' Sir William Gower,' better known as ' William Glen ' the tale of a murderer who brought disaster on his ship, and having confessed was cast into the sea. Here he is driven to confession by the ghost of an innocent man who suffered for the crime an unusual feature.

Of the four Songs of Country Life and Cus- tom, the first was noted down by Mr. Cecil Sharp from the singing of a man of 96, also in Somerset ; there is some confusion in it, and the tune in part seems to be a variant of ' Lochaber no more." There are three versions of a good carter's song, and three Pads tow May songs which, from the point of view of folk-lore, form the most