Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 8.djvu/363

 12 s. viii. APRIL 9, 1921.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 297 THE LORD'S PRAYER IN THE GIPSY OR ROMANY LANGUAGE (12 S. viii. 250). This is given in ' The Dialect of the English Gipsies,' by Smart and Crofton on p. 225 (2nd Edn., London 1875), where it is recommended to compare six versions, Pott, ii, 472, et seq., also those in the Appendices to Borrow' s GEORGE J. DEW. Lower Hey ford, Banbury. Three different texts, printed, according to various dialects, and collected from the mouth of several wandering tribes of gipsies in Hungary are given in Adelung' s ' Mithri- dates' (band i. pp. 250-252). This well- known work, containing the Lord's Prayer as specimen in 500 languages and dialects, by J. Chr. Adelung and J. S. Vater (in 4 parts, 8vo, Berlin, 1806-17) can be found, no doubt, in the British Museum. H. K. FUNERAL CAKE (12 S. viii. 207). I very well remember that when I was a boy in Birmingham in the 1840's, my parents used sometimes to bring home from funerals a fev- perfectly black biscuits, made as it were of charcoal. Of any special bag for holding them I never heard, but I held the biscuits in abhorrence, and hope that this most unreasonable and lugubrious sign of mourn- ing is now extinct, with many others of its kind. HOWARD S. PEARSON. THE QUALITIES OF FEMALE BEAUTY (12 S. viii. 247). The lines beginning " Trigiiita haec habeat " date their birth, as S. G. rightly surmises, from a time earlier than that of Nicolas Chorier. Giovanni Nevizzani gives them in Bk. I., section 93, of his ' Sylva Nuptialis,' that curious work which is so often quoted in the ' Anatomy of Melancholy.' Nevizzani says that these thirty essentials are enumerated near the end of the book ' De la louange et beaulte des dames.' He then quotes a Latin version in eighteen elegiacs which he attributes to Franciscus Corniger, with the remark " quern nunc refero quia non est impressus." This then would seem to be the first appear- ance of these lines in print. In Heinrich Bebel's ' Proverbia Germanica,' no. 152, we get a list of twenty-one points : " Haec mulier perfecte formosa erit, quae habuerit ; tria dura, tria mollia, tria brevia," &c. William Drummond of Hawthornden has given expression to Corniger' s standard in 'Beauty's Idea,' one of the pieces in his White is her hair, her teeth white, white her skin. answers to : Alba cutis, nivei dentes, albique capilli. The editor of Drummond in ' The Muses' Library,' clearly knowing nothing of the Latin original, pronounces " hair " to be " obviously incorrect," and alters it to "hand." EDWARD BENSLY. "SINGING BREAD." (12 S. viii. 269). To discover the meaning of " Singing-bread " one need go no further than to 'N.E.D.' where it is denned as " The wafer used in the celebration of the mass." The Diction- ary also gives "Singing cake" and "singing loaf" in the same sense. Barnabe Googe is translating the words "mysticus panis," the original of his twc lines quoted at the above reference being these : Ne iaceat uero. inque sepulchre sola colatur, Mysticus adfertur quoque et una clauditur intus Panis, ut impietas creaeat, cultusque prophanus. Naogeorgus (Kirchineyer), ' Regnum Papisticum,' IV., 501-503. EDWARD BENSLY. Much Hadham, Herts. A term that was formerly applied to the wafer bread used in singing (or saying) mass. The lines quoted by Brand are from Barnaby Googe's ' Popish Kingdom ' iv. 51b, (1570), a work not to be depended on for facts, though it bears witness to a survival of the term "singing bread" into Elizabeth's time, especially as wafer-bread was then used in our churches, as it still may be and often is. J. T. F. Winterton, Lines. Singing-bread was that offered in the Mass. It was made with great reverence, sometimes to the accompaniment of singing whence it is said its name was derived. The breads were also called " obleys." ST. SWITHIN. Round cakes or wafers intended for the consecrated host in the eucharistic sacra- ment (See Davies' 'Rites,' 1672, p. 2), also ' Test. Vetust,' p. 266 : " Item, I bequethe to the same chirch a little round cofyn of sylver, closed in Syngyng-bred, and not the hoste." W. JAGGARD, Capt. CAPT. CCOK : MEMORIALS (12 S. viii. 132, 176, 198, 218). " On Easly Moor, a few miles to the south of Roseberry Topping the tall column to the memory of Captain Cook stands like a lighthouse on this inland coast-line " (Gordon Home, ' Yorkshire,' p. 96). M. HOPE DODDS.
 * Zincali,' and in his ' Lavo-lil.'
 * Madrigals and Epigrams.' Line 3 :