Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 5.djvu/273

 12 S. V. OCT., 1919.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

267

TOMBSTONE INSCRIPTION. The following inscription in capital letters is on a tomb in "alvern Priory:

hilosophus Dignus Bonus Astrologus Lptheringus ir Pius ac Humilis Monachus Prior Huius Uvilis : ic Jacet in cista Geometricus ac Abacista : oetor Walcherus : flet plebs, dolet undique Clerus vie Lux Prima mori dedit Octobris, Seniori : ivat ut in coelis exoret quisque Fidelis MOXXV+

r hat does the fifth line mean ?

H. C N.

AUTHOR or BOOK WANTED. There is DW lying before me a small anonymous olume, printed at London in 1757 (302pp.). he following is an abstract of the title : " The Art of Conversation ; or the polite enter- ,iner : calculated for the improvement of both xes By a nobleman of distinguished abilities."

Can any of your correspondents throw ght on the authorship ? The work does Dt appear in Halkett-Laing's Dictionary.

J. K. (2)

GIANTS' NAMES. We have many and ariously located giants' legends in England id giants' graves, dykes, tables, caves, &c., Dound in the land.

There are, however, comparatively few ^rsonal names of these supermen placed

I record. I here set down some twenty r them : Ordulph of Tavistock, Gog and "agog or Gogmagog, Ossian of Ross-shire, arquin of South Lancashire, Carados of rirewsbury, Thunderbore, Blunderbore, lunderbuss, Holiburn of West Cornwall, srmagol, Denbras, Dan Dynas and his ife Venna, Cormoran or Cormovan, other- ise Careg Cowse, and his wife Cormelian of i. Michael's Mount, Wrath of Portreath, om of Lelant, Bellerus of the Land's End, recrobben, Trebiggan of West Cornwall, id Bolster of St. Agnes.

Several of these are obviously place - imes, as, for example, Trecrobben and rebiggan. The former is the name of a

II on the west of the isthmus of Penwith, hich is dialectically Crobb'n Hill, and in L6 ordnance maps Trencrom. Trebiggan is farmstead not many miles from the Land's ad. Its middle syllable would help to sociate it with a big man. Bolster is the Line of a steading on the hill of St. Agnes, id the giant give his name to the place or >es the place owe its name to its most mous inhabitant. Bellerus is suspicious id suggests that some scholar who was nd of retailing folk-lore knew that 3llerion is reputedly the classical name for e Land's End. Careg Cowse is an old >rnic-Celtic name for St. Michael's Mount.

Others of these names are of a familiar type, as Tom, Ordulph, and Carados, which in connexion with Shrewsbury suggests Caradoc.

Thunderbore, Blunderbore, Blunderbuss, and Wrath, gives one the sense of having been made up or adapted for the occasion. The remaining names on the list are not easy to explain. Gog and Magog sometimes appear as one giant Gogmagog. Has any one attempted to explain the derivation of these syllables ? Can the syllable " Ma" by any chance be indicative of femininity, ard was Magog the wife of Gog ? Of Connelian and Venna giantesses I can only observe that Vennes(h)ire was the name given in one of the oldest Cornish charters to the present Hundred of Kerrier.

Termagol, Cormoran or Cormovan (it looks as if carelessness in writing r and v has misled a printer of Hunt's or Botterell's books on West Cornish Folk-lore), Holiburn, Denbras, Dan Dynas, and Tarquin are names which I would ask some of your readers to shed light on. Most of them are Celtic, I believe, and if so, what meaning do they possess in that language ? Do their names arise from some incident in the story, woven around their personalities ? In conclusion, will your readers amplify this imperfect list of the giants' names of England ?

J. HAMBLEY ROWE.

TITLE OF BOOK WANTED. I shall be greatly obliged if any of your readers can

five me the name and publisher of a book read many years ago. It was a very charming romance, purporting to give the origin of the Tanagra figures, the well-known small statuettes in terra-cotta. The story was of the sculptor and his lover, the latter, being a modest young woman, refused to pose for the nude, and the sculptor eloped with her to Tanagra, where he modelled the statuettes in terra-cotta. M. BURNHAM. 141A Kensington High Street, W.

ASTERTION FLOWERS. In some old-time culinary recipes these flowers are mentioned as ingredients. What were they ? ^ I cannot trace " Astertion " in the * N.E.D.' G.

[? Nasturtium.]

JAMES WHEATLE Y : COBBLER. James Wheatley, a cobbler, afterwards Methodist minister, was the cause of extraordinary riots in Norwich in 1752. His conduct resulted in scandal, and he was sentenced by an ecclesiastical court to public penance. This was apparently never performed. He retained the confidence of his congregation, and died at Bristol.