Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 8.djvu/337

 i2s.viiLApBn,2 f io2i.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 275 What evidence has MB. ACKERMANN, that "the yellow-hammer, or (as we were correctly informed at 10 S. xi. 452 that we ought to call it) the yellow ammer, has ever had any such legend as he suggests attached to it Its note is not in the least passionate or melancholy. Country people say that it perpetually repeats " A little bit of bread and no cheese ' ' ! As to the nightingale, when Hood wrote of "'the bird forlorn, That singeth with her breast against a thorn," he was, of course borrowing from Richard Barnefield's ' Ode ': Everything did banish moan Save the nightingale alone. "She, poor bird, as all forlorn Lean'd her breast against a thorn, And there sang the dolefullest ditty, That to hear it was great pity. Whence did Barnefield derive this idea ? JOHN B. WAINEWBIGHT. CHERRY ORCHARDS or KENT (12 S. viii. 211). According to Murray's 'Kent,' at p. [10] : "It is probable that one species of the cherry (Prunus avium) was indigenous in this country, although varieties of P. cerasus, a native of the forests on. the southern slopes of the Caucasus, may have been introduced by the Romans at an early period. The cherry was, at all events, one of the fruits cultivated in Kent through the middle ages, although the extent of cultivation had much diminished, and the quality of the fruit much deteriorated, when Richard Hareys fruiterer to Henry VIII, introduced fresh grafts .and varieties from Flanders, and planted about 105 acres at Teynham, near Faversham, from which cherry orchard much of Kent was after- Awards supplied." JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT. " THE HAVEN UNDER THE HILL " (12 S. yiii. 228). A term often applied to Whitby in Yorkshire, and the title also of one of Miss Mary Linskill's stories referring to .that seaport. R. B. Upton. Murray's 'Somerset' (1899), at p. 251, -says of the old church dedicated to St. Andrew on Clevedon Point : " In the S. transept are the mural tablets of the Elton family, and of Henry Hallam, the .historian, and of his wife, daughter and two sons. Mrs. Hallam was the daughter of Sir Abraham Elton of Clevedon Court. The name of their elder son, Arthur Hallam, is indissolubly asso- ciated with Tennyson's poem ' In Memoriam.' Mr. Hallam selected this as a burial-place, as he rsays in the memoir of his elder son, ' not only from the connection of kindred, but on account of its still and sequestered situation on a lone hill that overlays the Bristol Channel.' It is to hill, and to this church, and to this grave, to which the remains of the old, heart-broken father have since been added, that Tennyson refers in his pathetic lines,] And the stately ships go on To their haven under the hill." ^ But the writer does not say where Tenny- son refers to "this church" and "this grave" in the poem, or where at Clevedor. the haven, to which he does refer, is to be found. JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT. PHAESTOS DISK (12 S. viii. 151, 237). I had been hoping that this inquiry would have elicited a reply from some one capable of discussing the questions independently, but as no such scholar has come forward I would direct the inquirer's attention to The Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Ex- ploration Fund for January, 1921, pp. 29-54, in which Mr. F. W. Read, F.S.A., gives 'A New Interpretation of the Phaestos Disk,' and adds a full account of all the studies that have been made upon it up to the present. Mr. Bead -takes quite a new departure from all the others and seeks to prove that the characters are a species of musical notation. This is a matter that should be of interest to musicians, more especially those who have investigated the melodies of antiquity and the systems of oriental notation. In any case Mr. Read's article is valuable because he does not confine himself to stating his own theory, but informs his reader of what all other students have said about it. CECIL MORDEN. Devonshire Club, St. James, S.W. PRONUNCIATION OF GREEK (AND LATIN) (12 S. viii. 26, 78, 214). Withl regard to the question of Latin, I would refer to Prof. Sandys' 'History of Classical Scholarship,' Cambridge, 1908,II,p. 233-234, and my work: 'Les Coutumes scolaires clans Tancienne Angleterre,' Evreux, 1920, p. 22. It would not appear from the above quoted books that the process was a gradual one. It was very rapid, according to Prof. Sandys, and the reason that the change of pronunciation was enforced was to aim a further blow against the Roman Catholic Church. All the priests for the English Mission were trained abroad and spoke Latin with the "monkish pronunciation." In one genera- tion, this would have become almost unin- telligible to the people who might have heard by chance a "massing priest," which, it would appear, was the desire of the Reformers. G. C. BATEMAN,