Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 8.djvu/254

 204 NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s. vm. MARCH 12, 1021, and made into cheese, but that the party got sadly inebriated 'and on the way home -dropped their treasure in a pool (F." S. P.). I heard the rirne from Mr. Sam Bennett of Llmington in 1912, who also told me the ^following : . Old Tommy Abbots And he was a fool He built a hovel Over his pool. Some one asked him the reason why, It was for his ducks to swim in the dry. and the next also : The Yebberton fools to Campden went, To take a whoel-barrow was their intent, They carried the barrow to Campden town For fear its wheels should bruise the groun. There was a mad dog went through the to^n, It bit the side of the barrow all round, They took the barrow to the seaside to be dipped And swore the dog it should 'be whipt. A dip in the sea was supposed to cure Hydro- rphobia so the pool was called the sea. One old rman of E. really was taken to the sea, but said ihe rather be bitten again. This was Thomas -Woodward of Ilmington. II. MINOR OFFICIALS. "1. The Watchman. If 1 am not mis- taken Sir R. Peel's Police Act was passed in 1829. It was adopted early in Gloucester- shire, but not till some years later in War- wickshire in which latter county parish constables and watchmen continued to -guard the place. It was the duty of every (rural) ' peeler ' to leave a ticket during the night, in some appointed spot, at every lone homestead in his beat ; but I do not remember that this practice was maintained after the adoption of the police-act by Warwickshire. "2. The rural ' Thief -taker.' As a class these men were almost extinct when my memory begins, yet in my early boyhood, about 1830, I remember that one was still flourishing at Shipston on Stour. But they properly belong to a somewhat earlier day in my father's time one of much local cele- brity was extant in this village of Halford in which I am now writing the Thief -taker Lomas. " The thief -taker was not a salaried peace- officer, but looked for payment to the rewards offered for the capture of evil-doers. The capture of the absconding fathers of bastard children at the instance of parish officers was looked upon as the bread-and-cheese of his profession. Generally also he exercised some small craft when not on duty ; the Lomas named 'above was a shoe-maker, the Shipston man]made baskets." J. HARVEY BLOOM. NATHANIEL FIELD'S WORK IN THE "BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER" PLAYS. (See ante, p. 141, 164, 183). III. 'THE KNIGHT OF MALTA.' (Acts I. and V.) WE find Field again collaborating with Massinger and Fletcher in ' The Knight of Malta,' this time contributing the first and last acts. Boyle assigns these to Beau- mont, Fleay "has little doubt " that they are Field's, while Macaulay observes that the style of their author, though somewhat like that of Field, is better than his usual work. There can, however, be no doubt that it was he who wTote them, and the best evidence of this is to be found in what is undoubtedly the finest scene in the play Act V. sc. i. the scene in which Oriana by her eloquence transforms the earthly pas- sion of the young knight Miranda to a pure, spiritual" love. It is of this scene that Sir A. W. Ward ('Hist. Eiig. Dram. Lit,,' II. 688) observes that he can recall "no nobler vindication of the authority of the' moral law in the whole range of the Eliza- bethan drama." It seems strange that no one has remarked its extraordinarily close resemblance to sc. ii. of ' The Triumph of Honour,' where Dorigen, in precisely similar circumstances, makes her lofty appeal to the higher nature of the infatuated Martius, and makes that appeal in language that can leave no shadow^ of a doubt that the two scenes are from the same hand. I have already had occasion to quote from the speech in which Dorigen refers to the deeds of Martius as being entered in a volume and urges him not to commit an unworthy act that will, cause the reader, on reaching the leaf that records it, to cast the book away, for it was this that gave me the first clue to the common authorship of ' The Triumph of Honour ' and the fourth act of ' The Queen of Corinth. ' The parallel in ' The Knight of Malta ' is even more striking, since, the situations being identical, it is more complete. Dorigen thus addresses Martius : Oh Martius, Martius ! wouldst thou in one minut Blast all thy laurels, which so many years Thou hast been purchasing with blood and sweat? Hath Dorigen never been written, read, Withou^ the epithet of chaste chaste Dorigen, And wouldst thou fall upon her chagtity Like.a.bJaQk drop of ink, to blot it out ?