Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 4.djvu/49

 12 S. IV. FEB., 1918.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

43

be worth placing on record in. ' N. & Q.' the remarks of a writer in The Daily News. He says :

" The only Christmas card I received this year was one from the Ministry of Food, authorizing me to get a sugar card from the post office. Lake many other people, I imagined that we were adopting a system invented in Germany, until I was reminded that food cards were used in Paris, at the suggestion of Boissy d'Anglas, in the year III of the First Republic. There was a shortage of flour in Paris, and some people did not get their fair share. Boissy d'Anglas declared that they ought ' to determine in a fixed and invariable manner the proper amount of bread which each citizen should receive, and secure that each should receive the right amount, whether he arrives early or late at the baker's, whether he arrives with the crowd or alone, whether he waits at the door until the moment of distribution, or whether he goes away and only returns when it begins.' And so it was decided that citizens should only receive bread if they presented bread cards, and one of the articles approved by the Convention read as follows : ' Each citizen j living by the work of his hands, shall receive a^pound and a half of bread ; all other individuals,' whatever be their age or sex, shall receive one pound.' So there is nothing new in the card system ; and, indeed, we might take Boissy d'Anglas's motto as our own : ' Paris must give up every superfluity.' "

F. A. RUSSELL.

Catford, S.E.

DANTE : A NEWLY DISCOVERED PORTRAIT. Some of the Dante students among your readers may have missed the following paragraph, tucked away in a corner of The Times of Jan. 4, 1918 :

" In the ancient church of St. Augustine, at Rimini, the discovery has been made of some important frescoes of the fourteenth century of the school of Giotto. One of these contains a new and very beautiful portrait of Dante."

H. O.

ST. SWITHIN AT BALMORAL. It was with some surprise that I read the following paragraph in Lord AVarwick's 'Memories of Sixty Years,' as I did not know that St. Swithin was deemed worthy of notice in North Britain :

" It was on St. Swithin's evening, and I was with Dr. Bayle, Prince Leopold's doctor, a very charming young man. Suddenly along the road leading to the front of the Castle we met a strange procession. First came royal carriages, with the Queen and Royal Princesses ; following them some hundreds of retainers, all carrying torches, and two brakes full of stablemen dressed up as witches, and some dummy figures stuffed with straw and sawdust to represent witches. Arrived before the Castle, the Queen alighted, and the procession halted until Her Majesty could be seen at a window on the first floor. Then the pro- cession deployed and made for a great pile of wood heaped up on the ground.- Torches were plunged into it, the mass was fired, the dummy witches

were forked on to the flames, the live witches ran screaming away to be caught another year, 1 was told, and finally there was a fine dance in the open." P. 27.

The index of the ' Memories ' directs one to this passage by the mention of St. Swithin's " Eve," but " evening " and " eve " are not synonymous in such a case.

ST. SWITHIN.

WOLFE'S ' Sin JOHN MOORE ' : A HIBER- NICISM. " And we far away on the billow ! " has often been noted as a Hibernicism of the Irish Wolfe's.

The late Thomas Macdonagh's last book, 'Literature in Ireland,' has : " Of course the phrase answers to 'agus sinn-ne i bhfad ar an bhfairrge.' " He goes on, however :

" In Pepys, 1665, July 20, ' The bell always going. This day poor Robin Shaw at Black- well's died, and Blacku-ell himself in Flanders.' And ' Pride and Prejudice,' viii., ' Yes, and her petticoat I hope you saw her petticoat. Six inches deep in mud, I am absolutely certain, and the gown which had been let down to hide it not doing its office.' "

What of Shakespeare and Milton ? Are they in the Celtic fringe ?

Yet seem'd it winter still, and you away, As with your shadow I with these did play.

Sonnet 98. Rather I shall choose

To live the poorest in my tribe, than richest,, ) And he in that calamitous prison left.

' S. Agon.,' 1478.

W STOCKLEY.

CHANGE OF NAME AT CONFIRMATION. (See 3 S. xi. 175, 202 ; 4 S. v. 543 ; vi. 17 ; 7 S. ii. 77.) Two of the above references are quoted in the article ' Name ' in the ' Encyclopaedia of Forms and Precedents ' (vol. ix. p. 1), a learned work, issued under the general editorship of Lord Halsbury. In the course of the article it is stated that the Confirmation Service in the First Prayer-Book of Edward VI. directs the bishop to request the sponsors to " name this child." There is nothing of the sort in the Prayer Book of 1549, and it is difficult to imagine how such an error could have crept into a work of such authority.

B. B. P.

THOMAS DE QTTINCEY'S DAUGHTER. The severance of a literary link with the past appears in this newspaper announcement of December, 1917 :

" De Quincey. On Thursday, the 20th Dec., at 179 Finborough Road, Emily Jane, youngest daughter of Thomas de Quincey, in her 85th year. By her own desire, no flowers. '

W. B. H.