Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 4.djvu/37

 12 S. IV. JAN., 1918.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

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would have helped towards the cost of re-erecting them ; but as they did not see their way to con- tributing, the project was abandoned, and ;ill that remained of this masterpiece was used for building purposes."

ALAN STEWART.

PADDINGTON POLLAICY (12 S. iii. 509). Gilbert's allusion was obviously to Ignatius Paul Pollaky. a Pole who, in the late sixties, established a private inquiry office at 13 Paddington Green, which he maintained till 1882. He further advertised himself as " Correspondent to the Foreign Police Gazette." I believe he was the first to set up an office of this description in the metropolis, though they are plentiful enough nowadays. WILLOUGHBY HAYCOCK.

[MB. CECIL CLARKE also thanked for reply.]

ARMS OF ENGLAND WITH FRANCE ANCIENT (12 S. iii. 419, 485). There is a large chest in the " buttery " at Durham Castle bearing inside the lid the arms of France ancient three fleurs-de-lis, 3 and 4 ; 1 and 2 being the arms of England three leopards (see auto- type reproduction of the chest open, Arch. jEliana, Second Series, xv. 296). I have also seen in private possession a shield of painted glass from a church in Durham county with same charges : 1 and 4, Eng- land ; 2 and 3, France ancient.

B. B B.

South Shields.

TUCKER AND PETEE FAMILIES (12 S. iii. 504) The Tucker papers are now in the possession of Ivan Tucker, 2nd Ghoorkhas, Butts Green, Chelmsford.

V. L. OLIVER.

LAYING A GHOST (12 S. iii. 504). The service as performed at Castle Acre in Norfolk, early in the nineteenth century, consisted in requisitioning the services of three of the neighbouring clergy, who read in rotation verses of Scripture, the ghost also reading and keeping pace with them. If the clerics managed to get a verse ahead, their power was established and - the ghost laid. The recess the spirit was put to rest in had two candle-ends thrown in, from which, I presume, they were lighted during the ceremony. My informant, an old lady, aged 84, was present (so she said) when the event took place. The recess was an object of dread in my boyhood. It was securely barred, two wooden bars and an iron one crossing from side to side ; but I believe it was merely an opening into a huge chimney- stack.

A somewhat similar story is told of Warwick Castle. An ancient dame had the

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privilege of selling spare milk, and, by a system not unknown to modern milk- vendors, she so cheated her customers that the Earl, hearing of it, cancelled the privi- lege. She then bewitched the Castle f usually in the form of a black dog. The chaplain, with the Vicars of St. Mary's and St. Nicholas's, brought the evil one to rest by reading passages of Scripture, and eventually followed the witch in the form of a dog to the height of Caesar's Tower, from which she or it sprang into the stream, to a chamber prepared under the mill dam. Her statue was placed upon the tower battle- ments, and was there until blown down some years back. The statue was obviously one of the stone warders often placed on castle battlements.

In 1879 1 was informed that the schoolroom at Horspath, near Oxford, had been per- sistently haunted by a ghost, to the general annoyance of the teachers and children ; but the parish priest, with cross-bearer, acolytes, &c., performed a solemn service of exorcism, with good effect. Is there any truth in this tale ?

J. HARVEY BLOOM.

The only authentic recent case I ever heard of was the rectory at High Wy combe, about thirty years ago. E. E. COPE.

SUGAR : ITS INTRODUCTION INTO ENGLAND (12 S. iii. 472). The following notes may be of interest.

The Burgundians attacked Paris in July, 1465. Haggard in his ' Louis XI. and Charles the Bold ' states of the besieged as follows

" They caused the bourgeoisie to close the gate,, after the Burgundians had been supplied in turn with all the paper, parchment, ink, sugar, and drugs that they demanded."

Prof. J. E. Thorold Rogers in his account of Holland in " The Story of the Nations," 1889, p. 49, stated :

" There were flourishing manufactures in Alexandria and Cairo. In particular, sugar was cultivated, extracted, and refined in the former town, with such success and abundance that its price fell, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, to less than an eighth of what it stood at in the beginning of the fifteenth."

If sugar was to be obtained in Alexandria at the commencement of the fifteenth century, it is probable that much was used in the Courts of Europe, and that sugar was therefore well known to many.

I have always understood that at the royal and other banquets the art of the sweetmeat- maker was much in evidence, and that this