Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 8.djvu/287

 12 S. VIII. MARCH 19, 1921.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 233 Mont St. Michel, off the coast of Normandy, and St. Michael's Mount in Cornwall. Clitheroe Castle is erected on a mass of limestone rock that towers above the town, and the chapel in it was called St. Michael in the Castle, and was the parish church for all the forests within the Honour of Clitheroe. Examples of the latter are the Hermitage " super Montem de Chale in Insula Vecta in honore Sanctae Katerinae," existing A.D. 1312, and the Oratory erected by Walter de Godeton on the same down a few years later, also dedicated to the same saint, which have given the name of St. Catherine to the down, and to the neighbour- ing Point, and to the powerful St. Catherine Lighthouse situate there, which is so well known to " all that go down to the sea in ships." There are also St. Catherine's hill near Winchester, and St. Catherine's hill near Christchurch, on the latter of which, according to tradition, the Priory Church should have been erected, but the founda- tions laid there several times were as often mysteriously removed to the present site, until at last the builders were convinced it was the will of heaven that the building should be erected at Christchurch where it now stands. The reason for churches on hills being dedicated to St. Michael is that their exposed situation rendered them peculiarly liable to damage by storms and tempests, which our forefathers believed were caused by the devil the Prince of the Power of the Air and his attendant fiends. Hence it was specially appropriate that churches, so exposed, should be placed under the dedi- cation and protection of the Archangel St. Michael, who was regarded as the leader of the heavenly host and the great antagonist and conqueror of the Devil, and who is so frequently represented in ecclesiastical art as triumphing over Satan, represented as a dragon. St. Catherine is the patron saint of hills, because according to ecclesiastical legend, after her martyrdom, angels took her body to Mount Sinai and buried it there. WM. SELF-W^EEKS. Westwood, Clitheroe. HUNDREDTH PSALM : GAELIC VERSIONS (12 S. vii. 405). To the versions of the first line adduced by Mr. Anderson may be added that of Bishop Bedell (Dublin edition, 1827) : " Deanaidh fuam luatgaireae cum an Tighe- arna, a talam nile." J. B. McGovERN. St. Stephen's Rectory, C.-on-M.,; Manchester. " AUSTER " LAND TENURE (12 S. viii. 109,, 192). Astre in the forms of hosier, aster and ayster occurs in the Court Rolls of the Manor of Chatburn Worston and Pendleton ( ' Court Rolls of the Honour of Clitheroe,' edited by Dr. William Farrer). At a Halmote held May 30, 1530, Jennet Cromock surrendered (inter alia] ten acres of oxgang land in Pendilton and one hosier in Pendilton to the- use of her son Christopher Cromock. At a> Halmote held on Oct. 21, 1532, the latter (then called Christopher Crombock) sur- rendered one " le aster " and ten acres of oxgang land lying in Penhulton with the- appurtenances to the use of Robert Sclatyer ; and at a Halmote held on July 16, 1548, Robert Sclater surrendered a messuage called ' le Ayster ' and ten acres of oxgang land lying in Penhulton to the use of John Braddill. It is quite clear from the above that astre, the word for hearth, is here used for the house itself, and it testifies to the importance of the domestic hearth in early times when it was the centre and altar of the primitive family. Elton ( ' Origins of English History ' ) arrives at the conclusion that the oldest customs of inheritance in England and Germany were, in their remote beginnings, connected with a domestic religion, based upon the worship of ancestral spirits, of which the hearth-place was essen- tially the shrine and altar. The idea of the sacredness of the hearth is still retained in the often expressed belief that you should never venture to poke the fire in another man's house till you have known him seven years. In many cases the spirits of departed ancestors were no doubt the originals of household " boggarts." Well Hall in Clithe- roe was supposed to be haunted, and an old lady, whose family had occupied the house for several generations, told me, in all sincerity, over thirty years ago, 'that her mother's grandmother was on very friendly terms with the boggart, and that, in the evening, when the hearth was swept, she used to sit on one side of the fire, and the boggart on the other, and they used to " camp " one another (that is, chat familiarly together). As Sir Laurence Gomme has pointed out,, possession of a homestead was the source of all other rights in the ancient village community. The cultivated land of the village was held by the owners of the village houses. Hence " auster-land " probably means the ancient cultivated land of a village or manor, the ownership of which was originally annexed to that of the ancient.